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Judge resigns over spy program

A federal judge has resigned from a special court in protest over President George W. Bush's secret authorization of a countrywide warrantless domestic spying program, the Washington Post reported yesterday.

The action by US District Judge James Robertson stemmed from deep concern that the surveillance program that Bush authorized was legally questionable and may have tainted the work of the court that Robertson resigned from, the newspaper said. The Post quoted two associates of the judge in a story posted on its Web site.

Robertson was one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act program (FISA), which oversees government applications for secret surveillance or searches of foreigners and US citizens suspected of committimng acts of terrorism or espionage.

Quoting colleagues of Robertson, the Post said the judge had indicated he was concerned that information gained from the warrantless surveillance under Bush's program could have then been used to obtain warrants under the FISA program.

The Post said Robertson, without providing an explanation, stepped down from the FISA court in a letter late on Monday to Chief Justice John Roberts.

Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said early yesterday she had no information to offer on the matter.

Robertson was appointed a federal judge by former president Bill Clinton in 1994. Chief Justice William Rehnquist later appointed Robertson to the FISA court as well.

Robertson has been critical of the Bush administration's treatment of detainees at the US naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, most memorably in a decision that sidetracked the president's system of military tribunals to put some detainees on trial.

In related news, the American Civil Liberties Union claims that government documents it obtained show that the FBI planned to have terrorism investigators spy on a 2003 animal rights event at Indiana University.

The alleged plan to infiltrate a campus speech by an environmental activist was contained in hundreds of pages of heavily censored documents ACLU lawyers obtained from the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act. An FBI spokeswoman denied the agency took any such action.

One of the documents, which the ACLU posted on its Web site on Tuesday, is from the Indianapolis FBI office and referred to plans to conduct surveillance and collect "general intelligence" during an April 2003 speech by animal-rights advocate Gary Yourofsky at the Indiana Memorial Union.

"It's hard to comprehend how surveillance of animal-rights groups makes us safer from terrorism, but it's easy to see how it threatens our constitutional rights to free speech and privacy," said Fran Quigley, executive director of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union.

Wendy Osborne, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Indianapolis office, said the surveillance did not take place.

"I can tell you we did not conduct surveillance in Bloomington at that meeting or any meeting like that," she told the Herald-Times.

"The FBI has to operate under the attorney general's guidelines," she said. "We don't just go around and watch organizations and go to meetings to see who's showing up. We're not allowed to do that, nor do we do that," she added.

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