Outside Group Urges Justice Department Probe of Boehner Remarks

7 Aug 2007 // A government watchdog group filed a complaint with the Justice Department on Monday calling for an investigation into whether the House's top Republican leaked classified information last week by discussing a secret court ruling.

A spokesman for the department declined to comment on the complaint, filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

The complaint targets remarks that House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, made on Fox News on July 31, while advocating passage of an administration-favored overhaul of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA -- PL 95-511). In arguing that the bill was urgently needed, Boehner made a reference to a court ruling that several news outlets subsequently identified as a classified decision by the secret court that administers FISA warrants.

"There's been a ruling, over the last four or five months, that prohibits the ability of our intelligence services and our counterintelligence people from listening in to two terrorists in other parts of the world where the communication could come through the United States," Boehner said. "The Democrats have known about this for months. We have had private conversations, we have had public conversations that this needs to be fixed. And Republicans are not going to leave this week until this problem is addressed."

Boehner's office mains that he was alluding to an earlier, January ruling by the secret court that had been previously discussed in public forums. Although details of that ruling are classified, administration officials have acknowledged that it was a decision placing the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program under the purview of the FISA court.

When questioned by reporters, several lawmakers, including the top Republicans on the Senate and House Intelligence committees, Christopher S. Bond of Missouri and Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, respectively, have declined to say what Boehner was referring to on Fox.

Brian Kennedy, Boehner's spokesman, dismissed the group's complaint as "laughable," insisting Boehner was referring to the previously disclosed January FISA court order. "It's ironic, but the only real threat to sensitive information here would come from hysterical, partisan witch-hunts like the one" that CREW "is trying to start today. Nice try, but we're not jumping on that broom."

The group's complaint comes after Newsweek reported in its Aug. 13 issue that the Justice Department last week raided the home of a former Justice Department lawyer in a probe over the public disclosure in 2005 of the National Security Agency's secret warrantless wiretapping program.