A clandestine arm of the federal judiciary eavesdropped on telephone conversations between Los Angeles-area Palestinians charged with subversion and visa violations and their attorneys who are fighting to keep them from being deported, the government has disclosed.
In revealing the surveillance, the Justice Department said, in effect, that no constitutional rights were violated because "none of those conversations involve privileged attorney-client communications."
The lead attorney for the Palestinians, Dan Stormer of Los Angeles, branded the surveillance "unlawful." He said defense lawyers will make an effort in federal court to force the government to produce information that laid the foundation for the wire taps.
But the government said such exhibits must remain sealed because they "contain extremely significant documents concerning sensitive intelligence sources and methods used by U.S. intelligence agencies (and) would damage the national security of this nation."
Stormer charged that the government misused its eavesdropping powers, authorized under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, when it tapped the Palestinians' phones and picked up conversations with their lawyers.
"Under common law, the Constitution's Sixth Amendment (which spells out the rights of the accused in criminal prosecutions) and state and federal evidence codes, the conversations between an attorney and a client are protected," Stormer said.
Furthermore, he said, the Surveillance Act is aimed at individuals involved in criminal activity and "acting on behalf of a foreign power. Our clients have not engaged in any unlawful acts. They've only engaged in their First Amendment right of freedom of speech."
The Justice Department memorandums, which also described the use of informants and video taping of one of the defendants, were filed last week in U.S. Immigration Court in Los Angeles in response to requests by defense lawyers.
A Justice Department spokeswoman said Saturday that the department will have no further comment on the surveillance disclosures.
The volatile case, which pits the Justice Department against civil rights and Arab-American groups, involves eight aliens who were accused under the McCarran-Walter Act of belonging to a Marxist faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization with a history of terrorism.
