FISA Abuses Update: DoJ IG Management Advisory Memorandum Edition

Patrick G. EddingtonLots of very important stories are going to get passed by, very understandably, due to the ongoing COVID-19 national emergency we ’re all trying to survive. Here’s one story that I hope does not get permanently subsumed by our public health crisis: the total debacle that is the FBI Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) surveillance application process.Today, the Department of Justice Inspector General released a Management Advisory Memorandum (MAM) about its follow up audit work in the wake of its Crossfire Hurricane (i.e., Carter Page FISA surveillance scandal)report from December 2019. Even though the DoJ IG is still relatively early in its follow up audit of FBI FISA application practices with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) for applications to spy on U.S. Person, the DoJ IG ’s preliminary findings were so alarming that they felt compelled to issue MAM now.Regarding the FBI ’s existing factual accuracy review procedures (known internally as “Woods procedures”), the IG stated (pp. 2–3):(1) we could not review original Woods Files for 4 of the 29 selected FISA applications because the FBI has notbeen able to locate them and, in 3 of these instances, did not know if they ever existed;(2) our testing of FISA applications to the associated Woods Files identified apparent errors or inadequately supported facts in all of the 25 applications we reviewed, and interviews to date with available agents or ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs