WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department used a secret subpoena to obtain two months of phone records for Associated Press reporters and editors without notifying the news organization, a senior department official tells NBC News, saying the step was necessary to avoid "a substantial threat to the integrity" of an ongoing leak investigation.

The seizure of the phone records, disclosed earlier Monday by AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt, is the latest move in a series of high profile and controversial investigations of leaks of classified information by the Justice Department. In a letter of protest to Attorney General Eric Holder, Pruitt said obtaining more than two months of AP phone records on 20 separate telephone lines without prior notice was a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into news-gathering operations. 

It also drew a swift rebuke Monday from members of Congress and freedom of the press watchdogs, one of whom called the move "Nixonian."

Ronald C. Machen, Jr., the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., revealed in a letter to the AP on Friday that federal prosecutors obtained the records. The letter did not give a reason for obtaining the records, but Machen is conducting an investigation into the leak of classified information about a foiled terror plot in Yemen last year. An AP story last spring reported details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al Qaeda plot to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the United States.

In his letter to Holder, Pruitt said the seized phone records were from early 2012 and included phone lines for AP bureaus in New York, Washington DC, Hartford, Connecticut and the AP line at the House of Representatives. He said the records seized also included those from the home phones and cell phones of individual journalists.

"We regard this action by the Department of Justice as a serious interference with AP's constitutional rights to gather and report the news," Pruitt said.

Holder last June appointed Machen to conduct the investigation of the Yemen terror plot leak and Rod Rosenstein, the U.S. attorney in Maryland, to oversee a separate probe into the leak of U.S. government efforts to use the Stuxnet computer virus to thwart the Iranian nuclear program. In later Senate testimony, Holder said that he and FBI director Robert Mueller had both been interviewed by FBI agents as part of the investigations because they had prior knowledge of the information that was leaked. (Under Justice regulations, any subpoena for news media phone records requires the "express authorization" of the attorney general. But a Justice Department spokeswoman did not respond Monday night when asked whether the attorney general had recused himself in the investigation.)

As another sign of the sensitivity of the case, CIA Director John Brennan disclosed earlier this year that he also had been questioned by FBI agents as part of the Yemen probe, but said he was later notified that he was not a subject of the investigation.

Bill Miller, spokesman for Machen, said in an email that the subpoena for the records was done by the book.

"Consistent with DOJ regulations, the department provided notification to the Associated Press of the receipt of toll records in a letter dated May 10, 2013," He noted that Justice regulations "do not require notification to the media prior to the issuance of legal process to obtain toll records."

In a separate email, Miller wrote: "We take seriously our obligations to follow all applicable laws, federal regulations, and Department of Justice policies when issuing subpoenas for phone records of media organizations. Those regulations require us to make every reasonable effort to obtain information through alternative means before even considering a subpoena for the phone records of a member of the media. We must notify the media organization in advance unless doing so would pose a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation.

"Because we value the freedom of the press, we are always careful and deliberative in seeking to strike the right balance between the public interest in the free flow of information and the public interest in the fair and effective administration of our criminal laws.”

The regulations cited by Miller state that subpoenas for the news media in criminal cases should be done only when there are “reasonable grounds to believe … that a crime has occurred” and that the records sought are “essential to a successful investigation.” They also state that subpoenas should, wherever possible, “be directed at material information regarding a limited subject matter and “should cover a reasonably limited period of time and … avoid requiring production of a large volume of unpublished material.”

Since President Barack Obama took office, the Justice Department has aggressively pursued leak investigation and brought more criminal prosecutions – six in five years – than any previous administration. Those cases, which also have been sharply criticized by press groups, have also targeted reporters’ phone records: James Risen, a national security reporter for the New York Times, had his phone, credit card and bank records subpoenaed as part of a Justice Department prosecution of a former CIA officer accused of leaking classified information on Iran’s nuclear program to him.

But critics say the extensive nature of the subpoena for the AP phone records goes far beyond what was seen in earlier cases.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, vowed to investigate.

