Who Is Charles Grassley?

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September 20, 2001 and After: FBI Translator Sees Pattern of Deliberate Failure
Immediately after beginning her job as an FBI translator, Sibel Edmonds encounters a pattern of deliberate failure in her department. Her supervisor, Mike Feghali, allegedly says, “Let the documents pile up so we can show it and say that we need more translators and expand the department.” She claims that if she was not slowing down enough, her supervisor would delete her work. Meanwhile, FBI agents working on the 9/11 investigation would call and ask for urgently needed translations. In January 2002, FBI officials will tell government auditors that translator shortages are resulting in “the accumulation of thousands of hours of audio tapes and pages” of material that has not been translated. [Washington Post, 6/19/2002] After she discloses this in an October 2002 interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes, Senator Charles Grassley (R) says of her charges, “She’s credible and the reason I feel she’s very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story.” He points out that the speed of such translation might make the difference between an attack succeeding or failing. [CBS News, 10/25/2002; New York Post, 10/26/2002] An investigation by the Justice Department’s Inspector General’s Office (see (July 8, 2004)) will also find Edmonds credible.

December 21, 2001: Senators Introduce Bills to Create Independent 9/11 Commission
Two bipartisan pairs of senators introduce legislation to create independent 9/11 commissions. Senators Joe Lieberman (D) and John McCain (R) propose to create a 14-member, bipartisan commission with subpoena power. At the same time, Robert Torricelli (D) and Charles Grassley (R) propose to create a 12-member board of inquiry with subpoena power. White House spokeswoman Anne Womack is noncommittal about the proposals, saying, “We look forward to reviewing them. Right now, the president is focused on fighting the war on terrorism.” [New York Times, 12/21/2001]

Afternoon March 7, 2002: After Being Rebuffed by Own Superiors, FBI Whistleblower Sends Letters to Senators and FBI Internal Investigation Departments
FBI translator Sibel Edmonds writes letters to the Justice Department’s internal affairs division, known as the Office of Professional Responsibility, and its Office of Inspector General, describing her allegations against co-worker Melek Can Dickerson (see Afternoon February 12, 2002). She also sends faxes alleging possible national-security breaches to the Senate Intelligence Committee and Senators Charles Grassley (R-Ia) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt), both of whom sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee. [Vanity Fair, 9/2005]

March 28, 2002-November 2002: Medicare Administrator Allegedly Negotiates Settlement with HCA Behind DOJ’s Back that is ‘Too Lenient.’
HCA, the country’s largest for-profit hospital chain, announces that it has struck a deal with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) over unaudited Medicare and Medicaid billings. The company—which paid more than $840 million in criminal fines, civil penalties, and damages in 2000 for fraudulent reportings to Medicare (see December 14, 2000), and which is still being investigated—will pay CMS $250 million to zero out its account with the agency. [Associated Press, 3/28/2002] But according to numerous government whistle-blowers, the amount is far too low. In a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services, Senator Charles E. Grassley (R-IA) will later accuse Medicare officials of “seeking to allow HCA to resolve more than $1 billion of liability to the Medicare program for only $250 million, based on little to no evidence supporting this low figure.” Even more troubling, notes the Senator, Medicare has agreed not to audit the company’s cost reports that have been piling up since 1997 when the agency stopped processing HCA bills because of the lawsuit. “One would expect a company with such a track record to be subjected to heightened scrutiny.… [Instead,] the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is proposing to excuse HCA from an even routine review of thousands of Medicare cost reports,” Grassley writes. He says the deal is “too lenient.” John R. Phillips, one of the attorneys involved in the lawsuit against HCA, later says the deal was quietly arranged between HCA and CMS head Thomas A. Scully. “The $250 million was a total sellout by Scully, who totally negotiated it behind Justice’s back,” he says. [New York Times, 11/19/2002] Similarly, Grassley, in a June 25 letter to a Justice Department lawyer, says comments by Scully “have given me great concern that there is an active, ongoing effort underway to change or modify enforcement [on Medicare fraud] policy that in my view could significantly undermine the [law].” [Office of Senator Charles Grassley, 7/25/2002] Scully, during his confirmation hearings, had pledged he would “aggressively enforc[e] the fraud statutes” (see May 29, 2001).

