FBI Didn’t Pay Their Bills So Tele-Coms Cutoff The Wiretaps
Just when you think you’ve heard everything, along come this(summary here). Thanks Michelle…your post left me numb for about 15 minutes..
Telephone companies cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau’s repeated failures to pay phone bills on time, according to a Justice Department audit released Thursday.
The faulty bookkeeping is part of what the audit, by the Justice Department’s inspector general, described as the FBI’s lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations. Poor supervision of the program also allowed one agent to steal $25,000, the audit said.
More than half of 990 bills to pay for telecommunication surveillance in five unidentified FBI field offices were not paid on time, the report shows. In one office alone, unpaid costs for wiretaps from one phone company totaled $66,000.
And at least once, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation ” the highly secretive and sensitive cases that allow eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or spies ” “was halted due to untimely payment.”
Well, that’ll teach you to pay your bills on time! Seriously though, these are the same people that we are trusting to gather intelligence in order to keep our homeland safe?
Rusty says: Note to FBI: pay your effing phone bills!! 
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January 10, 2008 - 03:41 PM on January 10th, 2008
This is a beautiful snapshot of what would happen with socialized healthcare. The level of incompetence would be staggering.
January 10, 2008 - 05:25 PM on January 10th, 2008
Good point! So the battery in your pacemaker doesn’t get replaced because some bureaucrat didn’t check the right box on a form…too bad!