"This is obviously disturbing," he said. Coming in the wake of other disclosures about the administration’s response to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and the IRS’s targeting of conservative nonprofit groups, he said it showed "top Obama administration officials increasingly see themselves as above the law and emboldened by the belief that they don't have to answer to anyone."

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he wanted to know more about the justification for the secret subpoena.

"The burden is always on the government when they go after private information -- especially information regarding the press or its confidential sources,” he said. “… I am concerned that the government may not have met that burden. I am very troubled by these allegations and want to hear the government's explanation."

Anti-secrecy watchdogs also criticized the move.

"I've never heard of a dragnet collection effort against a media organization like this," said Stephen Aftergood, who tracks secrecy issues for the Federation of American Scientists. "This was not a targeted monitoring of an individual reporter. It's a sweeping collection of an entire bureau's communications."

"The Justice Department’s seizure of the Associated Press’ phone records is Nixonian," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a group that advocates on behalf of whistleblowers. "The American public deserves a full accounting of why and how this could happen."

NBC News' Capitol Hill Correspondent Kelly O'Donnell contributed to this report.

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This story was originally published on Mon May 13, 2013 5:31 PM EDT

WASHINGTON - A senior Internal Revenue Service official knew in 2011 that IRS agents were giving extra scrutiny to conservative Tea Party groups, according to documents from a watchdog office obtained by Reuters on Saturday.

In a scandal that has already embarrassed the IRS and become a distraction for the Obama administration, a report from the Treasury Department's Inspector General For Tax Administration (TIGTA) was expected to be issued publicly next week on the IRS practice, who knew about it and when.

As more information emerged over the weekend, the White House said President Barack Obama was concerned about the conduct of a few IRS employees.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said: "If the inspector general finds that there were any rules broken or that conduct of government officials did not meet the standards required of them, the president expects that swift and appropriate steps will be taken to address any misconduct."

The TIGTA report finds that Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS's tax-exempt groups unit, knew of the extra scrutiny as early as June 2011.

On Friday, in remarks that triggered a storm of controversy, Lerner publicly apologized at a legal conference in Washington for what she termed "inappropriate" targeting by the IRS of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.

She said the practice was confined to an IRS office in Cincinnati and that it was "absolutely not" influenced by the Obama administration. She said none of the targeted groups was denied tax-free status.

The TIGTA report was requested last year by Republican Representative Darrell Issa, chairman of a congressional investigative panel, after he accused the IRS of targeting conservative groups.

TIGTA has found that the IRS singled out groups with the words "Tea Party" or "patriot" in their names for closer scrutiny, according to a TIGTA document.

IRS chief denied knowledge
In March 2012 in congressional testimony, then-IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman said the IRS was not making it harder for conservative groups to become tax-exempt.

Shulman stepped down at the end of 2012 when his term ended. Steven Miller was named acting head of the agency.

The IRS said in a statement on Saturday that the TIGTA report was correct. The statement said officials in the IRS exempt organizations division knew of the screening and that "IRS senior leadership did not have this level of detail."

The statement said that while "mistakes were made," there "were not partisan reasons behind this."

Although part of the executive branch, the IRS is considered an independent agency and officials try to stay out of politics.

According to the TIGTA document, the IRS was singling out the conservative groups as early as March 2010.

The document says managers in the "determinations unit" told specialists to be on the lookout for applications from organizations linked to the Tea Party, a political movement that favors smaller government and fewer and lower taxes.

Changing criteria
The IRS screening criteria were broadened in July 2011 to cover "organizations involved with political, lobbying or advocacy" seeking tax exemption, according to a TIGTA timeline of events.

Further broadening of the criteria occurred in January 2012 and again in May 2012, the document said.

Issa has vowed to investigate the matter and the House committee he chairs has the power to issue subpoenas. At least one other congressional panel intends to hold hearings, giving Republicans multiple opportunities to hammer the agency and the White House over the affair that had been brewing for months.

Lerner said IRS agents in Cincinnati targeted conservative groups "without talking to managers." The staffers were trying to deal with a crush of applications for tax-exempt status by using key words to get through the paperwork faster, she said.

