Opinion Piece

Letter

A MASSIVE scandal is brewing in Washington that will make Watergate look like an episode of the Simpsons.

The House Intelligence Committee, which oversees the United States intelligence community, has been examining a shocking memo detailing systemic and routine abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

The Act establishes procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and collection of foreign intelligence information between foreign powers and agents of foreign powers suspected of espionage or terrorism.

FISA also established the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to oversee requests for warrants by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

It is now clear that the scurrilous and completely false “Steele Dossier” was paid for by the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.

The American research firm, Fusion GPS was hired to do “opposition research” on Donald Trump. They hired Christopher Steele, a retired British MI6 officer with expertise in Russian matters. The dossier found its way to the FBI where the director, James Comey, was unimpressed by its unfounded and completely unproven allegations.

Nevertheless, it does appear that this dossier was used to sway the FISA court into granting a warrant for the surveillance of Trump and his campaign.

Thus a completely baseless dossier, paid for by Clinton’s presidential campaign, was used by the FBI to obtain a FISA warrant permitting them to surveil the opposition’s campaign.

Ironically, both the Senate and the House of Representatives have just voted in favour of a reauthorisation of FISA.

If the intelligence agencies can’t be trusted to go about their business of protecting the American people in a non-partisan way, were the Senate and the House of Representatives wise to have done this?

Patrick Cooper