Justice Department Ordered To Discuss Eavesdropping on Muslims

A federal judge has ordered senior Justice Department officials to tell him what they know about any secret government eavesdropping on several Muslim men who were deported after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

A former attorney general, John Ashcroft, and the FBI director, Robert Mueller III, are among those who must answer the judge, John Gleeson of U.S. District Court in Brooklyn.His order requires the Justice Department to make the disclosures within two weeks. The Justice Department will submit its answer under seal, though Judge Gleeson indicated he could choose to make the answers public.

The order, released yesterday, applies to two lawsuits brought by less than a dozen Muslims and a Hindu who were rounded up after September 11 and jailed in conditions they claim were brutal. They have since been deported.

Their attorneys, largely from the Manhattan-based civil rights group the Center for Constitutional Rights, have expressed concern that the National Security Agency is listening in on their conversations with their clients.

The order does not require the government to disclose whether the NSA has intercepted such attorney-client conversations. But the Justice Department will have to answer whether the government's lawyers, witnesses, or defendants in the case — including Messrs. Ashcroft and Mueller — have been informed of the content of any such intercepted conversations.

The order replaces an earlier one that had demanded more disclosure from the government. In March, the magistrate-judge handling the case, Steven Gold, told the government to provide answer to a similar question, but did not indicate the government could file those answers under seal.

"In matters this important and sensitive, it seems to me prudent to take small steps," Judge Gleeson wrote.

A spokesman for the Justice Department, Andrew Ames, said the department was reviewing the ruling.

"From our view this is a reasonable way to balance the concerns the judge has expressed," an attorney, Alexander Reinert, who represents one of the plaintiffs, said.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments today in an appeal to an earlier ruling brought by one of the men suing the government, Javaid Iqbal.