Certain employees of the Justice Department have been advised to hire lawyers to defend them in a spate of lawsuits that could be filed shortly by people who were detained in the wake of 9/11.

On Monday, the department's Inspector General is expected to release a report that will be critical of the government's roundup of nearly 800 individuals on immigration charges after the terrorist bombings in New York and Washington. The report, according to someone who is familiar with it, will criticize officials for not allowing many of the detainees to see an immigration judge, and holding detainees for lengthy periods even when it was increasingly clear they had nothing to do with terrorism.

The Inspector General's office said last July that the report should be ready by October 2002. In January of this year, it said its findings were complete and the report should be out shortly. It's unclear why the report has taken so long to be finalized, but sources say that there were discussions within the administration about the feasibility of delaying its release. Another portion of the report, dealing with conditions of confinement and access to counsel, is expected to be less critical.

Among the officials who are most likely to be named in lawsuits, and thus who may be seeking individual counsel, are Justice Department Criminal Division head Michael Chertoff, former DOJ Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh and former Immigration and Naturalization Service head James Ziglar, all of whom were architects of the roundup policy. Plaintiffs have been waiting for the IG report to be issued, believing — apparently accurately — that it could provide them with more ammunition for their complaints.