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Bush: FBI 'needs fixing'
10/03/2007 22:43 - (SA)
Estancia Anchorena - President George W Bush on Saturday expressed confidence in the director of the FBI a day after the law enforcement agency acknowledged breaching US privacy rules during terror investigations.
"I've got confidence in Director Mueller as I do in the attorney general," Bush said during a press conference with Uruguayan President Tebare Vazquez.
In Washington on Friday an inspector general's report said the Federal Bureau of Investigation had violated privacy rules in accessing individuals' telephone, e-mail and financial records during investigations connected to alleged terror threats.
After the report was released, FBI director Robert Mueller accepted responsibility, saying the inspector general had identified "serious deficiencies" in procedures used to supervise requests for sensitive private information.
Pleased by director's answers
But Bush said he had been briefed earlier on the report's conclusions and that he supported the efforts of Mueller and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who heads the Justice Department.
"My question is, what are you going to do to solve the problem, and how fast can you get it solved?" Bush said.
"I was pleased by Director Mueller's answers, that he had already begun to address some of the problems, but there is more work to be done."
After the September 11 2001 attacks, the congress passed the USA Patriot Act making it easier for the FBI to obtain "national security letters" to conduct secret investigations and obtain personal data and records.
The act dropped a requirement that the FBI show specific links between the records sought and terrorism.
But the inspector general's report on Friday said FBI agents had in a number of cases misused letters to obtain private data without citing an authorized investigation or providing the required documentation.
It was the latest controversy to hit the government's anti-terror investigations, atop claims of torture of suspects who are held without being charged in Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as dozens of lawsuits against US telecommunications companies who handed customers' e-mail and telephone information to the National Security Administration.
- AFP
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