The US government has been accused of spying on its citizens with help from phone companies, which may explain a disturbing visit Sean O'Driscoll received from the FBI
It began with a bleeping sound to show that another call was waiting. I told the person I was speaking with to hold a moment and switched to the other line. "Hello, this is the FBI Washington field office. We have a few questions we'd like to ask. We were hoping we could call to your house or that you could come in to see us."
After I said it would be better if someone called over, I went to take a shower and get ready. Before I had finished, the doorbell rang and a friend visiting from Ireland got up off the couch downstairs to answer it.
I came down to meet Special Agent David Lamdan, who pulled back my friend's blanket and sat on the sofa. He declined a cup of tea and took out his notebook. I was pretty sure that his visit probably had something to do with interviews I conducted about Irish organised crime in Boston. But then Special Agent Lamdan hit me with something I had never even considered.
"We have records to show a pattern of phone calls to al-Qaeda commander Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the man who organised the 9/11 attacks. Can you account for this?"
I can still remember the sweaty palmed, light-headed panic that crept over me, while smiling and trying to look calm. I had heard of the thousands of people who are refused entry on planes and interrogated at airports because of mistaken identity or a vague relation to a known terrorist. In hindsight, I can see that he was hoping to shake out some information by scaring me.
I remembered that I had tried to contact Dr Safir al Hawali, a radical Saudi cleric who was the director of a Dublin company called Mercy International Relief Agency that the FBI and Garda believed was a front for al-Qaeda or some other Islamic terror group.
The more I explained my job and why I could want to contact al Hawali at his Saudi office, the more Special Agent Lamdan took notes.
When he asked to see my passport and saw that my visa was issued in Belfast and that I wrote for a Northern Ireland newspaper, his note-taking became all the more fervent. It was the summer of 2003; the Columbia Three were still making news internationally.
The more I explained, the more information he wanted: my passport number, my visa number, my social security number, my driver's licence, my family background, how long I had lived in Northern Ireland, the names of my editors (I can still remember that he wrote the name of Irish Times former North America editor as Conor O'Kleery). The more questions he asked about Saudi Arabia, the more it became clear that the information he was working on had come from within the US and not from a wiretap in the Middle East. He didn't know, for example, that I had used an Arab speaker to leave messages on al Hawali's phone but, significantly, he knew the number of phone calls I made and their duration.
While I found Special Agent Lamdan engaging and professional, I found the incident more than little disturbing, because it appeared as if the FBI had easy access to my phone records.
IT ALL BECAME a lot clearer this month, with allegations in the USA Today newspaper that major US phone companies, including my then-carrier, Verizon, allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) access to millions of phone records without the NSA having to obtain a search warrant and without the knowledge of the phone users.
The spying programme was tacitly admitted by the outgoing White House spokesman in television interviews last Sunday, who said that America's phone system was not being tapped and that the NSA was simply looking for terrorist phone call patterns.
"Not so," says Shayana Kadidal, a lawyer taking a case called Center for Constitutional Rights v Bush, in which he argues that the NSA programme violated the human rights of millions of Americans by allowing the government to check phone records without having to show a genuine reason. If an NSA agent is having an argument with his neighbour about property, goes the argument, he can simply check that person's call record to know whose support they have relied on.
At the Center for Constitutional Rights' New York headquarters, Kadidal sits surrounded by a mound of legal papers. The carpets throughout the office are worn and stained and the fraying has been temporarily halted by the use of thick masking tape.
As Kadidal proudly shows off the "Moron, Asshole '04" bumper sticker that mimics the Bush-Cheney re-election stickers, he says that this dank, overcrowded office could bring justice on behalf of millions of people.
He was to file for summary judgment yesterday but the US Justice Department is facing so many new cases that it has delayed its response for a week. It has first to deal with a California case taken against the AT&T phone company by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is claiming collusion between the government and the phone companies.
"The government has gone for the 'nuclear option', as they call it in the secrecy trade," says Kadidal.
They're saying that the information revealed in the AT&T case is so essential to national security that the case should be thrown out. There are options - gagging orders and information that can only be shown to the judge - but they wanted the entire case brought down."
THE NEW YORK office of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is also taking a case on behalf of journalist Christopher Hitchens, Greenpeace and others who say that their constitutional rights could have been violated by the domestic spying programme.
As Gen Michael Hayden went before congress this week to justify the programme while seeking nomination as CIA chief, I took a short trip from the Center for Constitutional Rights to the headquarters of the Verizon phone company, my phone carrier when I was visited by the FBI.
Spokesman Bob Varettoni strongly denied reports in USA Today that Verizon had handed over its phone records to the NSA without requesting a search warrant. He said the company had no comment beyond its official statement that it has not been asked for the records and had not provided them. I told Mr Varettoni about my visit from the FBI and asked if Verizon had helped the government with individual cases.
"The company applied by all applicable laws, that's all we can say at this point," he said.
For Shayana Kadidal, the NSA's involvement in domestic spying is beyond doubt, given the admissions of the White House. "This isn't just about phone companies; it's about the government being able to pore over your phone records at the touch of a button without any search warrant and without having to show any justification. The potential for abuse is simply scary."