Thu 27 Sep 2007
Attorney Talks About Lawsuit Against Bush, NSA Over Wiretaps
Posted by k under Civil LibertiesNo Comments
By Jason Leopold Truthout 9/27/07
Recently, I sat down with attorney Jon Eisenberg who sued George W. Bush, the National Security Agency (NSA), and other federal agencies, on behalf of two Washington DC-based lawyers who allege their telephone calls were illegally monitored by the NSA in March 2004.
The lawyers, Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoor, appear to be the only American citizens who say they have hard evidence that proves the government spied on them.
Belew and Ghafoor had represented the Islamic charity Al-Haramain. The US Treasury Department accused the charity of funding al-Qaeda and in 2004 froze the organization’s assets. During the exchange of documents between Belew and Ghafoor and the Treasury Department in August 2004, the lawyers were sent a top secret document Eisenberg claims is evidence the attorneys’ phone calls with the Saudi director of Al-Haramain were monitored in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires the US government to obtain a warrant from a special court in order to spy on American citizens.
Full article and video interview: Truthout