Wiretapping

While Louisiana state police and the FBI started a wiretapping probe into the New Orleans Saints and General Manager Mickey Loomis , assistant head coach Joe Vitt called allegations that Loomis had his Superdome booth wired so he could listen to opposing coaches "ludicrous. " "It's absolutely ludicrous. It's impossible," Vitt said Tuesday. "I've never heard of it before. That's something from 'Star Wars.' When I first heard something about it being a wiretap, I thought they were talking about Sammy 'the Bull' Gravano or something.

Residential telephone customers can sue the government for allegedly eavesdropping on their private communications in a warrantless "dragnet of ordinary Americans," a federal appeals court ruled Thursday. Lawyers for customers of AT&T and other telecommunications providers hailed the ruling for allowing the courts to decide whether widespread warrantless wiretapping violated their constitutional rights. "It's huge. It means six years after we started trying, the American people may get a judicial ruling on whether the massive spying done on them since 9/11 is legal or not," said Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which was among those fighting for a day in court.

When federal agents eavesdropped on the telephone conversations of several drug trafficking suspects, they heard talk of marijuana sales, money transfers and cross-country drug shipments. They may have also detected something far more surprising: a Los Angeles County sheriff's captain. Law enforcement sources have confirmed that Bernice Abram, who is in charge of the sheriff's Carson station, was put on leave after federal authorities notified sheriff's officials that their captain may have been heard on the narcotics wiretap.

"Die Hard" director John McTiernan was sentenced to a year in federal prison Monday for lying to the FBI ? and later to a federal judge ? regarding his role in the wiretapping case of disgraced Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano. McTiernan, 59, will remain free on bail pending an appeal of some issues in the case. If the appeal is denied, he will begin serving his sentence, authorities said. Pellicano was convicted two years ago of racketeering and wiretapping. Prosecutors presented evidence at the trial that he secretly recorded movie producer Charles Roven's phone calls on McTiernan's behalf.

Four and half years after the Bush administration was caught eavesdropping on Americans without court approval, a federal judge in San Francisco has ratified a conclusion many Americans reached long ago: that the administration exceeded its legal authority in the war on terror. But U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker's ruling does more than that. It also reminds the Obama administration, which too often has echoed Bush-era positions on national security issues, that the "state secrets privilege" can cover a multitude of abuses.

In a repudiation of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism surveillance program, a federal judge ruled Wednesday that the government violated federal law when it failed to seek warrants to spy on two lawyers working for an Islamic charity in Oregon. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker rejected assertions by both Presidents Bush and Obama that their state secrets privilege shields them from lawsuits filed by American citizens investigated under a disputed domestic spying program launched after 9/11.

Former Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano and another man were sentenced to three years in prison Friday after pleading no contest to charges that they threatened a Los Angeles Times reporter in 2002. Pellicano, 65, and Alexander Proctor, 66, were charged with threatening reporter Anita Busch, who was doing investigative research on Hollywood industry figures. Busch found a dead fish with a rose in its mouth on her car's shattered windshield along with a sign reading "Stop," according to prosecutors.

Federal authorities shook the often secretive world of hedge funds with the arrests Friday of the billionaire founder of a major New York operation and five others on charges they engaged in extensive insider trading that allegedly netted more than $20 million in illicit profits. After taking the unusual step of using wiretaps in the investigation, authorities accused Raj Rajaratnam, the founder of the $7-billion hedge fund Galleon Group, two executives at California companies and three others of multiple counts of conspiracy and securities fraud.

Former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden angrily struck back Saturday at assertions that the Bush administration's post-9/11 surveillance program was more far-reaching than imagined and was largely concealed from congressional overseers. In an interview with the Associated Press, Hayden said that top members of Congress were kept well informed all along the way, notwithstanding protests from some that they were kept in the dark.

The Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 surveillance efforts went beyond the widely publicized warrantless wiretapping program, a government report disclosed Friday, encompassing additional secretive activities that created "unprecedented" spying powers. The report also raised new questions about how the Bush White House kept key Justice Department officials in the dark as it launched the surveillance program.