Full disclosure – I didn’t vote for Donald Trump in 2016,
and I won’t vote for him 2020. I
couldn’t give two flying shits about him or his impeachment. What does concern me is this country’s
national security apparatus, which will be around long after Donald Trump is
dead and buried. Presidents come and go,
but bureaucracy lasts forever, or so it seems.
If the FBI can screw with a presidential candidate like what the FBI
Inspector General uncovered, what can they do to someone without deep pockets,
some like you? In the 1980s, Reagan Labor Secretary Ray
Donovan was put through the ringer by a special prosecutor and was found “not
guilty” on all charges. Upon his
acquittal, he asked the press “what office do I go to get back my good name?” What will become of Carter Page?
The beginning of the Trump-Russia investigation had
nothing to do with Carter Page. It
started with a tip from a “friendly foreign government” [Australia] that
another Trump aide, George Papadopoulos, had received a “suggestion” from
Russia that it could assist the campaign by releasing information “damaging to
Mrs. Clinton (and President Obama).”
That was the low bar that needed to be cleared to begin a
counterintelligence probe. This was all
perfectly legal, all perfectly above board.
The investigation, named Crossfire
Hurricane [see the lyrics to the Rolling Stones’ Jumpin’ Jack Flash to get the reference]. Crossfire Hurricane didn’t start out as a
political hatchet job, but the evidence presented by the FBI Inspector General
paints a much different picture.
Nobody at the FBI admitted
to any sort of political bias, and the IG reported as much. Those who crowed about this reported lack of
political bias because it blew the Trump narrative of a politically-motivated
investigation out of the water didn’t read the full report. They should have, but reporters with
deadlines to meet probably couldn’t be bothered. The Horowitz report about FBI FISA abuses in
the Page case [and having reading the entire report, there’s no other way to
characterize what transpired in the case of Carter Page] casts an ugly shadow
over the FBI, whose motto is “Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity”. Integrity was missing from this process. But there was no political bias… So states
the IG report.
There is a reason this country has a Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act [FISA] process. That
reason is named J. Edgar Hoover. Under
the direction of Hoover, the FBI initiated a series of operations under the
umbrella of COINTELPRO [Counter Intelligence Program]. COINTELPRO’s initial target in 1956 was the
US Communist Party. Behind every protest
movement or act of resistance, the FBI saw the hand of the Soviet Union. COINTELPRO operations were initiated against
not only the Communists, but also Puerto Rican nationalists, the Black
Panthers, the American Indian Movement, and the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference. Tactics included intense
surveillance, organizational infiltration, anonymous mailings, and police
harassment. They also included illegal
wiretaps, bugs, and break-ins. If J.
Edgar Hoover felt like harassing someone for any reason [like Martin Luther
King, Jr.], he didn’t have anyone to tell him “no”. Presidents were afraid of him because he
might have dirt on them. The Church Committee in the mid-1970s
uncovered such abuses by the FBI. The
Ervin Watergate committee uncovered similar “dirty tricks” from Richard Nixon’s
“plumbers”. The “fix” for this was
FISA.
Since the FISA process has been in place, more than
40,000 FISA requests have been made. That’s a little more than 2 FISA
warrants/day for forty years. Chances are the FBI, by and large, is pretty good
at going through the process. It strains
credulity to think that failure to follow procedure in the Carter Page case can
be chalked up to either incompetence or ignorance of procedure. The errors made in the FISA requests were ALL
in favor of establishing probable cause.
What are the odds of that happening without any kind of intent by the FBI? They already knew that Carter Page had worked
for “another government agency” [e.g. CIA] vis-à-vis Russia, and one FBI
attorney named Kevin Clinesmith deliberately
doctored an email that said as much. Nothing says “intent” like doctoring evidence
to insure an outcome in your favor. Page
indeed worked with the CIA, but there are no documented signs of bias in this investigation [emphasis on documented]. Provision of this information is required
when making a FISA application. Evidence
of Page’s involvement with the CIA was deliberately changed to paint him in the
worst possible light. The IG referred Clinesmith
to DOJ for prosecution in this matter.
But there was no political bias…
The IG report stated Christopher Steele’s “dossier” was
inaccurate, was known by the FBI to be inaccurate after checking with one of
Steele’s sub-sources, and yet the Horowitz report documents the FBI’s FISA
requests concerning Carter Page relied almost entirely on information Steele
provided to the FBI. Additionally, after
Steele leaked his information to the press, the FBI terminated Steele as a
confidential human source. Yet, after
that termination they continued to receive, and USE information gathered by
Steele to make further FISA requests. Justice
Department attorney Bruce Ohr, whose wife used to work for the company that
employed Steele, said he was doing so as a “concerned citizen”. Even though Steele’s dossier was discredited
as inaccurate, why did Bruce Ohr continue to feed the FBI tidbits from it, why
was he not told to cease and desist, and why did the FBI keeping using
information to spy on an American citizen based on information that was
demonstrated to be false? Did Ohr keep
his own superiors in the dark about what he was doing? A friend of mine who did three tours in DC
told me that nothing happens by accident in DC.
He does state that hubris and stupidity are part and parcel of the DC
culture. And why not? Bureaucracies last forever. But there was no political bias…
The FISA process is only as good as the integrity of
those who ask for permission to spy on people.
In the case of Carter Page, whose only “crime” was to be associated with
Donald Trump, there was little if any integrity. FBI Inspector General Michael Horowitz told
Congress that in an operation so politically sensitive as Crossfire Hurricane,
“an Assistant Director knew about and approved of each operation, even in
circumstances where a first-level supervisory special agent could have approved
the operations”. And yet, abuse of the
process did happen. There is “no
applicable Department or FBI policy requiring the FBI to notify Department
officials of a decision to task CHSs to consensually monitor conversations with
members of a presidential campaign.”
Given the sensitivity of the investigation, it strikes me as odd that
those within the Department of Justice who “rubberstamped” the FISA
applications were not intellectually curious enough to ask if due diligence was
being accomplished. But since there was
no directive in place to do such follow-up, none was accomplished. But there was no political bias…
FISA applications are a collaborative process between the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court [FISC] and the Department of
Justice. FISC can and does ask questions
about the applications, and opportunities are given to DOJ lawyers to fix any
concerns brought up by FISC. This is why
FISA requests are rarely refused. Proceedings
before the FISC are ex parte, which
means the government is the only party present for the proceedings. The subject of the FISA requests are not
present, but anything the subject of the FISA requests is supposed to be
included as part of the FISA requests.
In the case of Carter Page, his denials of having met certain people, or
of having been in certain places, was deliberately
not included in each of the four times the FBI made FISA requests to
surveil Carter Page. But there was no
political bias…
As a result of all this malfeasance by the FBI, the FISC
issued a rare public rebuke of the FBI shortly after the Horowitz report was
made public. The presiding judge of FISC
said the following:
"This order
responds to reports that personnel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
provided false information to the National Security Division (NSD) of the
Department of Justice, and withheld material information from NSD which was
detrimental to the FBI's case, in connection with four applications to the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) for authority to conduct
electronic surveillance of a U.S. citizen named Carter W. Page. When FBI
personnel mislead NSD in the ways described above, they equally mislead the
FISC.”
Having read this, and having seen the statistics on FISA
approval [an infinitesimal amount of FISA requests have been denied since
tracking of such things began], one begins to wonder whether the FISC is a
“rubber stamp” for the government. Be
that as it may, the FISC’s order also told the FBI they have until January 10,
2020 to tell the court what they intend to do to remedy what happened in Carter
Page’s case. There’s nothing like
getting a court order that basically says “fix your shit in 30 days”.
U.S. Attorney John Durham is making a criminal inquiry into
the FBI’s handling of the Russia investigation.
He is also looking at the intelligence community’s involvement in this
matter. Unlike Horowitz, Durham has
subpoena power, and he also has the power to convene a grand jury which can
return indictments for criminal prosecution.
I am certain that Mr. Ohr and Mr. Clinesmith will be hearing from Mr.
Durham in due course.
FISA rules enacted over forty years ago were meant to
prevent the abuses of Hoover, Clinesmith, and Ohr from occurring. The rules are only as good as the people who
work within them. As much as it may pain
people in certain spiritual circles to admit, even Donald Trump and those who work for him have civil
liberties.