May 17, 2002: FISA Court Refuses to Give Justice Department Broad Domestic Surveillance Powers
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) turns down the Justice Department’s bid for sweeping new powers to monitor and wiretap US citizens. FISC judges rule that the government has misused the law and misled the court dozens of times. The court finds that Justice Department and FBI officials supplied false or misleading information to the court in over 75 applications for search warrants and wiretaps, including one signed by then-FBI director Louis Freeh. While the court does not find that the misrepresentations were deliberate, it does rule that not only were erroneous statements made, but important information was omitted from some FISA applications. The judges found so many inaccuracies and errors in FBI agent Michael Resnick’s affidavits that they bar him from ever appearing before the court again. The court cites “the troubling number of inaccurate FBI affidavits in so many FISA applications,” and says, “In virtually every instance, the government’s misstatements and omissions in FISA applications and violations of the Court’s orders involved information sharing and unauthorized disseminations to criminal investigators and prosecutors.” The court is also unhappy with the Justice Department’s failure to answer for these errors and omissions, writing, “How these misrepresentations occurred remains unexplained to the court.” The court finds that in light of such impropriety, the new procedures proposed by Attorney General John Ashcroft in March would give prosecutors too much control over counterintelligence investigations, and would allow the government to misuse intelligence information for criminal cases. The ruling is a severe blow to Ashcroft’s attempts since the 9/11 attacks to allow investigators working in terrorism and espionage to share more information with criminal investigators. (These limitations were put in place after the Church Commission’s findings of massive fraud and misuse of domestic surveillance programs during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. See April, 1976, January 29, 1976, and December 21, 1974). The Justice Department says of the decision, “We believe the court’s action unnecessarily narrowed the Patriot Act and limited our ability to fully utilize the authority Congress gave us.” Interestingly, the Justice Department also opposed the public release of FISC’s decision not to grant the requested powers. Stewart Baker, former general counsel of the NSA, calls the opinion “a public rebuke. The message is you need better quality control. The judges want to ensure they have information they can rely on implicitly.” Bush officials have complained since the 9/11 attacks that FISA requirements hamper the ability of law enforcement and intelligence agents to track terrorist suspects, including alleged hijacking conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui (see August 16, 2001). Those requirements mandate that agents must show probable cause that the subject of a search or wiretap is an agent of a foreign government or terrorist group, and, because FISA standards for obtaining warrants is far lower than for ordinary criminal warrants, mandate strict limits on the distribution of information secured from such investigations. The FBI searched Moussaoui’s laptop computer and other belongings without a FISA warrant because some officials did not believe they could adequately show the court that Moussaoui had any connections to a foreign government or terrorist group. In its ruling, FISC suggests that if the Justice Department finds FISA too restrictive, they should ask Congress to update the law. Many senators on the Judiciary Committee say they are willing to enact such reforms, but have complained of resistance from Ashcroft and a lack of cooperation from the Bush administration. [Washington Post, 8/23/2002] In November 2002, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review will overturn the FISC decision and give the Justice Department what it asked for (see November 18, 2002).

Late 2002: FBI Hinders Customs Investigation into Bin Laden Associate in Texas
Joe Webber, running the Houston office of the Department of Homeland Security’s Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, starts investigating a man believed to be raising money for Islamic militants. The suspect is in direct contact with people who are known to be associated with Osama bin Laden. Webber has good cooperation with the local FBI office, federal prosecutors in Houston, and Justice Department officials in Washington. However, he claims that FBI headquarters officials tell him point blank that he will not be allowed to conduct his investigation. After many months of delays from the FBI, friends from within the bureau tell him that headquarters will not allow the investigation to proceed because it is being run by Customs and not by the FBI. Webber is so upset that he eventually becomes a whistleblower. Sen. Charles Grassley and other politicians support his case and say there are other instances where the FBI impedes investigations because of turf battles. Asked if the FBI would put a turf battle above national security, Webber says, “That’s absolutely my impression. You would think, in a post-9/11 environment, that an event like that wouldn’t occur. But it did.” [MSNBC, 6/3/2005]

End Part I