Contents
Report of the Director .............................................................................................................................. 5
Reporting Requirements of the Statute ..................................................................................................... 6
Regulations .............................................................................................................................................. 6
Summary and Analysis of Reports by Judges ............................................................................................ 7
Authorized Length of Intercepts ........................................................................................................ 7
Locations ........................................................................................................................................... 8
Offenses ............................................................................................................................................. 9
Summary and Analysis of Reports by Prosecuting Officials ...................................................................... 9
Nature of Intercepts ......................................................................................................................... 10
Costs of Intercepts ........................................................................................................................... 10
Arrests and Convictions ................................................................................................................... 10
Summary of Reports for Years Ending December 31, 1987 Through 1997 ............................................ 11
Supplementary Reports ................................................................................................................... 11

Text Tables
Table 1
Jurisdictions With Statutes Authorizing the Interception
of Wire, Oral, or Electronic Communications .................................................................................. 13
Table 2
Intercept Orders Issued by Judges During Calendar Year 1997 ........................................................ 14
Table 3
Major Offenses for Which Court-Authorized Intercepts Were Granted ............................................ 17
Table 4
Summary of Interceptions of Wire, Oral, or Electronic Communications ........................................ 21
Table 5
Average Cost Per Order.................................................................................................................... 24
Table 6
Types of Surveillance Used, Arrests, and Convictions
for Intercepts Installed ..................................................................................................................... 27
Table 7
Summary Report on Authorized Intercepts Granted
Pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 2519 ............................................................................................................. 30
Table 8
Summary of Supplementary Reports for Intercepts
Terminated in Calendar Years 1983 Through 1996 .......................................................................... 31
Table 9
Arrests and Convictions Resulting From Intercepts Installed in
Calendar Years 1987 Through 1997 ................................................................................................ 36

3

Appendix Tables
Table A-1: United States District Courts
Report by Judges ............................................................................................................................. 38
Table A-2: United States District Courts
Supplementary Report by Prosecutors ............................................................................................. 80
Table B-1: State Courts
Report by Judges ........................................................................................................................... 100
Table B-2: State Courts
Supplementary Report by Prosecutors ........................................................................................... 190

4

Report of the Director of the Administrative
Office of the United States Courts
on
Applications for Orders Authorizing or Approving
the Interception of Wire, Oral, or Electronic Communications
The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 requires the Administrative Office of the
United States Courts (AO) to report to Congress the number and nature of federal and state applications for
orders authorizing or approving the interception of wire, oral, or electronic communications. The statute
requires that specific information be provided to the AO, including the offense(s) under investigation, the
location of the intercept, the cost of the surveillance, and the number of arrests, trials, and convictions that
directly result from the surveillance. This report covers intercepts concluded between January 1, 1997, and
December 31, 1997, and provides supplementary information on arrests and convictions resulting from
intercepts concluded in prior years.
From 1996 to 1997, the total number of intercepts authorized by federal and state courts increased 3
percent to 1,186, primarily due to growth in applications involving the surveillance of narcotics operations
(up 6 percent). Following a 9 percent increase in 1996, the number of applications for orders by federal
authorities declined slightly by 2 percent in 1997. The number of applications by state prosecuting officials
increased 9 percent over last year. The number of federal intercept applications authorized has grown
substantially over the last 10 years, increasing 141 percent from 1987 to 1997. In contrast, state applications
have increased 41 percent since 1987. The number of intercepts employed in drug-related investigations also
has undergone significant growth. Drug offenders were targeted in 870 of the interceptions concluded in
1997, compared to 379 in 1987, a 130% increase.
The appendix tables of this report list all intercepts reported by judges and prosecuting officials for
1997. Appendix Table A-1 shows reports filed by federal judges and federal prosecuting officials. Appendix
Table B-1 presents the same information for state judges and state prosecuting officials. Appendix Tables
A-2 and B-2 contain information from the supplementary reports submitted by prosecuting officials about
additional arrests and trials in 1997 arising from intercepts initially reported in prior years.
Title 18 U.S.C. Section 2519(2) mandates the submission of wiretap reports no later than January 31
of each year. This office, as is customary, sends a letter to the appropriate officials every year reminding them
of the statutory mandate. Nevertheless, each year reports are received after the deadline has passed. Although
the number of missing state and local prosecutors’ reports was lower in 1997 compared to 1996, the number
of reports that were either late or not submitted for this year’s report remains higher than usual. The AO is
grateful for the cooperation and the prompt responses we received from other officials around the nation.

