Justice to resume probe of warrantless wiretaps

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department said Tuesday it has abruptly reopened an internal investigation of the role played by its lawyers in the administration's warrantless-surveillance program, marking a notable policy shift days into the tenure of new Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

The investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) was abandoned in July 2006 after President Bush refused to give security clearances to the OPR attorneys attempting to conduct the investigation, according to documents and congressional testimony.

H. Marshall Jarrett, OPR's chief counsel, wrote Tuesday that attorneys in his office were proceeding with their investigation.

The warrantless-surveillance program, authorized by Bush in 2001, allowed the National Security Agency to monitor communications between the United States and overseas without court oversight when one of those involved was believed to be tied to al-Qaida.

Tapes revive issue of

detainees' treatment

The CIA has three video and audio recordings of interrogations of senior al-Qaida captives but misled federal judges about the evidence during the case against terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, federal prosecutors revealed in a Friday court filing that was made public Tuesday.

The disclosure is unlikely to undo Moussaoui's conviction because the agency said the material on the tapes doesn't pertain to his case.

However, the disclosure could invite fresh scrutiny of the CIA's treatment of so-called enemy combatants who were held at secret prisons or U.S. bases overseas.

Prosecutors revealed the existence of the tapes in a letter to Chief Judge Karen Williams of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., and to U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema of Alexandria, Va., the trial judge in Moussaoui's prosecution.

Ex-agent guilty

in security breach

An illegal immigrant from Lebanon with relatives linked to the militant Islamic group Hezbollah lied her way through national-security background checks to become an agent for both the FBI and CIA, and then used her position to access government computers for information about her relatives and a U.S. investigation into the group, authorities said Tuesday.

Nada Nadim Prouty, a 37-year-old Lebanese national, pleaded guilty to conspiracy, unauthorized computer access and naturalization fraud in federal court in Detroit and agreed to cooperate with authorities.

Prouty's case is a major embarrassment for the FBI and CIA, which supposedly had tightened security after CIA officer Aldrich Ames and FBI Special Agent Robert Hanssen were caught selling secrets to foreign governments. But officials stressed that the investigation has not uncovered any evidence that Prouty gave Hezbollah or its operatives classified information.

Seattle Times news services