I recently wrote an updated post on the many FISA abuses uncovered by NSA Director Mike Rogers – and how DOJ’s National Security Division Head John Carlin intentionally hid these abuses from the FISA Court.

It’s highly improbable that DNI James Clapper did not know about the FISA Abuses as well.

One of the more significant revelations unearthed by Rogers was the FBI’s use of outside private contractors. For those already familiar – scroll down to section on Evelyn Farkas.

From the FISA Court Ruling (Page 83-84):

The FBI had disclosed raw FISA information, including but not limited to Section 702-acquired information, to a [Redacted].

[Redacted] is largely staffed by private contractors.

Contractors had access to raw FISA information on FBI storage systems.

Unrestricted access continued – after they completed work on an FBI request (Page 84-85):

Restrictions were not in place with regard to the [Redacted] contractors.

Access was not limited to raw information for which the FBI sought assistance.

Access continued even after they had completed work in response to an FBI request.

The FBI systematically enabled outside contractors to access raw FISA data – using the FBI’s systems as access points – across multiple Agencies (Page 87):

Improper access granted to the [Redacted] contractors seems to have been the result of deliberate decisionmaking.

Access to FBI systems was the subject of an interagency memorandum of understanding.

The FBI intentionally hid the implementation of this practice – and the practice itself – from the FISA Court until it was discovered in March 2016 (Page 87):

No notice of this practice was given to the FISC until 2016.

The government cannot say how, when or where non-compliant information was used. Once an individual had access to the information, it could no longer be traced or tracked (Page 82):

The NSA is unable to identify any reporting or other disseminations that may have been based on information returned by [these] non-compliant queries.

NSA’s disseminations are sourced to specific objects, not to the queries that may have presented those objects to the analyst.

Nearly five months after Director Rogers notified the Court, the government was still struggling to understand all points of raw FISA data access (Page 22):

The government reported that NSA was still attempting to identify all systems that store upstream data and all tools used to query such data.

Private contractors had full and unfettered access to raw FISA data. And no one could track what they did with that data.

None of this was an accident (Page 87):

The Court is concerned about the FBI’s apparent disregard of minimization rules and whether the FBI may be engaging in similar disclosures of raw Section 702 information that have not been reported.

This concern from the FISA Court applied specifically to the FBI – not the NSA. The FISA Court’s lack of trust in the FBI was apparent.

At this juncture, we don’t yet know the identities of these private contractors. But I’m guessing we shortly will.

Evelyn Farkas – On March 2, 2017, Obama’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Evelyn Farkas went on MSNBC. In the interview, Farkas detailed how the Obama Administration gathered and disseminated intelligence on the Trump Team:

I was urging my former colleagues, “Get as much information as you can. Get as much intelligence as you can” – before Obama leaves the Administration.

The Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff dealing with Russians, they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence.

That’s why you have the leaking.

Note that Farkas said “how we knew” not “what we knew”. A crucial distinction.

On March 22, 2018, House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte issued a subpoena to the DOJ. There was some intriguing information contained within (more here) but one question seemed particularly relevant to this discussion:

7. All documents and communications referring or relating to internal Department of Justice or FBI management requests to review, scrub, report on, or analyze any reporting of FISA collection involving, or coverage mentioning, the Trump Campaign of Trump Administration;

In effect, Goodlatte is inquiring after the sources and methods of surveillance intelligence Ms. Farkas is referring to.

Devin Nunes has already given us a basic understanding of what occurred.

On March 22, 2017, after learning of Trump Transition surveillance, Devin Nunes gave an impromptu press conference followed by a more formal press conference (transcripts here).

Revisiting Nunes’ comments with knowledge of the FBI’s use of private contractors provides new levels of understanding. Some comments relate to the October 21 2016 Carter Page FISA Warrant. Other comments are specifically related to earlier collections.

Comments by Nunes are sequential:

I recently confirmed that on numerous occasions, the intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition.

Details about persons associated with the incoming administration, details with little apparent foreign intelligence value were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting.

The NSA has been very, very helpful. They know how important these programs are, they are in constant communication with our team.

I have spoke to Admiral Rogers about these concerns, and he wants to comply as quickly as he can.

From what I know right now, it looks like incidental collection. We don’t know exactly how that was picked up but we’re trying to get to the bottom of it.

I think the NSA’s going to comply. I am concerned – we don’t know whether or not the FBI is going to comply.

I have seen intelligence reports that clearly show the President-elect and his team were at least monitored and disseminated out in intelligence, in what appears to be raw—well I shouldn’t say raw—but intelligence reporting channels.

It looks to me like it was all legally collected, but it was essentially a lot of information on the President-elect and his transition team and what they were doing.

This information was legally brought to me by sources who thought that we should know about it.

This is normal incidental collection. It was normal foreign surveillance.

This appears to be all legally collected foreign intelligence under FISA, where there was incidental collection that then ended up in reporting channels and was widely disseminated.

We went through this about a year and a half ago as it related to members of Congress…it’s very similar to that, it reminds me of what happened a year and a half ago.

It’s official IC information. These were intelligence reports. It brings up a lot of concerns about whether things were properly minimized or not.

We don’t know who sent the taskings, if the taskings were changed into what went into these intelligence reports.

The President himself and others in the Trump transition team were clearly put into intelligence reports that ended up in this White House and across a whole bunch of other agencies.

There’s two issues here. There’s additional unmasking of names…I don’t know how many names were unmasked, but I know these additional unmaskings occurred. And then we have the additional issue of the names that were put into these intelligence reports.

I was able to determine that it looks like it was legal collection, incidental collection, that made its way into intelligence reports. It has to do with FISA, and there are multiple FISA warrants that are out there, but there’s nothing criminal at all involved.

On March 31, 2017 a Fox News report by Adam Housley cited numerous unnamed intelligence sources with direct knowledge of events:

We’ve learned that the surveillance that led to the unmasking started way before President Trump was even the GOP nominee. The person who did the unmasking, I’m told, is very well known, very high up, very senior in the intelligence world and is not in the FBI.

This led to other surveillance which led to multiple names being unmasked. Again these are private citizens in the United States.

We’re told that the main issue here is not only the unmasking of the names, but the spreading of names for political purposes that have nothing to do with national security and everything to do with hurting and embarrassing Trump and his team.

This is all coming from folks that are in these agencies and frustrated with the politics that is taking place in these agencies.

The FBI and the NSD didn’t need a wiretap. They already had multiple points of access in their systems. They just had to be willing to use these access points – or have someone else use them – to harvest the NSA upstream data.

The FISA Court ruling tells us they did this. It doesn’t tell us the targets.

We know from FISA Court documents that information was being gathered through illegal “About” queries – and had little or nothing to do with National Security. They were unauthorized, specifically related to U.S. persons and were the result of deliberate decision-making.

The FBI employed independent contractors – some to seemingly gather political opposition research using “About” queries from late 2015 through April 18, 2016.

Once the process had been stopped – and was now potentially exposed – the FBI & NSD decided what to do with the previously gathered information.

The idea of a Dossier was formulated. It provided three purposes.

It became a repository of some of the information already gathered – and was augmented with information from Christopher Steele. It became a means to ultimately obtain legal permission for the previously illegal methods by which the information had been gathered. It allowed for the continuation of information gathering after Rogers shut Section 702 “About” searches down – through the FISA warrant on Carter Page.

The Steele Dossier became the repository of information gathered from illegal Section 702 searches while at the same time transforming that information into outside evidence that could be used in obtaining a FISA warrant to legitimize…the original information.

It became legal to maintain surveillance on the Trump Campaign using earlier data that originated with “incidental” capture of U.S. persons in the collection of data on non-U.S. persons.

The following timeline presents an evolution of events. A timeline of Rogers’ actions (dates bolded) is integrated with a broader timeline (dates unbolded):

This timeline is intentionally abbreviated – although it probably doesn’t seem so. For a broader timeline see here.

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