Leonidas Ralph Mecham
Director
April 1998

5

Applications for Orders Authorizing
or Approving the Interception of Wire, Oral,
or Electronic Communications

No report to the AO is required when an
order is issued with the consent of one of the
principal parties to the communication. Examples
of such situations include the use of a wire interception to investigate obscene phone calls; the
interception of a communication to which a police
officer or police informant is a party; the use of a
body microphone; or the use of only a pen register
(a mechanical device attached to a telephone line
to record on paper tape all numbers dialed from
that line).

Reporting Requirements of
the Statute
Each federal and state judge is required to
file a written report with the Director of the
Administrative Office of the United States Courts
(AO) on each application for an order authorizing
the interception of a wire, oral, or electronic
communication (18 U.S.C. 2519(1)). This report
is to be furnished within 30 days of the denial of
the application or the expiration of the court order
(after all extensions have expired). The report
must include the name of the official who applied
for the order, the offense under investigation, the
type of interception device, the general location of
the device, and the duration of the authorized
intercept.
Prosecuting officials who applied for interception orders are required to submit reports to
the AO no later than January 31 on all orders that
were terminated during the previous calendar
year. These reports contain information related to
the cost of the intercept, the number of days the
intercept device was actually in operation, the
total number of intercepts, and the number of
incriminating intercepts recorded. Results such as
arrests, trials, convictions, and the number of
motions to suppress evidence related directly to
the use of intercepts are also noted.
Neither the judges’ reports nor the prosecuting officials’ reports contain the names, addresses,
or phone numbers of the parties investigated. The
AO is not authorized to collect this information.
This report tabulates the number of applications for interceptions that were granted or denied, as reported by judges, as well as the number
of authorizations for which interception devices
were installed, as reported by prosecuting officials. No statistics are available on the number of
devices installed for each authorization.

Regulations
The Director of the AO is empowered to
develop and revise the reporting regulations and
reporting forms for collecting information on intercepts. Copies of the regulations, the reporting
forms, and the federal wiretapping statute may be
obtained by writing to the Administrative Office of
the United States Courts, Statistics Division, Washington, D.C. 20544.
The Attorney General of the United States,
the Deputy Attorney General, the Associate Attorney General, any Assistant Attorney General, any
acting Assistant Attorney General, or any specially
designated Deputy Assistant Attorney General in
the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice
may authorize an application to a federal judge for
an order authorizing the interception of wire, oral,
or electronic communications. On the state level,
applications are made by a prosecuting attorney
“if such attorney is authorized by a statute of that
State to make application to a State court judge of
competent jurisdiction. . . .”
Many wiretap orders are related to largescale criminal investigations that cross county and
state boundaries. Consequently, arrests, trials,
and convictions resulting from these interceptions
often do not occur within the same year as the
6

numbers used by the reporting jurisdictions. The
same reference number is used for any supplemental information reported for a communications
intercept in future volumes of the Wiretap Report.
A total of 1,186 applications were authorized in 1997, an increase of 3 percent from 1996.
Judges approved all applications. A total of 569
applications were approved by federal judges in
1997, a decline of 2 percent over the previous
year. The 2 percent decrease in federal applications in 1997 follows a 9 percent increase in 1996.
Approvals of applications by state judges increased
9 percent to 617. Wiretap applications in New
York (304 applications), New Jersey (70 applications), and Florida (57 applications) accounted
for 70 percent of all authorizations approved by
state judges.

installation of the intercept device. Under 18
U.S.C. 2519(2), prosecuting officials must file
supplementary reports on additional court or police activity that occurs as a result of intercepts
reported in prior years. Appendix Tables A-2 and
B-2 describe the additional activity reported by
prosecuting officials in their supplementary reports.
Table 1 shows that 45 jurisdictions (the
federal government, the District of Columbia, the
Virgin Islands, and 42 states) currently have laws
that authorize courts to issue orders permitting
wire, oral, or electronic surveillance. During 1997,
a total of 24 jurisdictions used at least one of these
three types of surveillance as an investigative tool.

