This would seem to be disturbing news, with a local Houston angle.
The head of Houston's Immigration and Customs Enforcement office has accused the FBI of stalling a federal investigation into a terrorist fund-raising organization, officials said Friday.Posted by Alan at June 4, 2005 11:20 AMJoe Webber, special agent in charge of ICE's office in Houston, told Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, that the FBI had delayed for four months his efforts to obtain a wiretap authorization in an investigation involving an individual in Houston suspected of terrorist ties and a person designated a terrorist by U.S. intelligence agencies.
On Friday, Grassley wrote U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, seeking a joint investigation.
Webber is a veteran agent who was in charge of the U.S. Customs office in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, and narrowly escaped when the terrorist attacks damaged his building next to the World Trade Center.
Officials said that ICE agents had collected evidence that a Houston-area man had ties to al-Qaida and might be raising money for terrorists.
They said the agency could document calls to a person designated a terrorist but could not listen in on those calls until a phone tap was approved.