On today’s BradCast, FBI Director James Comey and NSA chief Mike Rogers testified for more than five hours today before the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, confirming the existence of an FBI counterintelligence probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, and batting down charges by President Trump that then-President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower before leaving office. [Audio link to show follows below.]
We’re joined by national security journalist Marcy Wheeler of Emptywheel.com for analysis of today’s long-awaited public hearing, with a focus on the many still-unanswered questions surrounding the charges of collusion between Trump and Russia and of the leaked classified information documenting a phone conversation between Trump’s National Security Advisor Mike Flynn and the Russian ambassador to the U.S. Why was Flynn’s part of the conversation captured and transcribed by the Intel Community in the first place, before the content of that discussion, concerning sanctions against the former Soviet Union, was leaked to media? Why wasn’t Flynn’s side of the discussion “masked” or “minimized”, as many Americans believe is the case when it comes to the capture of information from U.S. persons during foreign counterintelligence investigations?
“Since 2008,” she explains, “it’s been permissible for the FBI, in whatever intercepts they get directly, to be able to go back in and look up stuff without distinction of whether the somebody is a US person or a foreigner. This is why the Republicans are so buggy about this.”
“What many people are discovering, for the first time, is that the FBI can do backdoor searches. It means they do not need a warrant…where some analyst in the FBI or the NSA has decided someone is of foreign intelligence interest. The FBI doesn’t need a warrant for that at all. They access that stuff without any criminal evidence against Americans. If they get a tip on you, they can look you up by your name, just on that tip alone.”
Wheeler goes on to detail the legal statutes on that, the lack of public evidence concerning the alleged “cutout” between stolen DNC emails and WikiLeaks, why it took so long for Comey to inform Congress about his investigation at all (he said it’s been under way since last July), questions about whether Trump and others in his Administration are susceptible to compromise by foreign agents, and whether or not she has confidence in the Congressional and FBI investigations into all of these matters.
Also today: Trump’s approval rating hits a new low, and a federal appellate court protects a Constitutional right in Mississippi by blocking another GOP attempt to close the state’s last remaining abortion clinic…
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[audio:http://bradblog.com/audio/BradCast_BradFriedman_HouseIntelComTrumpRussia_MarcyWheeler_032017.mp3]
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Perhaps Obama didn’t specifically order Trump’s calls to be recorded — but he would not have had to, since the No Such Agency is trying to collect everything, automatically.
NSA whistleblower Russ Tice claimed that then Senator Obama had his calls collected. It’s reasonable that Trump’s calls were recorded, too. (The only and only place I agree with Trump.)
The government is listening to the people.
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NSA whistleblower Russ Tice on Boiling Frogs Podcast
June 19, 2013
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/06/19/podcast-show-112-nsa-whistleblower-goes-on-record-reveals-new-information-names-culprits/
NSA whistleblower Russel Tice told Peter B. Collins on Boiling Frog Post News (the website of high-level FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds):
[excerpt]
Tice: Okay. They went after–and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things–they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the–and judicial. But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of–heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House–their own people. They went after antiwar groups. They went after U.S. international–U.S. companies that that do international business, you know, business around the world. They went after U.S. banking firms and financial firms that do international business. They went after NGOs that–like the Red Cross, people like that that go overseas and do humanitarian work. They went after a few antiwar civil rights groups. So, you know, don’t tell me that there’s no abuse, because I’ve had this stuff in my hand and looked at it. And in some cases, I literally was involved in the technology that was going after this stuff. And you know, when I said to [former MSNBC show host Keith] Olbermann, I said, my particular thing is high tech and you know, what’s going on is the other thing, which is the dragnet. The dragnet is what Mark Klein is talking about, the terrestrial dragnet. Well my specialty is outer space. I deal with satellites, and everything that goes in and out of space. I did my spying via space. So that’s how I found out about this.
Collins: Now Russ, the targeting of the people that you just mentioned, top military leaders, members of Congress, intelligence community leaders and the–oh, I’m sorry, it was intelligence committees, let me correct that–not intelligence community, and then executive branch appointees. This creates the basis, and the potential for massive blackmail.
Tice: Absolutely! And remember we talked about that before, that I was worried that the intelligence community now has sway over what is going on. Now here’s the big one. I haven’t given you any names. This was is summer of 2004. One of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with, with a 40-something-year-old wannabe senator from Illinois. You wouldn’t happen to know where that guy lives right now, would you? It’s a big white house in Washington, DC. That’s who they went after. And that’s the president of the United States now.
While neither witness could point to evidence that Russia hacked the vote, neither was asked nor could have answered whether the official machine tally was accurate.
Unfortunate that no one brought up the fact that the best form of cybersecurity when it comes to voting entails “Democracy’s Gold Standard,” to wit, hand-marked paper ballots publicly hand-counted at each precinct on election night.
Brad: You got it wrong with respect to US person whose conversations are captured on a FISA-authorized wiretap. Marci got it right.
Whether we deal with a domestic criminal investigation (e.g. court-authorized wiretap of a Mafia figure) or a FISA warrant with respect to a foreign national (Russian Ambassador), the fact that the surveillance captured a conversation that included a US persons who was not the target of the warrant does not mean that law enforcement is required to obtain another warrant to use the captured conversation against the U.S. person
If, for example, the other person speaking to the Mafia figure turns out to be a hit man, that would entail evidence of a crime that could be used against the hitman. The information (including the identity of the US person) entailed collection incidental to the lawful surveillance.
Also, FBI could not have obtained either a FISA or domestic criminal court order authorizing a tap on anyone in team Trump unless the FBI already had probable cause to show those individuals were likely to have engaged in criminal acts. Thus it is far more likely that the transcript of Flynn’s conversation with the Russian Ambassador was the product of an authorized surveillance of the ambassador.
That FISA order, itself, would be classified. So it’s unlikely we’ll ever see that order.
Thus, it is highly likely that the transcript of the Flynn conversation was incidentally but lawfully acquired as the product of a FISA-authorized surveillance of the Russian Ambassador.
Ernie said @3:
I don’t know that I disagreed with Marci on those points, as much as I was trying to ask her about what the law is (or is supposed to be) in an instance such as this. So, if it sounded as if I disagreed with her, in any respect, that was likely my fault for being unclear somewhere along the way. She is the expert on these issues, not me.
Right. And that’s also what I was trying to get at with Marcy: Trying to learn whether we could yet tell if there was, in fact, a warrant (and, thus, probably cause) for Flynn, or whether he just got caught up incidentally, during his conversation with the (presumably FISA-warranted) Russian ambassador.
The Snowden leaks about “X-Keyscore” suggest they don’t need any stinkin’ warrants.
Of course, General Flynn would have known this as well as anyone, given his tenure at DIA.