Justice Weighs Bid To Delay Guidelines For Security Probes

[maddezmom]

Source: CongressDaily

The Justice Department said today it is reviewing a bipartisan letter from the Senate Judiciary Committee's top leaders seeking to delay until after Sept. 17 proposed new guidelines for conducting FBI's national security investigations.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Leahy, D-Vt., and Judiciary ranking member Arlen Specter wrote Attorney General Michael Mukasey seeking "a brief delay" until Mukasey appears before the committee on Sept. 17 to review the new ground rules and their civil rights implications.

"We're reviewing the letter," said department spokesman Peter Carr. "We continue to discuss this with Congress, and we are carefully reviewing the suggestions we have received from these discussions."

The proposed guidelines "represent an important step towards our shared goal of improving the FBI's intelligence capabilities," the senators wrote Monday. They also praised the goal of giving agents clear rules to follow in any national security investigation.

But they said the proposals to harmonize rules over traditional criminal and national security matters "also raise potential civil liberties concerns." Since 2001, the FBI has been transforming itself from a traditional crime-fighting organization to one with more emphasis on preventing acts of terrorism.



Read more: http://www.nationaljournal.com/congressdaily/cd_20080819_1356.php