FBI Fails to Pay Phone Bills on Critical Surveillance

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10, 2008— -- By failing to pay its phone bills on time, the FBI had the line cut on a wiretap in a national security investigation ordered by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and missed other opportunities to collect key surveillance, according to a government report released Thursday.

"Telecommunications carriers actually disconnected phone lines established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost evidence, including an instance where delivery of intercept information, required by a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act order, was halted, due to untimely payment," Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine noted in the report.

The review, which looked at how the FBI uses confidential funds to support its covert and undercover activity, found several problems and challenges in how the bureau tracks and monitors these funds, which hide the bureau's identity from criminals, vendors and public disclosure.

According to the report, the FBI receives invoices from telecommunication carriers for surveillance connections and renewal costs each month.

"As part of our audit, we analyzed 990 telecommunication surveillance payments made by five field divisions, and found that over half of these payments were not made on time," a summary of the report noted.

The costs of maintaining crucial intercepts pile up, according to the report, which noted, "Lacking such [FBI] headquarters-issued procedures, FBI field divisions have instituted separate, ad hoc tracking mechanisms, which had mixed results in paying bills on time.

"For example, a primary carrier sent a list to one of the field divisions we tested, detailing $66,000 in unpaid telecommunication costs resulting from surveillance activity."

FBI Assistant Director John Miller acknowledged that the bureau's financial management system, which dates back to the 1980s, is not sufficient.