*grin* [from my neck of the woods, so probably more interesting to me than most. it'd also be interesting to hear other stories of suspected clandestine surveillance. this guy is friends with Brandon Mayfield, another PDX attorney who had represented middle eastern clients, who was jailed on bogus finger print matches to the spain bombings - even when spanish authorities insisted he had nothing to do with it: www.komotv.com/news/printstory.asp?id=31353 ] also interesting that ADT appears to comply fully with such black bag jobs; another reason to roll your own :) ---cut--- http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1142913320152530.xml&coll=7 Lawyer thinks office was searched in secret Surveillance - A Portland attorney, who represents a Saudi, cites suspicious circumstances Tuesday, March 21, 2006 BRYAN DENSON A Portland lawyer suspects that federal authorities executed warrantless searches of his Lloyd Center office to collect information about a client who is the subject of an international terrorism investigation. Tom Nelson, who represents Saudi national Soliman al-Buthi, previously filed a complaint that alleged warrantless interception of phone and e-mail communications between al-Buthi and his other lawyers. "We allege in our complaint not only that they intercepted communications without a warrant, but they used the interceptions to the disadvantage of the client," Nelson said. Nelson thinks government agents, with no judicial supervision, entered his office on a number of occasions last year. He first raised the suspicion in September in a letter to Karin Immergut, the U.S. attorney for Oregon, who wrote back saying she was aware of no such warrantless searches. Nelson recounted his fears about warrantless searches by the National Security Agency in a story this week in U.S. News & World Report. Two years ago, the federal government charged al-Buthi, who headed an Ashland nonprofit called al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, with taking charitable donations totaling $130,000 in traveler's checks out of the United States. Federal authorities have accused the al-Haramain parent organization, based in Saudi Arabia, of ties to Osama bin Laden. Nelson thinks that while he was representing al-Buthi on the criminal charge and attempting to rid his client of a suspected "global terrorist" designation that someone posing as a janitor repeatedly tried to, and apparently did, enter his Lloyd Center office after hours. Attorney Jonathan Norling, who shares office space with Nelson, said he was sleeping on a couch at their practice early one morning last May when a man dressed as a custodian tried to enter Nelson's office. Norling startled the man twice one night in July when he caught the man trying to enter the locked office. Norling also suspects federal authorities were trying to collect information from Nelson's desk and computer. Whoever it was, he said, had a badge for the building that appeared valid. "This person clearly wasn't a cleaning crew," Norling said. "I know the cleaning crew. They come in at different times. They have a cart, and this guy didn't have a cart. . . . I've worked here seven years, and I've worked a lot of late nights, and I never experienced anything like that until Tom was working (on this case)." Nelson was suspicious of the government, having briefly represented Brandon Mayfield, the lawyer wrongly accused of the 2004 terrorist attack in Spain. Mayfield was the subject of intense federal surveillance. Nelson's suspicions deepened when he found that his computer had inexplicably been rebooted and that papers in his cluttered office had been moved around. "I'm not the world's best housekeeper," he said, "but I know where things are." After a few suspicious experiences, Nelson took his al-Buthi files to his home in Zigzag. There he experienced what he described as unexplained lapses in his burglar alarm, failures that the company that monitors the alarm couldn't adequately explain. On Sept. 23, he fired off the first of two letters to Immergut, the U.S. attorney for Oregon, complaining of "strong indications that my office and my home have been the target of clandestine searches" related to the al-Buthi case. Immergut responded Jan. 19 that she stood by her earlier statements: She was aware of no such searches under her watch. Immergut wrote that she assumed he was referring to news reports about clandestine intercepts by the NSA. Immergut pointed out in her response that the NSA and Department of Justice were separate agencies. In an interview Monday, she added, "The (NSA) is not required to come to the U.S. attorney for the district of Oregon for authorization to conduct any kind of searches." All of which keeps Nelson scratching his head. "I have no proof the government's doing these things," he said. "I just have a very healthy suspicion they are." ---end-cut---