from former FBI Agent Asha Rangappa, who is a former FBI Counterterrorism agent in the NY office, and is now a Senior Lecturer at Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, and previous served as an Associate Dean at Yale Law School. In other words, someone who knows both counterterrorism and the relevant law, in the case what is involved in getting a FISA surveillance warrant.
In Five Questions the Nunes Memo Better Answer, Rangappa takes us through all the detail and nitty gritty of getting such warrants, and why a four page memo written by Nunes’ staff clearly is not presenting anything like an accurate picture.
We already know the issue involved is surveillance on Carter Page, which leads to intercepting of some communications at Trump Tower, which was not itself being targeted.
To give you a sense of how thorough and important this piece is, here is the first of those five questions and its explanation:
1. When did the FBI open an investigation on Carter Page?
It’s important to understand that just because the FBI receives information (like the Steele Dossier), the Bureau cannot immediately run to a FISA court and obtain a warrant. A FISA warrant itself does not make a “case;” rather, it’s an investigative tool used in support of an existing national security case, one that normally would have been opened months, if not years, prior. In fact, FISA warrants can be approved only for what are called Full Investigations. These are the most serious class of investigations within the FBI and require an “articulable factual basis” to open: For counterintelligence cases on U.S. persons (USPERs), these cases involve facts demonstrating that the subject is in contact with and working on behalf of a foreign intelligence service. That means that, at some point prior to obtaining the FISA warrant, the FBI opened an investigation on Carter Page, obtained enough factual evidence to justify making it a Full Investigation, and would have done enough investigative activity to be able to put together a FISA application.
In fact, Page was already on the FBI’s radar as far back as 2013, when they obtained recordings of Russian foreign intelligence officials discussing targeting Page for recruitment. FBI officials at that time interviewed Page and warned him that he was being targeted – Page admitted that he had been in contact with these officers (not knowing they were Russian intelligence operatives) and has said that he shared “immaterial information and publicly available research documents” with the Russian spies. As former CIA officers and I have described, this would be consistent with the early stage of an intelligence recruitment process, and the FBI would have likely kept tabs on Russia’s efforts to see if they persisted and succeeded. There are even reports that Page was under FISA surveillance in 2014, which could have strengthened the basis for a new one in 2016 with renewed Russian interest in him. The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. intelligence obtained intercepts as early as spring 2015 of Russians discussing “meetings held outside the U.S. involving Russian government officials and Trump business associates or advisers.” By the time Page joined the Trump campaign in 2016, the FBI would have had three years to monitor the recruitment process unfolding (Page continued his contacts with Russia through this time, and his unusual trip to Moscow in summer 2016 was no secret) – and this is the process the FBI would have outlined in its application to the FISA court in 2016 to demonstrate how and why Page was “engaging in clandestine intelligence activity on behalf of a foreign power” to obtain surveillance.
THE TAKEAWAY: If the Nunes Memo does not indicate when the investigation underlying the Page FISA application was opened or how many months/years of investigative activity preceding the dossier is detailed in the Page FISA application, it is not telling a sufficiently complete or accurate story.
If you read the entire piece, to maintain a FISA warrant on a US Citizen, which Carter Page was and is, beyond 90 days, one has to demonstrate to the FISA judge (who may not be the same person who authorized the original warrant) that actionable intelligence was gained. The anecdotal evidence is that Page may have been under continual surveillance for quite some time, which would have started well before Mueller took over the investigation, which may mean that Page was a continual source of actionable intelligence.
There is so much more in this piece.
I really think someone should bring Rangappa on a show for an extended period to explain all this.
Please, read, bookmark, and pass on.