WASHINGTON — New rules for national security investigations will help protect Americans from terror attacks, FBI Director Robert Mueller told lawmakers Tuesday, even if they single out people from the Middle East.
Mueller told the House Judiciary Committee that FBI agents would no longer need solid evidence or allegations of wrongdoing to spy on Americans even before opening investigations. Democrats expressed doubts that the Justice Department and FBI would protect civil liberties and privacy rights after years of previous abuses and stymied congressional oversight.
During nearly two hours of testimony, Mueller described the tentative rules — known as the attorney general’s guidelines — as a proactive way to prevent another 9/11.
The guidelines do not require congressional approval, and the Justice Department wants to have them in place by the month’s end. The Justice Department says they will merely streamline existing authorities used in criminal and national security investigation. Critics call them a broad expansion of FBI powers that could result in racial, ethnic or religious profiling.
Mueller is scheduled to make a similar appearance today before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Also Tuesday, Mueller said the FBI will ask a group of independent scientists to review evidence from the government’s anthrax investigation that concluded an Army researcher masterminded the deadly 2001 biological attacks.
The FBI and National Academy of Sciences have been discussing whether to do an independent review, likely costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, of the DNA analysis that led investigators to Dr. Bruce Ivins.
Ivins, a scientist at the Army’s biodefense lab at Fort Detrick, Md., killed himself in July as prosecutors prepared to indict him for murder in the letter attacks, which killed five people.