About 300 applications were initially flagged for closer scrutiny. Of those, 75 were chosen for that treatment based on the presence of the key words in their names.

Thousands of applications
Each year the IRS reviews as many as 60,000 tax-exempt applications from groups ranging from charities to labor unions. Some are classified as 501(c)(4) groups after the section of the tax code that makes them tax-exempt. Such organizations can collect money from anonymous donors and spend it on advertising.

To get and keep their tax-exempt status, 501(c)(4) groups cannot endorse a political candidate or a political party.

The number of groups seeking 501(c)(4) status more than doubled from 2010 to 2012, coinciding in part with the surge of Tea Party enthusiasm. In 2010 the U.S. Supreme Court issued its "Citizens United" decision lifting government limits on corporate spending in federal elections.

Consumer groups have been pushing the IRS to clarify the standards for "social welfare organizations," as they are known in Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, to ensure that they are not abusing their tax-exempt status.

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In the fall of 2011, a key Boston police counterterror intelligence unit -- funded with millions of dollars in U.S. homeland security grants -- was closely monitoring anti-Wall Street demonstrations, including tracking the Facebook pages and websites of the protesters and writing reports on the potential impact on "commercial and financial sector assets" in downtown areas, according to internal police documents.

The police monitoring of the activities of Occupy Boston -- an off-shoot of the Occupy Wall Street protests that swept the country in 2011 -- came during a period after the U.S. government received the second of two warnings from the Russian government about the radical Islamic ties of alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis told a congressional panel Thursday that his department was never alerted by any federal agency to the information about Tsarnaev, but added that it was "hard to say" whether it would have made any difference in preventing the bombing. FBI  officials have insisted that the intelligence about Tsarnaev was vague and uncorroborated and that their own assessment at the time produced no "derogatory" information that justified opening a full-scale investigation.

But the internal Boston police documents, recently obtained by a civil liberties group, could raise fresh questions about the role of Homeland Security-funded "fusion centers" like the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, or BRIC, which conducted the monitoring. The Boston unit  is one of 72 such units set up to collect, analyze and share intelligence about potential terror threats. While  Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has called the units “one of the centerpieces” of the nation’s counterterrorism efforts, congressional critics have questioned their effectiveness and accused them in some cases of writing "useless" reports that infringed on civil liberties.

“They  were monitoring completely lawful activities,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice, a civil liberties group that recently obtained the documents on the BRIC’s monitoring of Occupy Boston under the Freedom of Information Act. She said the BRIC monitoring was an example of the “vast expenditure of government money” to collect intelligence on activities unrelated to terrorism, in violation of First Amendment rights.

A Boston police spokeswoman said the department has changed its reporting procedures since the monitoring of the protests and emphasized that the BRIC is “about a lot more than terrorism.”

A Homeland Security official declined comment, saying the BRIC, like other fusion centers, was “locally owned and operated.” But the official noted that, just five days before the marathon bombing, the BRIC did produce an assessment for the event that, while concluding there was “no specific” or “credible” threat information, advised that “officials should be aware of a range of potential terrorist threats, from scattered unsophisticated attacks to dispersal of chemical or biological agents.” The assessment also identified the marathon finish line — where the bombing took place — as well as Fenway Park as “an area of increased vulnerability.”

The internal police documents about the activities of the BRIC show that on Sept. 30, 2011 — just two days after the second Russian warning about Tsarnaev was sent to the CIA — the Boston police unit was focused on an upcoming “Take Back Boston Rally” planned for the city’s Dewey Square.

“Approximately 100 people are listed as attending the Take Back Boston Rally on the event’s Facebook page and Occupy Boston organziers are encouraging people to attend it as well,” reads one BRIC report written by a U.S. homeland security official on Sept. 30, 2011. “The BRIC has received information that approximately 700 people will participate in the Take Back Boston march, with approximately 100 people staying to camp out as part of Occupy Boston.”