Summary and Analysis of
Reports by Judges

Authorized Length
of Intercepts

Data on applications for wiretaps terminated
during calendar year 1997 appear in Appendix
Tables A-1 (federal) and B-1 (state). The reporting
numbers used in the appendix tables are reference
numbers assigned by the AO; these numbers do
not correspond to the authorization or application

Table 2 presents the number of intercept
orders issued in each jurisdiction that provided
reports, the number of amended intercept orders
issued, the number of extensions granted, the
average length of the original authorizations and

Federal and State Wiretap Authorizations
Number of authorizations
700

600

500

400

300

200

100

0
1987
Federal
State

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992
Calendar Year

7

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

Federal and State Wiretap Authorizations
Percent of Total Authorizations

State
52.0%

State
64.9%

Federal
48.0%

Federal
35.1%
1997

1987

wiretaps) of all intercept devices were authorized
for single-family dwellings; 9 percent (108 wiretaps) were authorized for apartments; and 7 percent (78 wiretaps) were authorized for business
establishments such as restaurants and hotels.
Since the enactment of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, a specific location need
not be cited in a federal application if the application contains a statement explaining why such
specification is not practical or shows that the
person under investigation is purposely thwarting
an investigation by changing locations (see 18
U.S.C. 2518 (11)). In these cases, prosecutors use
“roving” wiretaps to target a specific person rather
than a specific telephone or location. For the 1997
report, federal authorities reported that they employed “roving” wiretaps for one extortion operation in the District of Massachusetts and for three
narcotics investigations located in the Eastern
District of New York, the Southern District of New
York, and the Eastern District of Virginia. On the
state level, eight roving wiretaps were used: one in
New Jersey for a gambling investigation, and two
in Illinois, four in New York, and one in Wisconsin for narcotics operations. Forty-five percent of
intercept applications (529 applications) specified “other” locations. Applications specifying other
locations, which include mobile telephones, electronic pagers, and cellular telephones, have been
increasing in recent years with the proliferation of

their extensions, the total number of days the
intercepts were actually in operation, and the
nature of the location where each interception of
communications occurred. Most state laws limit
the period of surveillance under an original order
to 30 days. This period, however, can be lengthened by one or more extensions if the authorizing
judge determines that additional time for surveillance is warranted.
During 1997, the average length of an original authorization was 28 days, the same as the
average length for an extension. A total of 1,028
extensions were requested and authorized in 1997,
up 16 percent from last year. The wiretapping of
a digital display pager to investigate a narcotics
operation in Arizona led to the longest federal
intercept. The original 30-day order was extended
14 times to complete the 430-day investigation.
The longest state intercept occurred in Queens,
New York, where a 540-day larceny investigation
required a 30-day order to be extended 17 times.
In contrast, 43 state intercepts were each in operation for less than a week.

Location
The most common location for the placement of wiretaps in 1997 was a “single-family
dwelling,” a type of location that includes houses,
rowhouses, townhouses, and duplexes. Table 2
shows that in 1997 a total of 23 percent (273
8

in 1997. Nationwide, gambling (98 applications)
and racketeering (93 applications), which were
the next most frequently cited offenses after narcotics, were each cited in 8 percent of intercept
applications as the most serious offenses under
investigation in 1997.

these types of communication devices. During the
1990s, the percentage of applications designating
other locations for the placement of intercepts has
grown twofold, and over the last 10 years has
shown a fivefold increase. Combinations of locations were cited in 16 percent of federal and state
applications (185 applications) in 1997.

