by Assistant Attorney General Robert Mueller since 1986 (other sources claim 1983). After the bank was shut down in 1991, Barr testified in congress that the investigation had "coordination" problems and promised to remedy the issue but other federal prosecutors claim Barr actively thwarted several indictments of BCCI in Florida, when the Customs Service discovered that CenTrust Bank of Miami was a front for BCCI and possibly Saudi Intelligence. The American investigation of BCCI was taken over by Senator John Kerry after discovering the bank during drug trafficking investigations. After becoming impatient with the slow pace and inaction of the Justice Department under Barr, Kerry had the investigation turned over to New York State District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, who managed to extract a plea agreement with BCCI for various criminal violations and the indictment of First American Chairman Clark Clifford. Phone surveillance program In 1992, Barr launched a surveillance program to gather records of innocent Americans' international phone calls. The purpose of the DEA program was to collect "bulk logs of outgoing international phone calls from the United States to countries deemed to be linked to narcotics trafficking" through "issuing administrative subpoenas to phone companies" According to USA Today, the program "provided a blueprint for far broader phone-data surveillance the government launched after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001". The DoJ inspector general concluded that this program had been launched without a review of its legality and made 16 recommendations including areas relating to subpoena procedures and guidance training materials. In December 2019, Democratic Senators Ron Wyden and Patrick J. Leahy asked the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate Barr for approving the program, accusing Barr of “an illegal, bulk surveillance program” alleging “without conducting any legal analysis”. Iran-Contra In late 1992, Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh, who had been chosen to investigate the Iran–Contra affair, found documents in the possession of Reagan's former defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, which Walsh said was "evidence of a conspiracy among the highest-ranking Reagan Administration officials to lie to Congress and the American public". Weinberger was set to stand trial on felony charges on January 5, 1993. His "indictment said Mr. Weinberger's notes contradicted Mr. Bush's assertions that he had only a fragmentary knowledge of the arms secretly sold to Iran in 1985 and 1986 in exchange for American hostages in Lebanon." According to Walsh, then-president Bush might have been called as