12:59 PM PDT on Wednesday, May 24, 2006

By WILLIAM McCALL, Associated Press Writer

Portland Mayor Tom Potter on Wednesday accused the FBI of using "big brother" tactics in his city by trying to recruit an informant inside the offices of City Hall.

KGW photo

Portland Mayor Tom Potter during a news conference Wednesday about the FBI.

The FBI said it "strongly disagrees on the significance of the incident described."

Dan Nielsen, the FBI's acting special agent in charge for Oregon, said an agent and a city employee "came across each other in day-to-day activities, Starbucks and they work out in the same gym."

He said the agent made no secret about who he was, and when the city employee was "clearly uncomfortable about the situation," he told her she was free to report the contact."

"It wasn't the jackbooted thug coming in and putting on the klieg lights," Nielsen said.

Potter, a former police chief, has been at odds with the FBI before.

Last April, the mayor and other City Council members voted to remove Portland police from the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force because the FBI refused to give him the top-secret security clearance he said he needed for full oversight of the officers assigned to the task force.

In a letter posted Wednesday on the city's Web site, Potter said a city employee on May 11 was stopped by a special agent from the Portland FBI who asked whether she knew any of Portland's five City Council members.

According to Potter, the employee was asked "if she would be willing to pass information to him relating to people who work for the city of Portland. He said that while he had duties in other areas, the agency was always interested in information relating to white collar crime and other things."

KGW

Potter said the agency's actions smacked of "big brother," especially in light of recent news reports about some of the nation's biggest phone companies sharing millions of customer records with the National Security Agency.

Last November, the FBI opened a public corruption investigation into the Portland Police Bureau's handling of pawn and secondhand shops that sold stolen merchandise.

On Wednesday, Potter said that federal authorities have since told him they know of no public corruption in Portland and are not conducting an investigation of the city.

He said "there is no information to indicate any public corruption on the part of City Council members or employees," so "the FBI has no legitimate role in surreptitiously monitoring elected officials and city employees."

Nielsen, the FBI's acting special agent in charge for Portland, said Wednesday that he expects the agency to maintain good relations with the mayor and the city.

"It's normal there will be disagreements of opinion," Nielsen said. "I don't see it as downward spiral."

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Associated Press Writer Julia Silverman contributed to this story.