22-year FBI agent with extensive FISA experience says the agency broke the law, repeatedly

Frank Watt served for over 22 years as an FBI special agent.  So he knows the agency's procedures thoroughly.

Watt has written a devastating critique of the Inspector-General's report on the illegal use of FISA wiretaps on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page.  I've edited his article below--but I encourage you to read his original:

As a 22 year FBI agent I have personally conducted multiple investigations using both Title III "wiretaps" and FISA authorized intercepts. From this perspective it's clear that the actions of the FBI and DOJ are outrageously illegal.


As most Americans know, the FBI asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court for permission to wiretap a U.S. citizen, Carter Page.  The law provides that for the FISA court to allow this, the FBI must present facts showing that Page was doing something reasonably considered to be a threat to national security--that he was, in effect, working for a foreign power.  

Wiretapping an American citizen is so serious that permission is only supposed to be given after intense judicial scrutiny.  But according to the I.G. report, the FBI's request to wiretap Page was based on unverified, second hand information in the "Steele dossier."
In the course of my FBI career I have written multiple affidavits to support a wiretap.  In every case, as I stood before the judge to obtain the authorization to conduct the wire tap, my supporting affidavit had been checked, rechecked, and approved by (at a minimum) the principal legal advisor at my field office, the line prosecutors at the US Attorneys Office for the appropriate jurisdiction,  DOJ attorneys at the Office of Enforcement Operations at Main Justice, and program managers, legal counsel, and Division heads at FBI Headquarters. 

My point in describing this is to show the exhaustive and thorough review these ordinary investigations must pass.  And even though all my cases were high-profile, they all pale in comparison to the unprecedented sensitivity of the FBI's wiretap on Page.

The implications of intercepting the communications of a U.S. citizen who is associated with the political campaign of a candidate seeking the Presidency rings nearly every bell in the FBIs and Attorney General's Guidelines for sensitive investigations. As discussed in the IG report, by regulation, these cases cannot be initiated without the written approval of the Director and the Attorney General. 

In addition to requiring approval by the Director and AG, the IGs report identified many other high level officials who reviewed and approved the Page FISA request:  "NSD's Acting Assistant Attorney General, NSD's Deputy Assistant Attorney General with oversight over 01, 01's Operations Section Chief and Deputy Section Chief, the DAG, Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General, and the Associate Deputy Attorney General responsible for ODAG's national security portfolio." 

The suggestion that somehow, seventeen significant errors, omissions of fact, falsehoods, or deliberate misrepresentations made their way into a FISA affidavit/s--supposedly by accident by an anonymous case agent-- and then were not immediately noted and corrected throughout the course of this exceptional review process is simply not believable. 

Moreover, for the court to renew the wiretap permission after the initial authorization period, the FBI Director and the Acting/Attorney General themselves are required to review the results of the wiretap.  Renewal permission is only granted if those officials affirm that the results are "investigatively significant."  

The FBI went back to the FISA court THREE times to renew the wiretap request, but claims that no one involved in the process any of the three times noticed that there was no incriminating evidence being generated by the intercepts. Keep in mind, Page's communications were continuously monitored for approximately eleven months. 

It's literally unbelievable.

The fact that they allowed an unnamed FBI Agent to swear to the renewal affidavits doesn't relieve them of their responsibility for the outcome nor does it allow for the "I can't be aware of every aspect of the case" excuse. 

Americans are being asked to believe that the hand selected team of investigators, attorneys, and Senior Executive Service officials with decades of law enforcement, administrative, and judicial experience were abject failures at a task that they were hired to perform.  To believe that people with unlimited time and resources, working on the most sensitive investigation in history, somehow manaaged to "overlook" seventeen major omissions, misstatements, and/or outright falsehoods, is simply not believable. 
 
The far more plausible explanation is that nearly everyone who significantly participated in obtaining FISA coverage on Page knowingly and deliberately broke the law to one degree or another.  The reasons behind the decision to do so are irrelevant. The particulars regarding the seventeen I.G. findings are startling, taken individually. It's difficult to see how any of the individual omissions or misstatements could have happened accidentally. Viewed collectively, the apparent intentionality is nearly impossible to reconcile as anything but corruption. 

Devastating.  But I'll be stunned if anyone higher than a clerk is penalized for this, even in the smallest way.

Two sets of laws, baby.