A follow-up report, three days days later, tracked the number of protesters, noting that “the size of the camp in Dewey Square has steadily grown over the weekend” and that “according to the group’s website” the demonstrators were planning two marches, including one to a “local media station, very likely to be Fox News Boston on Beacon Hill.”

Verheyden-Hilliard, whose group obtained the documents, said it was not surprising that the BRIC would be reporting such information since later documents appear to show Homeland Security officials requesting such data. In one “Daily Intelligence Briefing,” dated Oct. 21, 2011, the “Threat Management Division” of Homeland Security’s Federal Protective Service outlines a “template for creating the daily intelligence brief for your region” and then cites a “list of events we want to request” that officials submit “for daily briefing information.” Among the categories, in addition to reporting on domestic terrorist acts and “significant criminal activity” is one called “Peaceful Activist Demonstrations.”

NBC News

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis testifies Thursday before a House committee on the marathon bombings.

In his testimony Thursday, Commissioner Davis acknowledged to a House committee that his department, which runs the BRIC, was never provided any of the intelligence from the FBI and CIA that Tsarnaev, a resident of Cambridge, had been twice flagged by the Russians as an Islamic radical with ties to “underground” groups in that country.

“We were not aware of the two brothers,” Davis said in response to questioning by Rep. Mike McCaul of Texas, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. “We were not aware of Tamerlan’s activities.”

Davis acknowledged that police counterterrorism detectives were assigned to an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) -- a separate unit from the Homeland Security fusion centers that serves as the government's primary investigative arm for probing terror threats. An FBI agent at the Boston JTTF conducted an “assessment” of Tsarnaev in 2011 after the first warning about his ties was sent by Russia’s FSB intelligence service. The assessment found no “derogatory” information about Tsarnaev that justified conducting a formal investigation. Later information about Tsarnaev included a second Russian warning to the CIA on Sept. 28, 2011.

But while Boston police had access to the JTTF’s classified database, Davis said that his own officers assigned to the task force were never  specifically alerted to any the information about Tsarnaev. “They tell me they received no word about that individual prior to the bombing.”

FBI spokesman Jason Pack said Thursday that state and local members of the JTTF are “responsible for maintaining awareness of possible threats” in their areas and could have performed “customized key word searches” of the FBI database that would have yielded the information about Tsarnaev.

NBC News researcher Taylor Sears contributed to this report.

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NEW YORK -- Federal prosecutors on Thursday revealed charges that accuse a Tunisian man who had lived in Canada with applying for a visa "to remain in the United States to facilitate an act of terrorism." 

The charges name Ahmed Abassi, a native of Tunisia who had been living in Canada.  Prosecutors say he came to New York in mid-March. 

Federal investigators say he met with the men involved in a plot -- first revealed in mid-April -- to attack an Amtrak passenger train from New York to Toronto.  They say the plotters discussed blowing up a bridge at Niagara Falls to cause the train to plunge into the gorge below. 

Canadian authorities announced in mid-April that the plot had been stopped. They disclosed then that they had arrested two men -- Chaieb Esseghaier of Montreal, a 30-year-old Tunisian graduate student who is reported to have guerrilla warfare training and is described as the ringleader, and Raed Jaser of Toronto, 35, a school bus driver.

Frank Gunn / AP

Chiheb Esseghaier, one of two suspects arrested last week in Canada in connection with the alleged terror plot to derail a passenger train near the U.S.-Canada border, arrives at Buttonville Airport outside Toronto on April 23.

Federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York said Thursday that Abassi was arrested 17 days ago. The fact that word of his arrest was withheld indicates he was likely providing some information about the plot to investigators. 

He is charged with fraudulently applying for a work visa "in order to remain in the United States to facilitate an act of international terrorism," according to a statement from the Justice Department. 

Authorities in Canada said in April that an al Qaeda facilitator in Iran had worked with Esseghaier, and also that the train they intended to target was an Amtrak train originating in New York's Penn Station. 

"Esseghaier was simply a bad guy, and dangerous. This guy was purely evil," said one investigator, and had scientific training and the technical ability to make chemical bombs. 

