Opinion ID: 715778
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Wiretap Orders

Text: 42 Based upon the recordings made of Green's prison telephone conversations, the FBI sought and received a series of wiretap orders--allowing law enforcement officials to monitor other calls made from the telephone numbers that Green was calling from prison. Green challenges the validity of these orders. 43 He argues principally that the Assistant Attorney General (AAG) who authorized the initial wiretap application lacked the authority to seek wiretap orders at the time the applications were made. Pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 2516(1), any Assistant Attorney General who has been specially designated by the Attorney General, may authorize an application to a Federal judge ... for ... an order authorizing or approving the interception of wire or oral communications.... The authorizing AAG had been designated under § 2516(1) by a prior Attorney General (AG). However, at the time the AAG authorized the initial wiretap application, the designating AG had departed, and a newly appointed AG had not yet revested him with the necessary statutory authority. The AAG ultimately was designated to issue wiretaps by the incoming AG, roughly six months after the AG's appointment. 44 Green's claim is without merit. We rejected a similar argument in United States v. Terry, 702 F.2d 299 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 461 U.S. 931, 103 S.Ct. 2095, 77 L.Ed.2d 304 (1983), ruling that [a]dministrative continuity requires that the designation by an outgoing [AG] of Assistants to authorize electronic surveillance remain valid at least for a reasonable time after the [AG] leaves office, even without an express redesignation by his successor. Id. at 311; see also United States v. Nanfro, 64 F.3d 98 (2d Cir.1995). There is nothing unreasonable about the period of time that elapsed here.