Even the FBI Has To Pay Their Phone Bill

Posted by Jason Easley on 01.10.2008

It is tough to spy when the phones are disconnected

An audit conducted by the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General into the theft of confidential case funds came up with some surprising findings. The first was that the FBI's Financial Management System was extremely lax. The second finding of the audit was that the FBI has trouble paying its phone bill for surveillance operations. "As part of our audit, we analyzed 990 telecommunication surveillance payments made by 5 field divisions and found that over half of these payments were not made on time. We also found that late payments have resulted in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting 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 (FISA) order was halted due to untimely payment."

The FBI actually had their phone lines disconnected for nonpayment. Seriously, these are the people who are supposed to be protecting us from a domestic terrorist attack? Isn't it a frightening thought that critical information could slip by the FBI because somebody didn't pay the phone bill? These are the people who George W. Bush wants us to trust with domestic surveillance?

Even worse, when the FBI did get a refund from a telecommunications company, they had no procedures in place for tracking the money. According to the audit, "According to the OIG investigators who conducted the criminal investigation described at the beginning of this summary report, the lack of formal procedures used by field divisions to handle telecommunication refunds provided opportunities for the FBI employee to steal refunded money." The audit also said that the FBI needs to perform better oversight on confidential case funds, and who is handling those funds.

The audit uncovered that half of the 35 employees who have daily access to these funds also have personal financial problems. "The FBI has not developed or implemented procedures that ensure employees with financial concerns are not placed in situations where they are responsible for approving and handling confidential case funds without enhanced supervision. We believe that the FBI needs to develop and implement procedures that ensure employees with serious financial concerns do not regularly handle confidential case funds without additional oversight or safeguards."

How come our government lets the intelligence and military communities get away with this type of waste and mismanagement? Where are the presidential candidates on this? I think Americans deserve a better government, and no agency should be able to hide their waste and incompetence behind a claim of national security.