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FBI, FISA Met Woods

After finding some seventeen mistakes in the FBI requests to the FISA court to spy on Carter Page, the Attorney General ordered wider review of FISA applications.  A prelimary report has been released and finding are not good, from Office of Inspector General, Department of Justice. via Legal Insurrection [1]:

As a result of our audit work to date and as described below, we do not have confidence that the FBI has executed its Woods Procedures in compliance with FBI policy. Specifically, the Woods Procedures mandate compiling supporting documentation for each fact in the FISA application. Adherence to the Woods Procedures should result in such documentation as a means toward achievement of the FBI’s policy that FISA applications be “scrupulously accurate.” Our lack of confidence that the Woods Procedures are working as intended stems primarily from the fact that: (1) we could not review original Woods Files for 4 of the 29 selected FISA applications because the FBI has not been 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 supervisors in field offices generally have confirmed the issues we identified; (3) existing FBI and NSD oversight mechanisms have also identified deficiencies in documentary support and application accuracy that are similar to those that we have observed to date; and (4) FBI and NSD officials we interviewed indicated to us that there were no efforts by the FBI to use existing FBI and NSD oversight mechanisms to perform comprehensive, strategic assessments of the efficacy of the Woods Procedures or FISA accuracy, to include identifying the need for enhancements to training and improvements in the process, or increased accountability measures.

… we believe that a deficiency in the FBI’s efforts to support the factual statements in FISA applications through its Woods Procedures undermines the FBI’s ability to achieve its “scrupulously accurate” standard for FISA applications.

Funny while the IG found numerous omission in the FISA application, former FBI director vouched for their accuracy, from John Soloman, Just the News [2]:

The FBI’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act compliance is a “labor-intensive” and “top-tier” program that protects Americans civil liberties by ensuring evidence is “very, very carefully scrubbed” for accuracy,[former FBI Director James] Comey told House members in a closed-door deposition back in December 2018.

Fifteen month later, the Justice Department’s inspector general blew a hole in Comey’s representation. His review of warrant applications in more than two dozen FISA cases over the last five years that found that every one of them failed to meet the requirements of the Woods Procedures, which mandate the compilation of documentary evidence in support of each fact in a warrant application.

More from John Soloman, Just the News [3]:

House Republicans late Tuesday renewed their demands that the House Judiciary Committee hold hearings into the FBI spying on Americans after a new review found agents routinely used inaccurate or incomplete evidence to justify surveillance warrants.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the panel’s ranking member, sent Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.

As a minimum the hearings should hear from all officials who do, or did, oversee the FISA court, Chief Justice John Roberts, every supervising judge of the court, and every director of the FBI, and both the chair and ranking member of all appropriate congressional committees for the period of the report.  If Congress should fail to act, the President should appoint a special counsel.  I suggest Sidney Powell.