The Inspector General's Report on the FISA Warrant

 

The bulk of the Inspector General's Report (pp. 121-34) deals with the FISA warrant against Carter Page, and finds numerous flaws in the process.  Even before receiving the Steele Report, agents had wanted to wiretap Page.*  To obtain a warrant, the FBI had to establish probably cause to believe that Page might be the agent of a foreign power.  Their interest was based on Page's past contacts with Russian intelligence agents and his visit to Moscow in July.  If there was any coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence, that seemed like the  most likely time for it to take place.  However, higher up's believed that the FBI was close, but not quite there (pp. 121-122).  The Steele report elevated the case for a wiretap from about 50/50 to what the FBI considered sufficient (p. 125).** 

The report found serious flaws in the application.  FISA applications should contain all relevant information, pro and con.  The application for Carter Page was based primarily ln the Steele report.  It included many of Steele's allegations about Page, including that he was serving as an intermediary between Manafort and Russia in a "well-developed conspiracy" regarding the hacks, that Russian officials offered him compromising materials on Hillary Clinton that they might be willing to share, that Russian officials discussed lifting sanctions with Page, and that Page was involved in Russia's release of DNC e-mails to Wikileaks (p. 130).  None of these allegations, it should be added, proved to be true, nor was there any corroboration at the time the application was made (p. 132)..  Meanwhile, the application left out significant exculpatory information (p. 127):

• Although the Steele Dossier portrayed Page as a liaison between Manafort and Russia, Page denied every having met or spoken to Paul Manafort.
• Page's denials of any knowledge of ties between Russia and Wikileaks or involvement in the Republican Party platform during a conversation with an informant (pp 146-147).
• Page's denials to the informant of meeting with sanctioned individuals in Moscow (p. 170).
• Papadopoulos' denials to an informant that the Trump campaign had any involvement with Russia or Wikileaks (pp. 166-167).  Such denials must be included, even if the FBI does not believe them (p. 168).
• Notice from the CIA (always referred to as "another government agency."  For some reason the Inspector General is extraordinarily coy about naming it) that Page was working for them in many of his Russia contacts.
• A serious exaggeration of Steele's reliability and importance

The FBI did also have some concerns about Steele being hired to do opposition research for the Democratic Party or the Clinton campaign (pp. 134-142).  At the same time, the FBI routinely uses biased or hostile sources in seeking warrants (friendly or neutral sources rarely have much dirt to offer) and considers this acceptable so long as the bias is include in application (p. 144).  That information was included in the Page warrant, in a footnote that was clearly visible in the main text (pp. 142-143). 

The FBI went on to apply for and receive three renewals of the application.  Although never expressly stated, the reason for the renewals appears to have been that they weren't getting any significant information, which was probably a sign to end the surveillance.  The first renewal application was not significantly different from the original application, except that it mentioned Steele had been fired for leaking information to Mother Jones.  It did not mention new information the FBI had received since the first application casting doubt on Steele's importance, reliability, and sources (pp. 202-204). 

The FBI applied for a second renewal in April, 2017 (p. 210).  By this time, they had spoken to Steele's primary sub-source and learned information from the sub-source that cast serious doubts on much of Steele's reporting (pp. 211-212).  Yet this was not included in the application (pp. 213, 215).  The same defects carried over into the FBI's third and final application (pp. 219-228).  

The Inspector General found that FBI procedures do allow the use of uncorroborated information in FISA applications, as was done with Page.  However, in those case, there has to be a thorough assessment of a source's reliability.  The FBI seriously failed in this requirement for Page (pp. 360-361).  It also found that many of the defects in the process were known to lower-level agents but did not make their way the top, so that higher ranking FBI officials approved the application unaware of its defects (p. 365).  This raises and obvious question -- how many of these problems are unique to this particular application and how many are chronic?  The report even found that one of the lawyers involved in the application tampered with an e-mail to state that Page was "not a source" for the CIA.  

If anyone is interested in the fine details of how the FBI makes FISA applications, I highly recommend the Inspector General's report.  For anyone else, the whole thing is deathly dull.  The report also contains interesting information for an outsider.  There are approximately 1,300 FISA applications submitted per year, and about 25-40 final applications per week (p. 133).

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*A FISA wiretap of George Papadopoulos was also considered but rejected (p. 128).

**For what it is worth, General Counsel James Baker believed there was sufficient information for a FISA warrant even without the Steele report (pp. 134-135).