Filat also said that the Ministry of the Interior has already started a domestic investigation into the police's actions on April 7, 2009 and especially during subsequent days and weeks.

I spent 15 years with the F.B.I., working on domestic and international investigations as an agent, a sniper on the Hostage Rescue Team and an intelligence coordinator.

The Justice Department reported that the current guidelines from the Attorney General gave sufficient legal authority for domestic investigation and surveillance.

Government officials say the information has helped capture one important Al Qaeda operative abroad, and that it has assisted domestic investigations as well.

The report stated that it was impossible for any domestic (Sri Lankan) investigation into the government/security forces to be impartial "given the entrenched culture of impunity".

NSA operatives were once required to obtain warrants from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court before the instantiation of an invasive domestic investigation.

The United States has led calls for an independent probe and warned Sri Lanka it risked an international commission of inquiry unless there was a credible domestic investigation.

In particular, the CIC was ordered to cease its domestic investigations, to destroy its investigative records, and to ship its agents out to overseas theaters.

He said he did not expect the bill to be as widely used as it has been in domestic investigations that had little or nothing to do with international terrorism.

It will also provide an important first test of the government's expanded powers to use intelligence gathered in foreign surveillance operations in a domestic criminal investigation, experts said.