Law enforcement officials say Esseghaier met Abassi during a trip to New York. But they say the meeting did not go well.  Abassi, they say, thought he should be the person in charge. As a result of the failure to get along, Abassi did not have a role in the derailment plot. Authorities did not spell out any further the basis for the visa fraud charge beyond saying it was to facilitate an “act of terror.” 

The FBI has covertly monitored the activities of the two Canadian men, their contact with overseas Al Qaeda facilitators and others, and their possible connection to others who could be linked to the plot. 

"What Mr. Abassi didn't know was that one of his associates, privy to the details of the plan, was an undercover FBI agent," said George Venizelos, the FBI Assistant Director in Charge of the New York office. 

The yearlong covert investigation involved electronic and physical surveillance. Authorities emphasize, however, that this was no sting operation.  It was, they say, a significant terror plot, once which failed to get more notice because of the Boston Marathon bombings. 

CTV News via Reuters

Raed Jaser is seen arriving at court in the back of a police car in Toronto on April 23.

Esseghaier and Jaser made their initial court appearances in Canada in April. They are charged with conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to interfere with transportation and participating in terrorist group activities. Esseghaier told the court that the Criminal Code of Canada “is not a holy book” and did not apply to him.

Richard Esposito is senior executive producer of the NBC News investigative unit; Jonathan Dienst is WNBC chief investigative reporter and NBC News contributing correspondent in New York City; Pete Williams is NBC News justice correspondent.

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Michael Conroy / AP file

This school bus crash on the southeast side of Indianapolis on March 12, 2012, killed the driver and a student.

For the first time in nearly a decade, the number of traffic deaths went up and a shift away from motorcycle helmet laws may be to blame, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and helmet advocacy groups.

An improving economy, which leads to more discretionary driving, also played a role in the increase, according to NHTSA officials. “With a rebounding economy that there’s increased discretionary driving, which is clearly always the leader in terms of dangerous driving scenarios,” NHTSA Administrator David Strickland said.

Read more from The Detroit Bureau

Last year was the first year that deaths rose since 2005 and it marked the highest number of people to die on U.S. roads since 2008. The total number of fatalities rose 5.3 percent to 34,080, according to the NHTSA estimate.

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The Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) is projecting that approximately 5,000 motorcyclists died in 2012: a 9 percent increase from 2011. This would represent 14.7 percent of overall traffic fatalities, the highest percentage ever.

Motorcycle deaths are up for several reasons: unseasonably warm winter weather early last year drew more riders out; high gas prices have led to an increase in motorcycle sales and more riders; and states continue to overturn laws that required helmet use.

“We’re seeing a really heightened number of motorcycle crashes and fatalities, which has really been driving the numbers in a lot of states,” Strickland said.

NHTSA said road deaths rose in all four quarters of 2012 and the fatality rate rose to 1.16 deaths per 100 million miles traveled, up from 1.10 in 2012 — and the highest fatality rate since 2008.

The rise follows a steady decline in road deaths since 2005, when 43,510 people died. Road deaths are down 26 percent since 2005. Road deaths in 2011 hit a 60-year-low, falling to 32,367.

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“After years of historic lows, any small uptick is going to look like a strong contrast,” Strickland said.

However, the focus on motorcycle fatalities is hard to escape in May, which is National Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month. Proponents of mandatory helmet laws point to the fact that motorcycle traffic fatalities went up in 34 states and decreased in 16 states.

Right now only 19 states require them of all riders, down from 26 states that did so in 1997. Several states repealed mandatory helmet laws in recent years, including Michigan, Pennsylvania.

Campaigns to repeal the laws are underway in some of the remaining states, and no state has enacted a universal helmet requirement since Louisiana did so in 2004.

Every region of the country saw motorcycle fatality numbers rise last year, including jumps of 32 percent in Oregon, 29 percent in Indiana, 18 percent in Michigan and 8 percent in Pennsylvania.

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However, opponents of mandatory helmet laws claim the rise in fatalities can't be attributed simply to riders not wearing helmets.