Summary and Analysis
of Reports by
Prosecuting Officials

Offenses
Violations of narcotics laws remain the most
prevalent types of offenses investigated through
communications intercepts. Table 3 indicates that
73 percent of all applications for intercepts (870
cases) authorized in 1997 cited “narcotics” as the
most serious offense under investigation. Many
applications for court orders indicated several
criminal offenses under investigation, but Table 3
includes only the most serious criminal offense
named in an application. The use of federal intercepts to conduct drug investigations was most
common in the Central District of California (59
applications). On the state level, the New York
City Special Narcotics Bureau conducted the most
drug investigations in 1997, with the number of
authorizations obtained for drug-related intercepts more than doubling from 78 in 1996 to 161

In accordance with 18 U.S.C. 2519(2),
prosecuting officials must submit reports to the
AO no later than January 31 of each year for
intercepts terminated during the previous calendar year. Appendix Tables A-1 and B-1 contain
information from all prosecutors’ reports submitted for 1997. Judges submitted 73 reports for
which the AO received no corresponding reports
from prosecuting officials. For these authorizations, the phrase “No Prosecutor’s Report” appears
in the appendix tables. Some of the prosecutors’
reports may have been received too late to include
in this report, and some prosecutors delayed filing
reports to avoid jeopardizing ongoing investigations. Information received after the reporting

Drugs as the Major Offense
1000
879

870
821

800

732
679
634

600
520
435
400

536

471

379
352
294

303

289

1988

1989

320

285

296

278

1992

1993

1994

326

328

1995

1996

316

200

0
1987

1990

1991

Calendar
Year
Other
Drugs
Other Offenses
Offenses
Drugs

9

1997

age cost increased 1 percent to $82,107. The
average cost of a state wiretap rose 3 percent to
$37,137 in 1997. For additional information, see
Appendix Tables A-1 (federal) & B-1 (state).

deadline will be included in next year’s Wiretap
Report.

Nature of Intercepts
Of the 1,186 communication interceptions
authorized in 1997, a total of 1,094 intercept
devices actually were installed. Table 4 presents
information on the average number of intercepts
per order, the number of persons whose conversations were intercepted, the total number of communications intercepted, and the number of
incriminating intercepts. Wiretaps varied extensively with respect to the above characteristics.
The average number of interceptions per day in
1997 ranged from 0 to nearly 400. The most
active federal intercept occurred in the Southern
District of New York, where a 47-day narcotics
investigation resulted in an average of 422 interceptions per day. For state authorizations, the
most active investigation was a 20-day gambling
operation by the New York Organized Crime Task
Force that produced an average of 396 intercepts
per day. Nationwide, in 1997 the average number
of persons whose conversations were intercepted
per order in which intercepts were installed was
197. The average number of conversations intercepted was 2,081 per wiretap, 20 percent of which
produced incriminating evidence (418 intercepts).
Table 6 presents the type of surveillance
device used for each intercept installed. The most
common method of surveillance was the telephone wiretap, which accounted for 69 percent
(756 cases) of intercepts installed in 1997. Electronic devices such as digital display pagers, voice
pagers, cellular phones, and electronic mail constituted 19 percent (206 cases) of intercept devices installed; microphones were used in 3 percent
of intercepts. A combination of devices was involved in 9 percent of intercepts (97 cases).

