The Justice Department's false statements

March 12, 2007
The Justice Department's false statements

Based on the DOJ's false assurances, Congress dismissed away the concerns of Russ Feingold and The Post and overwhelmingly voted to re-authorize the Patriot Act. In doing so, they re-authorized the dramatically expanded NSLs, which were first authorized (in expanded form) in September, 2001.

In other words: all of those assurances we gave you in order to convince you that we were using NSLs in strict accordance with the law were false. Now that the IG Report proves that what we told you is false, we are retracting what we said, and when we get around to it, we will also correct the false testimony we gave at Congressional hearings and the false assurances we gave you in secret, classified meetings -- all of which successfully convinced you to re-authorize the Patriot Act.

It is inconceivable that these false assurances were made in good faith. They were plainly the by-product of either deliberate deceit or a reckless indifference to finding out whether those statements were true. The IG Report documents that the illegal use of NSLs was not isolated in any way, but instead, was pervasive and systematic. As the Washington Post Editorial yesterday noted: