Last Monday, President Donald Trump told the Justice Department and the FBI to declassify unredacted versions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant applications used to get wire-taps on Carter Page. The president also called for other materials—such as Bruce Ohr and Christopher Steele’s email correspondence—to be revealed. But by Friday, Trump had backed off, tweeting that the Department of Justice had persuaded him to let the DoJ inspector general vet the documents first. That way a “perceived negative impact on the Russia probe” could be avoided. It would also calm “key Allies” who had “called to ask not to release.”

But the pushback hadn’t just come from government. Some media made the case—a rather counterintuitive one for journalists to make—that the information not be released. Most prominently, the New York Times decried as terribly dangerous the very idea of making the FISA materials public. The headline of a September 18 article signaled the newspaper’s disapproval: "Ignoring Security Concerns, Trump to Make Russia Documents Public."

In the article, author Adam Goldman suggested that the remaining redactions of the FISA warrants regarding Carter Page should stay under wraps, given the concerns of the "intelligence community and members of the law enforcement." The intelligence crowd, you see, were angry that redacted versions of the FISA warrant applications had been declassified and released by the Trump administration in July. Goldman wrote that they “believed that the information should not have been made public and that its release set a dangerous precedent by making public secret methods of investigation."

According to the Times, it didn’t take long for the law enforcement establishment’s fears to be realized: Goldman has been talking to “[f]ormer and current F.B.I. officials” who “have expressed concern that the Republican efforts to out the materials could have long-lasting consequences, making it harder to recruit informants willing to help with investigations who are the lifeblood of law enforcement.”

The president and his partisans, the Times lamented, were putting party ahead of national security. “For months, Mr. Trump and some of his most fervent congressional supporter have clamored for the material’s release against the protests of the intelligence and law enforcement communities,” Goldman wrote. Trump’s order to release unredacted FISA documents was just “the latest instance of the president siding with Republican allies on Capitol Hill over federal law enforcement.”

And yet, there’s something rather strange about Goldman denouncing the release of FISA documents: Back on February 5, the reporter filed a motion with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court asking the FISC "to order publication of all of its orders authorizing surveillance of Carter Page.” And not just that: Goldman (together with fellow Timesman Charlie Savage and the Gray Lady herself) also asked the court for all “the application materials and renewal application materials upon which those orders were issued."

The context, of course, was a little different back then. In February, the majority report of the House Intelligence Committee—the Nunes Memo—had just been published, and Democrats were looking for material that could be used to rebut it. They thought they would find that material in as-yet-unreleased materials from the FISA warrant applications. Revealing the records of the secret court was justified, Goldman argued to the FISC, “Given the overwhelming public interest in assessing the accuracy of the Nunes Memorandum and knowing the actual basis for the Page surveillance orders.”

An entire section of Goldman’s filing with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is devoted to the proposition that so much of the FISA warrants was already out in the open that one couldn’t argue to keep what’s left under lock and key. The section is headed with this unambiguous statement in bold, capital letters, partially underlined: “ THERE IS NO LONGER ANY REASON FOR THE PAGE WARRANT ORDERS AND APPLICATION MATERIALS TO BE WITHHELD IN THEIR ENTIRETY AND DISCLOSURE WOULD SERVE THE PUBLIC INTEREST ”.

One motion was not enough. On February 14, Goldman and his NYT team filed a supplemental notice “further supporting publication of the Carter Page surveillance records.” The “ongoing disputes over the facts surrounding the issuance of orders to surveil Carter Page are not some minor partisan squabble,” Goldman said in the court filing. “At a minimum, this dispute raises important questions about the effectiveness of the FISA Court’s oversight and protections for citizen’s Fourth Amendment rights.” Which was why “Publication of the application materials and orders is clearly in the public interest.”

But that was then. Now, Goldman warns us, any such release is a threat to “the lifeblood of law enforcement.” One can hope that the change of perspective is due to more than just the expectation, then, that the warrants would hurt Trump versus the expectation, now, that they may help the president.

It’s possible Goldman might not remember that he’s the “movant” in a motion before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. If he had remembered, surely he would have disclosed it to readers, who might want to know that the reporter telling them of the dangers of releasing FISA warrants is trying to get the court to release those very FISA warrants to him.

Readers might also want to know that the motion with Goldman’s name on it isn’t just an artifact of the past, not even the recent past. It continues to be before the court. Goldman’s motion to the FISC was prepared by several lawyers, including David A. Schulz of the Media Freedom & Information Access Clinic of the Abrams Institute in New York. Asked by THE WEEKLY STANDARD whether the request for the FISA documents was still being considered by the court, Schulz said it was: “Motion still pending.”

That means while Goldman was quoting FBI and intelligence sources on the terrible things that would come of releasing unredacted FISA warrants, among other closely held documents, he was asking the FISA court to give him the Carter Page warrants.

Of these two contradictory stances, the argument Goldman makes in the court motions is the one I find more compelling. The public has a legitimate interest in knowing what happened before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and they are only going to have confidence in that knowledge if they are able to get the information from complete original sources. Transparency is the thing, whatever party it may benefit at any given moment.

