Chicago Bomb-Sting Defense Lawyer Can See FISA Papers
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-30/chicago-bomb-sting-defense-lawyer-can-see-fisa-papers.html
A defense lawyer won permission to see secret foreign intelligence papers that may have led to evidence against his client, the first such ruling in an American terrorism case.
Over the objection of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, a Chicago federal judge yesterday granted lawyer Thomas A. Durkins request to see applications for intelligence gathering submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The judge said she was the first to allow a defendants attorney to see such FISA court records.
Durkin represents Adel Daoud, 20, a Hillside, Illinois, man arrested in September 2012 after he allegedly tried to detonate a phony bomb outside a downtown Chicago bar in a Federal Bureau of Investigation sting operation. Daoud has pleaded not guilty.
Holder said in an affidavit that the disclosure would harm national security. The ruling comes as the federal government is coming under increasing scrutiny for surveillance at home and abroad using the National Security Agencys collection of telephone and Internet metadata.