Ex-NSA Overseer Accuses FBI of Retaliatory Raids
August 1, 2012 by supermario
Filed under Americas
courthousenews.com
(CN) – A former member of the House committee charged with overseeing National Security Agency operations claims the FBI raided her property and seized electronic equipment and papers after falsely suspecting her of leaking classified information about the government’s warrantless wiretap program to the media.
Diane Roark, who worked on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence for five years, claims the July 26, 2007 raid was in retaliation “for her whistleblower activities and execution of her Congressional oversight responsibilities that revealed inefficiency, contract fraud, the persistent waste of billions of dollars on a single ill-conceived program that was never built, plus illegal and unconstitutional operations.
In her lawsuit against the United States in Oregon Federal Court, Roark claims she voluntarily met with the U.S. attorney and FBI investigators in February 2007, about five years after she retired from the committee in 2002.
She says they suspected her of leaking classified information about the wiretap program to the New York Times and to Times reporter James Risen, “and/or to the Baltimore Sun.”
The Times published a series of articles on the surveillance program in December 2005. Risen’s book, “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration,” was published in early 2006.
Roark says she answered all their questions, except when asked to reveal her sources or divulge details about her conversation with a congressman, and provided an affidavit swearing that she was not the source of the published exposes.
Several months later, the FBI raided her property, “seizing many boxes of papers, rolodexes and electronic equipment,” the lawsuit states.
“Simultaneous raids took place in Maryland at the homes of two associates, J.K. Wiebe and William Binney,” Roark claims. “At the same time, another associate, Edward Loomis, was removed from his place of employment and ‘persuaded’ to allow a search of his home without a warrant. A fourth associate, Thomas Drake, was raided on November 28, 2007. Loomis and Drake lost high-paying jobs.”
Before the raids, Roark says government agents “conducted a surreptitious search of Roark’s property, thereby acquiring information about her associations and activities.”