Arrests and Convictions
Federal and state prosecutors often note the
importance of electronic surveillance in obtaining
arrests and convictions. For example, a federal
wiretap in the District of Columbia led to the
conviction of all 15 persons arrested. Prosecutors
commented that the intercepts in this narcotics
investigation were “instrumental in providing direct evidence to convince defendants to enter plea
agreements and cooperate with the government.”
A federal wiretap in the Southern District of California resulted in the seizure of 1,874 kilograms of
cocaine and $1,343,000 in cash, and led to the
conviction of 9 of the 16 persons arrested. On the
state level, the District Attorney’s Office in Bronx
County, New York, noted that “the interceptions
led to the arrest and indictment of numerous
individuals who would otherwise have evaded
arrest and prosecution.” Of the 28 persons arrested in this 110-day narcotics operation, 21
persons were convicted. A state intercept in Mesa
County, Colorado, led to the conviction of 10 of
the 14 persons arrested. Prosecutors reported that
“without the interceptions there would not have
been sufficient information to prosecute the main
targets for the racketeering charges which included the full scope of their operation.”
Table 6 presents the numbers of persons
arrested and convicted as a result of interceptions
terminated in 1997. As of December 31, 1997, a
total of 3,086 persons were arrested based on
electronic surveillance activity, 25 percent more
than in 1996. A total of 542 persons were convicted in 1997, representing a conviction rate of
18 percent, slightly lower than the 1996 conviction rate of 20 percent. Federal wiretaps were
responsible for the majority of convictions in
1997 (54 percent). A two-week wiretap of an
apartment in the District of Columbia produced
the most convictions of any single federal intercept in 1997. This narcotics investigation resulted
in the conviction of all 15 persons arrested. The
most effective state intercept in terms of the number of convictions occurred in Queens County,
New York, where the State Attorney’s Office re-

Costs of Intercepts
The average cost of intercept devices remained stable relative to last year; the average cost
of an intercept order in 1997 was $61,176. Table
5, which provides a summary of expenses related
to intercept orders in 1997, reflects the cost of
installing intercept devices and monitoring communications for the 1,029 authorizations for which
reports included cost data. For federal wiretaps for
which expenses were reported in 1997, the aver10

Average Cost of Wiretaps
Average Cost (in Thousands of Dollars)
70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

Calendar Year

applications). The majority of wiretaps involved
drug-related investigations, ranging from 56 percent of all applications authorized in 1987 to 73
percent in 1997. The average number of incriminating intercepts remained relatively stable, increasing slightly from 36 percent of intercepts
installed in 1987 to 38 percent in 1997.

ported that a single intercept led to the conviction
of 25 of the 41 persons arrested in this narcotics
investigation. Because criminal cases involving
the use of electronic surveillance may still be
under active investigation, the results of many of
the intercepts concluded in 1997 may not have
been reported. Prosecutors will report the costs,
arrests, trials, motions to suppress evidence, and
convictions related directly to these intercepts in
future supplementary reports, which will be noted
in Appendix Tables A-2 or B-2 of subsequent
volumes of the Wiretap Report.

Supplementary Reports
Under 18 U.S.C. 2519(2), prosecuting officials must file supplementary reports on additional court or police activity occurring as a result
of intercepts reported in prior years. Because many
wiretap orders are related to large-scale criminal
investigations that cross county and state boundaries, supplementary reports are necessary to fulfill
reporting requirements. Arrests, trials, and convictions resulting from these interceptions often
do not occur within the same year in which the
intercept was first reported. Appendix Tables A-2
and B-2 provide detailed data from all supplementary reports submitted.
During 1997, a total of 1,762 arrests, 2,352
convictions, and additional costs of $2,421,992
resulted from wiretaps completed in previous years.
Table 8 summarizes additional prosecution activity by jurisdiction for intercepts terminated in the
years noted. Most of the additional activity reported in 1997 involved wiretaps terminated in

Summary of Reports for
Years Ending December
31, 1987 Through 1997
Table 7 provides a historical summary of
information on intercepts reported from 1987 to
1997. The table specifies the number of intercept
applications requested, denied, authorized, and
installed, and the number of extensions granted;
the average length of original orders and extensions; the locations of intercepts; the major offenses investigated; average costs; and the average
number of persons intercepted, communications
intercepted, and incriminating intercepts. From
1987 to 1997, the number of intercept applications authorized increased 76 percent (up 513
11

ing from intercepts terminated in calendar years
1987 through 1997.

1996. Intercepts concluded in 1996 led to 61
percent of arrests, 47 percent of convictions, and
93 percent of expenditures reported in 1997 for
wiretaps terminated in prior years. Table 9 reflects
the total number of arrests and convictions result-

12

13