>The lawsuit is brought on behalf of four American Muslim men with no criminal records who were approached by the FBI in an effort to recruit them as informants. Some of our clients found themselves on the No Fly List after refusing to spy for the FBI, and were then told by the FBI that they could get off the List if they agreed to become informants. Our other clients were approached by the FBI shortly after finding themselves unable to fly and were told that they would be removed from the List if they consented to work for the FBI.
>A House representative said Thursday she is requesting an investigation after learning a CNN reporter was put on the federal no-fly list shortly after his investigation of the Transportation Security Administration.
>In my case, I started having trouble flying after I blew the whistle in the case of “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh, the first terrorism prosecution in the United States after Sept. 11. As the Justice Department ethics attorney in that case, I inadvertently learned that my e-mail records had been requested by the court. When I tried to comply, I found that the e-mails, which concluded that the FBI committed an ethics violation during its interrogation of Lindh, had been purged from the file. I managed to recover them from the bowels of my computer archives, gave them to my boss and resigned. I also took home copies in case they “disappeared” again. Eventually, in accordance with the Whistleblower Protection Act, I turned them over to the media when it became evident that the Justice Department withheld them from the court.