(Click here for more about the report on the rise in motorcycle fatalities.)

The Alliance of Bikers Aimed Toward Education (ABATE), a Pennsylvania-based organization that opposes helmet mandates, said fatality levels are influenced by several other factors, including an increase in motorcycle riding, alcohol impairment and road deterioration.

Charles Umbenhauer, ABATE’s lobbyist, said motorcycle registrations in his state increased from 286,531 to 404,409 last year. The fatality rate in the last full year of the state helmet mandate was 5.5 per 10,000 registrations, and 5.2 per 10,000 last year, the first year of the repeal.

“It’s common sense. If you put more motorcycles on the highway, you’re going to have more accidents and more fatalities,” he said.

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A registered sex offender who was jailed in 2006 after a tipster wrongfully accused him of murdering kidnap victim Gina DeJesus wants an apology from the city of Cleveland.

“I’m happy they’re home and safe,” Matthew Hurayt said of DeJesus, and fellow kidnap victims Michele Knight and Amanda Berry, who were rescued by a neighbor Monday after years of captivity.

But Hurayt, whose home was searched in 2006 with TV cameras and a crowd of spectators watching, said there are still injustices connected to the case that need righting. “I want justice for the men that really did it, (the tipster) locked up and the city of Cleveland to make a public apology,” he said.

Hurayt, whose criminal record includes a conviction for sexual battery of two children, told NBC News that on Sept. 21, 2006, he and roommate John McDonough were arrested after a tipster said that he had raped and killed DeJesus and buried her under his new garage.

“The police jumped on that and plastered me all over the news,” said Hurayt.

Hurayt and McDonough were held for several days in the Cleveland City Jail on suspicion of the aggravated murder of DeJesus, who vanished in 2004. As a crowd gathered, police and FBI agents searched the house for 10 hours. They dug under his garage with a backhoe and chopped the cement floor into sections, and dug under the structure. They also dug under a dog house.

Authorities said that cadaver dogs had “indicated” at several places on the property, and they removed a number of items from the house for further investigation. But they found nothing tying Hurayt to the disappearance of DeJesus or that of Amanda Berry, who got into a strange car in 2003 and never came home.

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Tony Dejak / AP

A daring escape and a dramatic 911 call led to the rescue of three women who allegedly had been held captive for years inside a home in Cleveland, Ohio.

Launch slideshow

“We're disappointed that the search wasn't as fruitful as we hoped,” police Lt. Thomas Stacho told the Cleveland Plain Dealer at the time. “But we would have been remiss if we didn't investigate this lead.” An FBI agent told the DeJesus family, which had already been notified of a possible break in the case, that nothing had been found, the paper said.

After Hurayt spent a weekend in jail, a judge ordered him released on Sept. 25, 2006, rejecting an assistant county prosecutor’s request to increase his bond on an unrelated assault case. Hurayt’s lawyer, Mark Marein, compared the search for remains on his client’s property to the search for Jimmy Hoffa.

Hurayt filed a claim for compensation for $20,000 in damages to Hurayt’s property with the city’s Moral Claims Commission, but it was rejected, said Marein.

Hurayt was required to register as a sex offender because of his sexual battery conviction. He was also convicted in the 2006 assault case, and served time in prison. After he was released in 2010, according to Hurayt, locals remembered that his home had been searched for DeJesus’s remains and continued to think he had some connection to the case. According to Hurayt, in the past three years people have broken his windows, set fire to his garage and harassed him with phone calls.

Marein said that his client was harassed on a daily basis. “He literally could not walk down the street without people busting his chops.”

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Marein said the first telephone call he got Tuesday morning was from Hurayt. “It was, ‘I told you so.’ He wore that scarlet letter for a long time.”

According to Marein, Hurayt filed police reports detailing some of the incidents of harassment, but police “turned a blind eye.”

Public information officers for the Cleveland Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Dateline NBC

Jon-Adrian Velazquez, who is serving a 25-years-to-life sentence in Sing Sing prison for killing a former New York City police officer, in his cell in 2011.

