With Gonzales Under Fire, FBI Violation Gains Notice

"In this instance the conduct . . . was wilful and intentional even though she did not realize that she had acted in contravention of the RFPA and Bureau policy," the October 2004 report said. "It should also be noted that SA [name redacted] was at the time a probationary agent."

"This matter has been referred to the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility for such actions as may be appropriate," FBI Deputy Counsel Julie Thomas wrote to the presidential board charged with civilian oversight of the legality of U.S. intelligence activities. The bureau said yesterday that the agent was subsequently disciplined.

Details of what the investigation involved and which documents were gathered were redacted from the copy of the memo that the bureau released publicly.

"The fact that the FBI considers this intentional and willful behavior speaks volumes," said Marcia Hofmann, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which helped win the release this summer of FBI documents related to national security letters. "This is not a situation where a civil liberty group is putting that label on the conduct. It is the FBI itself, and I think the attorney general should have taken that very seriously."

The Justice Department said it stands by what Gonzales said in his initial testimony. "The Justice Department has routinely provided Congress with reports of intelligence collection mistakes and errors, and thus the Attorney General's testimony could not fairly be understood as a representation that such mistakes had not occurred since the passage of the Patriot Act," spokesman Dean Boyd said in a statement.

White House press secretary Tony Snow, responding to calls from some lawmakers for Gonzales to step down, reaffirmed yesterday that Bush still supports him. Although some lawmakers have said Gonzales misled them in testimony about another matter -- the administration's warrantless surveillance program -- Snow said Gonzales testified truthfully about that and "tried to be very accurate.

A White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, accused Democrats of being on a "crusade" to destroy the attorney general.

Meanwhile, an internal Justice Department inquiry is looking into whether anyone involved in past abuses of national security letters or related tools called "exigent circumstances" letters should be held criminally or administratively liable.

Its Office of Professional Responsibility is reviewing whether lawyers in the FBI's national security law office -- who are responsible for ensuring that agents comply with the law -- failed to perform their job.