http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72811-0.html [abridged] """ ... Imagine a government agency, in a bureaucratic foul-up, accidentally gives you a copy of a document marked "top secret." And it contains a log of some of your private phone calls. You read it and ponder it and wonder what it all means. Then, two months later, the FBI shows up at your door, demands the document back and orders you to forget you ever saw it. ... al-Buthi and Al-Haramain's American branch were added to the government's public list of terrorists on Sept. 9, 2004, just weeks after the government turned over the call log to the charity's attorneys. It's not clear when officials realized they'd given a highly classified document to an organization they considered terrorist, but the FBI showed up at Belew's office in October and demanded the call log back, advising the lawyer not to attempt to remember the document's contents. By then, Belew had given a copy of the document to Washington Post reporter David Ottaway, who had been writing about how the government investigated and listed individuals and groups suspected of funding terrorism. Ottaway did not report on the classified call log, and when the FBI called, the Post dutifully handed over its copy. That might have been the end of it. But in December 2005 The New York Times revealed that the government had been spying on Americans' overseas communications without warrants, and Al-Haramain's lawyers realized why the FBI had been so adamant about getting the document back. "I got up in the morning and read the story, and I thought, 'My god, we had a log of a wiretap and it may or may not have been the NSA and on further reflection it was NSA," says Thomas Nelson, who represents Al-Haramain and Belew. "So we decided to file a lawsuit." """