A government investigation has revealed that employees at a federal immigrant detention center violated prison rules and federal law when they recorded private conversations between attorneys and their clients who had been arrested after the September 11 attacks. 

A report by the Justice Department on Thursday, December 18 revealed that guards and other employees intentionally made more than 40 videotaped recordings of attorney-client meetings at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, NY. 

The report also revealed that approximately 20 guards at the MDC engaged in physical and verbal abuse of the detainees held after September 11 on immigration charges, pending an investigation to determine whether they were involved in the terrorist attacks. 

While Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a directive in October 2001 permitting monitoring of attorney-client meetings in cases of national security with the approval of the attorney general and notice to the inmate and the attorney, this authority was not used at MDC.  In addition, a December 2001 memo to wardens of federal prisons in the Northeast stated that attorney-client visits may be visually recorded, but explicitly stated that they could not be voice recorded.