Is this a felony?
Only if someone is interested in investigating and prosecuting it.
Just like the proverbial tree that falls in the forest, someone needs to hear it. Unfortunately the press, the FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department are not listening.
An investigation was in progress and certain information came to light which led an agent to submit documents, via established departmental procedures requesting that a search warrant be issued. I have to assume that it is a normal procedure for the agent to submit the information to a superior rather than directly to a magistrate. Here is what is tricky about this situation. The superior may be able to show that changing the information was reasonable. One reason might be that the superior sought to "clarify" something in the documentation, and that as a result of a good faith attempt to "clarify" the document a search warrant couldn't be issued. (You can probably dream up anything as well as the superior.) But, if it can be shown that the altering of the information was because of something like political correctness and the superior didn't want to take heat for an Islamic backlash, then we might be in business here. If the supervisor acted alone, and was acting beyond the scope of official duties, then I would believe that the changing of the information would be a felony, because it altered a legal document which was needed in support of a search warrant. Another issue would be that we may now have an "obstruction of justice" issue. I would tend to think that the failure to obtain a search warrant because the information was illegaly altered would certainly be prosecutable as a criminal matter. There then becomes a question of civil liability. Failure to obtain the warrant, and perform the search for information because someone in the FBI illegally altered the supporting documents may have led to FOUR airliners being hijacked, resulting in the deaths of THOUSANDS of civilians at NYC and the deaths of Military personnel at the Pentagon, and the targeting of the White House. In addition, this failure by the FBI could be seen as having led to the involvement of the United States in a WAR on foreign soil, which has caused additional deaths of Americans and has resulted in the expenditure of huge amounts of financial resourses from the Treasury. But, I'll make a bet here. The Government will cover this up. I love President Bush, but I think he will allow the FBI to get away with this. I bet there will be no successful criminal investigation against responsible management personnel, and there will be no successful civil litigation against the Government. If anything, the agent who tried to prevent the attacks will be successfully persecuted and villified. (Official disclaimer - ALL the above is OPINION only.)