Earlier this afternoon, Justice Department's inspector general Glenn Fine released a report which found several FBI probes during the Bush era were improper.
In some cases, Fine said, agents began investigations of people affiliated with activist groups for "factually weak" reasons.
In others, the report said, the FBI extended probes "without adequate basis" and improperly kept information about activist groups in its files. Among the groups monitored were the Thomas Merton Center, a Pittsburgh peace group; People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals; and Greenpeace USA. Activists affiliated with Greenpeace were improperly put on a terrorist watch list, the report said.
The full report, viewable here, stops short of finding that the FBI violated domestic groups' First Amendment rights. But it's still pretty scathing.
Among other things, it found that there was no basis for suspicions that there were any suspected terrorists at a 2002 Merton Center rally. It also found that FBI Director Bob Mueller unintentionally gave inaccurate testimony to Congress about the investigation.
The report makes several recommendations, including a review of several cases in the FBI's Pittsburgh division, as well as narrowing the guidelines for investigating possible acts of terrorism.