NEW YORK -- Attorneys for a New York City man serving a 25-years-to-life sentence for the murder of a retired police officer on Thursday filed a motion demanding a new trial for their client, calling the Manhattan district attorney’s decision not to toss out the verdict after an extensive re-investigation of the case a “cruel joke.”

The mother of Jon-Adrian Velazquez, the man convicted of the killing, was near tears as she joined attorneys Robert Gottlieb and Celia Gordon during a morning news conference outside a state courthouse in lower Manhattan to announce the filing of a motion to vacate his murder conviction. “It’s 15 years later and I’m still standing here at 100 Centre St.,” said Maria Velazquez. “But I am hopeful, and so is Jon-Adrian, that we will get justice. He must be a free man, because he is an innocent man, and we have proven it.”

In a case based on witnesses’ testimony, Velazquez, then 22, was arrested and later convicted of second-degree murder in the 1998 death of ex-cop Albert Ward, who ran an illegal gambling parlor in Harlem. His case and new information suggesting he may have been wrongfully convicted were the focus of a 2012 “Dateline NBC” investigation.

Velazquez’s attorneys also used Thursday’s news conference to blast District Attorney Cyrus Vance and his Conviction Integrity Program, which reviewed evidence in the high-profile case for 18 months and then opted to leave Velazquez in Sing-Sing Prison.

Gottlieb said he was shocked that the Conviction Integrity Program had decided to let the conviction stand despite what he called recantations by some original witnesses and accounts from newly located witnesses who said the killer was a man named “Mustafa.”

“The entire case was based on eyewitness identifications,” said Gottlieb. “Since the 1999 trial we have learned so much more about the fallibility of eyewitness accounts. There is nothing left justifying Jon-Adrian Velazquez spending one more moment in prison.”

Gottlieb said he regretted trusting the Conviction Integrity Unit and that Vance – on whose transition team he served in 2010 -- had played a “cruel joke” on the Velazquez family.

“We were optimistic and hopeful, knowing what we know, that justice would be done speedily and Jon-Adrian would walk out of Sing Sing,” he said. “We were wrong.”

On Jan. 27, 1998, half a dozen people -- nearly all drug users or dealers, according to trial testimony -- were inside the gambling parlor when two men came in and announced a robbery.  Witnesses told police that one of the men had a gun; the other started binding people with duct tape.  A struggle ensued and Ward was shot once in the head by the gunman. 

Witnesses described the two perpetrators as a dark-skinned black man and a light-skinned black man with braided hair and a knit cap.

Velazquez, who is Hispanic and had never worn his hair in braids, according to court records, was later arrested after a witness picked his photo from a book of police mug shots, and two other witnesses corroborated the identification.

Velazquez, who said he was at home speaking on the phone with his mother at the time of the robbery, and had a phone bill that he says proved it, has always maintained his innocence. He started writing letters to a “Dateline” producer in 2002, claiming he was wrongfully convicted and challenging “Dateline” to find any evidence of his guilt.

In 2012, according to Gottlieb, two witnesses came forward to say that a light-skinned crack dealer named Mustafa who wore his hair in dreadlocks told them he was involved in the shooting.

Gottlieb said that when the DA’s office questioned the witnesses, it tried to undercut their credibility and ultimately discounted their stories.

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The Manhattan DA’s office began looking into the case in October 2011 at the request of Velazquez’s attorneys. The decision not to challenge the conviction was announced in a 16-page letter to Velazquez’s attorney last month.

In a statement, Erin Duggan, chief spokeswoman for the DA, said that the reinvestigation “did not uncover evidence sufficient to demonstrate that Mr. Velazquez is innocent of the crimes for which he was tried and convicted by a jury. This is now a court matter and we will respond in due course to the motion filed today. But it is beyond baffling that these lawyers, who spent many hours with many senior prosecutors working on this reinvestigation, would vilify the District Attorney’s Office now that the result is not what they had hoped for. Any suggestion that this was other than a thorough re-investigation is, simply put, false.”

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