Jul 29, 2008 9:14 pm US/Pacific
Islamic Group Re-Files Domestic Spying Suit In SF
SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) ―
An Islamic charity has refiled a lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco accusing the Bush Administration of illegal warrantless wiretapping.
Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker dismissed the original lawsuit filed by the Oregon-based American branch of the now-defunct Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, which was declared a terrorist organization by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2004.
Walker said the group could not use a top-secret document, reportedly a phone log, that was accidentally released to the group by the Treasury Department in 2004 and later retrieved by the FBI.
He said the foundation could proceed with claims of violations of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, only if it could provide preliminary evidence from non-classified sources.
The amended lawsuit filed Tuesday seeks to do that by quoting public statements made by U.S. officials including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI director Robert Mueller.
Jon Eisenberg, an Oakland lawyer for the foundation, said a key statement was a 2007 speech to bankers and lawyers in which Deputy FBI Director John Pistole referred to the FBI's use of "surveillance" in the 2004 investigation of the Al-Haramain subsidiary.
The lawsuit says, "Through this speech and its posting on defendant FBI's official Internet Web site, defendant FBI has now confirmed to plaintiffs and the public at large that plaintiffs were surveilled."
Eisenberg said Tuesday afternoon, "I think we've made the showing Judge Walker required, which means we can go forward, but ultimately that will be the judge's decision."
U.S. Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller said, "We're reviewing the lawsuit," but said the department had no other comment.
The defendants in the lawsuit include President Bush, the National Security Agency, the FBI and other agencies and officials.
The plaintiffs are the Al-Haramain branch and two of its American lawyers, Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoor, who claim their calls to an Al-Haramain official in Saudi Arabia were wiretapped in 2004.
Eisenberg said their next step will be to ask Walker to consider examining the top-secret document as possible evidence under confidential procedures set forth in the FISA law.
Walker said in his July 2 ruling that he would consider a request that he look at the classified document if the plaintiffs could pass the hurdle of providing preliminary unclassified evidence.
While Walker dismissed the original lawsuit, he left the door open for an amended lawsuit by ruling that the Bush Administration could not use a state secrets argument to seek dismissal of a lawsuit claiming a FISA violation.
The Al-Haramain case is one of about 45 domestic surveillance lawsuits from around the country that were consolidated in Walker's court.
Most of the others were filed against telecommunications companies rather than the government. Those cases appear to have been ended by FISA amendments passed by Congress and signed by Bush on July 10 giving the companies retroactive immunity from being sued.
But several groups represented by the American Civil Liberties Union have filed a lawsuit in federal court in New York challenging the amendments.
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