“OVERSIGHT OF THE FBI”
by Sharon Rondeau
(Jun. 7, 2018) — On Wednesday Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray requesting a copy of the agency’s guidelines on the use of human intelligence sources.
“We are writing to request that the FBI provide the Committee with a fully unredacted copy of the version of the FBI’s Confidential Human Source Policy Guide (CHSPG) currently in force. If a different version was in force in 2016, please provide a fully unredacted copy of that as well,” the letter begins.
The request may be in response to newly-revealed text messages between the now-infamous former FBI attorney Lisa Page and current FBI Human Resources employee Peter Strzok, who was Deputy Director of Counterintelligence in 2016.
The text messages are part of the Justice Department Inspector General’s probe into whether or not the FBI mishandled the 2016 investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she served as Barack Hussein Obama’s Secretary of State between 2009 and 2013.
Many of the texts remain partially redacted by the government but reveal that Strzok and Page were monitoring the 2016 presidential primaries and general-election developments very carefully. While they were critical of Clinton at times, they spoke of Trump in terms of “an idiot” and someone they believed should not become president.
A U.S. Senate 502-page document release on Monday contains a text-message exchange between the two in which they appear to be discussing the use of “lures” outside of the continental United States.
Last month, The Washington Post and The New York Times confirmed the FBI’s use of an “informant” to gather information from at least three members of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, which has outraged some Republican congressmen.
Since that time, Trump himself has tweeted that his campaign was “spied” upon, and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has been attempting for months to obtain documents from the Justice Department on the FBI’s alleged use of human intelligence sources engaged with members of the Trump campaign.
Subpoenas from the committee have been ignored, according to Nunes, who has said in the recent past that a Contempt of Congress citation or impeachment are under consideration for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
On Thursday morning, WTKR reported that Justice will now allow “top lawmakers on Capitol Hill to review certain documents related to the FBI’s use of a confidential intelligence source during the 2016 presidential campaign early next week,” citing “a senior Justice Department official.”
While the FBI was concluding its probe of Clinton’s email server in late July 2016, Strzok flew to the UK on an apparent mission to interview one or more parties who made contact with the Trump campaign. Subsequent document releases, however, indicate that the FBI’s “counterintelligence” operation likely began significantly earlier that year.
It has been reported that Strzok interviewed Clinton on July 3, 2016, two days before then-FBI Director James Comey exonerated her of criminal wrongdoing in a solo press conference which many thought to be outside of the agency’s protocols.
When Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz discovered anti-Trump text messages between Strzok and Page, he reportedly informed Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who removed Strzok from Mueller’s investigation into whether or not anyone from the Trump campaign “colluded” with Russian operatives to gain an advantage for Trump.
Mueller has reportedly also probed the extent to which any Russians attempted to influence the 2016 election.
After finally gaining access in late April to the “EC” (electronic communication) which reportedly served as the basis to open the counterintelligence investigation, Nunes said that there was “no underlying intelligence” to support the FBI’s decision.
Since last year, a significant exodus of top-ranking FBI personnel has occurred, to include former FBI Chief of Staff James Rybicki, Comey, former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, U.S. Justice Department Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, former FBI General Counsel James Baker, Page and former public affairs director Michael Kortan.
McCabe, Yates and Comey were fired, while Baker was first reassigned and then resigned. Horowitz has referred McCabe for consideration of criminal charges to the U.S. attorney for Washington, DC.
Testimony in 2007 by then-FBI Assistant Director, Directorate of Intelligence Wayne M. Murphy confirmed that human intelligence sources were used outside of the United States but did not elaborate on the parameters for doing so.
The ACLU published the 2011 version of the FBI’s Confidential Human Source Policy Manual, although the document is heavily-redacted.
Grassley and Feinstein concluded their letter with, “As you know, it is the Committee’s constitutional duty to conduct oversight of the FBI. Acquiring the CHSPG is essential to the Committee’s oversight of the FBI’s use of informants…”