A wide-ranging surveillance operation by the Food and Drug Administration
against a group of its own scientists used an enemies list of sorts as
it secretly captured thousands of e-mails that the disgruntled
scientists sent privately to members of Congress, lawyers, labor
officials, journalists and even President Obama, previously undisclosed
records show.
What began as a narrow investigation into the possible leaking of
confidential agency information by five scientists quickly grew in
mid-2010 into a much broader campaign to counter outside critics of the
agency’s medical review process, according to the cache of more than
80,000 pages of computer documents generated by the surveillance effort.
Moving to quell what one memorandum called the “collaboration” of the
F.D.A.’s opponents, the surveillance operation identified 21 agency
employees, Congressional officials, outside medical researchers and
journalists thought to be working together to put out negative and
“defamatory” information about the agency.
F.D.A. officials defended the surveillance operation, saying that the
computer monitoring was limited to the five scientists suspected of
leaking confidential information about the safety and design of medical
devices.
While they acknowledged that the surveillance tracked the communications
that the scientists had with Congressional officials, journalists and
others, they said it was never intended to impede those communications,
but only to determine whether information was being improperly shared.
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