Posted on 02/28/2002 11:26:13 AM PST by Asmodeus
Thu Feb 28, 2002
Leahy, Grassley ready to introduce FBI oversight legislation
By JE esse J. Holland, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Two senators are pushing a plan to improve monitoring of the FBI, including a provision to let Justice Department investigators independently look at the agency and to protect whistle-blowers.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. Charles Grassley (news), R-Iowa, plan to announce their ideas Thursday. They will say they intend to introduce a legislation to make clear that the Justice Department's inspector general has jurisdiction over the FBI.
Grassley and Leahy's representatives would not talk Wednesday about the proposed legislation.
Last year, however, after a series of FBI oversight hearings in the Judiciary Committee, the senators said they would introduce the measure. They said their legislation would guarantee in law inspector general's authority, even though Attorney General John Ashcroft made the same move administratively.
In the past, the inspector general could investigate the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration only when ordered to do so by the attorney general or his deputy. Ashcroft gave the inspector general authority in July to investigate problems at the FBI without his permission.
"We should not leave matters in a position where the inspector general's important role in performing FBI oversight could once again be frustrated by the stroke of a pen by a future attorney general," Leahy said in July.
The FBI has been under fire for what critics have called a cover-up-the-mistakes mentality and a series of missteps going back over the years. Among more recent problems are the loss of weapons and computers; failure to provide thousands of documents to lawyers for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh; discovery of a spy, Robert Hanssen, at the heart of the bureau; the Branch Davidian and Ruby Ridge standoffs; and the botched investigation of former nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee.
Leahy's committee plans additional FBI oversight hearings this year, some to include questions about why America's intelligence agencies were not more prepared for the terror attacks of Sept. 11.
The bill also will increase the protection of FBI whistle-blowers, Grassley said Wednesday.
FBI "agents who blow the whistle about problems or wrongdoing didn't have the same protection as others in government," Grassley said in a speech at the National Whistleblower Center.
"We're going to fix that with FBI reform bill that Senator Leahy and I will be introducing."
Grassley has long been an advocate of whistle-blowers and their protection. The Justice Department inspector general last year began an investigation of allegations of retaliation against agents assigned to look into the bureau's handling of the 1992 standoff with white separatists in Ruby Ridge, Idaho.
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Good Work, by the way.
...also please e-mail this petition to EVERYONE on your list...
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