The public rebuke of the FBI by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (“The FISA Judge Strikes Back,” Review & Outlook, Dec. 18) should remind the bureau’s leaders that there are still some basic law-enforcement rules that all agents and prosecutors must follow. I was a career federal prosecutor and a U.S. attorney, and I quickly learned Rule No. 1: Don’t play games with a court in applying for search warrants and wiretaps.

Every FBI agent working in the field is aware of this rule. Perhaps the senior agents who submitted the applications have been away from the field too long or have been taken with the inside-the-Beltway political mystique. Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was often subject to criticism, yet under his administration the agents responsible for these actions would have been dismissed from the service within a day of their discovery.

As federal judges, the FISA court members have contempt power and could very well sanction the FBI agents and the attorneys who assisted them in these applications. The judges shouldn’t tolerate being made fools of in public.

Peter F. Vaira

Philadelphia