In March, the Justice Department's Inspector General revealed that FBI agents had sent a flurry of fake emergency letters to phone companies, asking them to turn over phone records immediately by promising that the proper papers had been filed with U.S. attorneys, though in many cases this was a complete lie. More than 60 of these letters were made public today as part of a FBI document dump in response to a government sunshine lawsuit centered on the FBI's abuse of a key Patriot Act power.

The most striking thing about these exigent letters (.pdf) (made public via the Electronic Frontier Foundation) is that they all use the same pathetic, passive bureaucratese: "Due to exigent circumstances, it is requested that records for the attached list of telephone numbers be provided."

So far they seem to all be coming from the same office: the Communications Analysis Unit which looks to be located in Room 4944 in FBI Headquarters. The "exigent letters" also refer almost exclusively to a "Special Project" and the only name on any of the letters is Larry Mefford.

Mefford was no rookie FBI agent. Mefford was the Executive Assistant Director, in charge of the Counterterrorism/Counterintelligence Division. In English, that means he was in charge of preventing another terrorist attack domestically.

What does that mean? Well, Mefford's name is on documents that requested personal information on Americans. Some of those requests included information known to be false to the agents signing them. That's a federal crime, according to one former FBI agent.

What was this "Special Project" in the Communications Analysis Group? What exactly were they doing that would require "expedited" letters that sometimes requested more than 2 pages of phone numbers from phone companies? In the immortal words of the Butch Cassidy, who are those guys?

The documents also show that these "exigent letters" – essentially end runs around the rules set up to keep the FBI from trampling on citizens rights – weren't devised by some rogue Jack Bauer-style agent. The form letters originated from inside FBI Headquarters and in some cases, bear the name of a senior level FBI offiicial who should have been aware of the letters' legal grey status and possibility for abuse.

The FBI is fully aware of the power handed to it by Congress's passage of the Patriot Act. Indeed, as early as November 28, 2001, every field office was warned by the Office of the General Counsel that:

NSLs are powerful investigative tools in that they can compel the production of substantial amounts of relevant information. However, they must be used judiciously. [...] In deciding whether or not to re-authorize the broadened authority, Congress certainly will examine the manner in which the FBI exercised it. Executive Order 12333 and the FCIG require that the FBU accomplish its investigations through the "least intrusive " means. Supervisors should keep this in mind when deciding whether or not a particular use of NSL authority is appropriate. The greater availability of NSLs does not mean that they should be used in every case.

From the looks of the audits coming out, that seems to be one memo FBI agents dutifully ignored. And perhaps rightfully so, since Congress didn't bother to challenge Alberto Gonzales's knowingly false statements to Congress about the FBI's use of these powers before they made them permanent.