Barr authorized the surveillance program in 1992. A DOJ Inspector General report concluded this year (a mere 27 years later) that the government hadn't tried to determine whether the program was legal before starting it, and hinted that perhaps it wasn't.
Background: For decades, the DEA secretly gathered data on billions of calls from the United States to 116 countries. It was the government's first known bulk surveillance program, gathering data regardless of whether people were suspected of a crime.
usatoday.com/story/news/201…
usatoday.com/story/news/201…
The odds of DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility, which reports to Barr, acting on Sen. Wyden's request that it investigate Barr are, uhhh, not exceptionally high.
