Solomon had just returned from a Fox News hit outlining a story about the surge in “unmaskings”—where American citizens’ private communications were exposed without warrants. Solomon was discussing the Rosemary Collyer report on NSA database queries and unmaskings. Senior FBI and DOJ officials had already told him: Don’t waste your time on Russia collusion.
Late that night, he pulled into his driveway.
A blue sedan with yellow fog lights sat waiting by his mailbox.
Two men stepped out.
“‘We can’t tell you who we are, but you’re at the tip of a very large iceberg, and we hope you drill into it.’
‘What in God’s name are you guys talking about?’
‘Well, that thing you were reporting on television…’
‘Yeah, that’s a FISA court filing.’
‘It is the apex of a very large scandal, and you need to drill down in it.’
‘All right, walk me through this guys.’
‘We can’t tell you. It’s all classified.’
‘OK that’s not very helpful. Can you give me something of a more generic description?’
‘Yeah, we work in the intelligence community, and our agencies were asked to participate in one of the greatest political dirty tricks in history.
And if it isn’t stopped—and one day, when it is uncovered—we will lose the tools that keep you and I safe at night.
We won’t be able to find terrorists, and we won’t find spies, because these tools will be taken from us because we abused them in the last couple of years.’
John Solomon is a smart man.
John Solomon knows the issue they were talking about, the issue he was just discussing on Fox News, the issue that surrounds the “tools” they are concerned about losing, is the issue of conducting surveillance using the NSA database.
John Solomon knows this. He is not obtuse or mistaken about the issue that was at the center of that weird contact.
However, notice how John Solomon then obfuscates that specific issue and jumps immediately to conflate it with the Clinton dirty tricks around Russiagate, the Trump-Russia collusion stuff. Solomon is NOT doing this accidentally or by mistake. Solomon is taking the viewer away from the main story on purpose.
Notice that nowhere in the larger or expanded interview [SEE HERE] does Solomon ever bring up the originating issue of surveillance of the Trump campaign or exploitation of the NSA database in the discussion. Instead, he starts to immediately call attention to the Clinton campaign dirty tricks and the FBI collaboration therein.
Let us discuss how big a story is being professionally hidden.
We have significant research files on the 2015 and 2016 political surveillance program; which includes the trail evident within the Weissmann/Mueller report; in combination with the Obama-era DOJ “secret research project” (their words, not mine). We are able to overlay the entire objective and gain a full understanding of how political surveillance was conducted over a period of approximately four to six years.
This is why there was panic after the 2016 election.
President Obama’s “Spygate” operation is what they are trying to hide by focusing on Hillary Clinton’s “Russiagate.”
Working with a timeline but also referencing origination material in 2015/2016, lets remind everyone how the program operated. This explains an evolution from The IRS Files in 2010 to the FISA Files in 2016.
More importantly, research indicates the modern political exploitation of the NSA database, for weaponized intelligence surveillance of politicians, began mid 2012.
The FISA-702 database extraction process, and utilization of the protections within the smaller intelligence community, was the primary process. We start by reviewing the established record from the 99-page FISC opinion rendered by Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer on April 26th, 2017; and explain the details within the FISC opinion.
I would strongly urge everyone to read the FISC report because Judge Collyer outlines how the DOJ, which includes the FBI, had an “institutional lack of candor” in responses to the FISA court. In essence, the Obama administration was continually lying to the court about their activity and the rate of fourth amendment violations for illegal searches and seizures of U.S. persons’ private information for multiple years.
Unfortunately, due to intelligence terminology Judge Collyer’s brief and ruling is not an easy read for anyone unfamiliar with the FISA processes outlined. The complexity also helps the media avoid discussing, and as a result most Americans had no idea the scale and scope of the issues. So, we’ll try to break down the language.
For the sake of brevity and common understanding CTH will highlight the most pertinent segments showing just how systemic and troublesome the unlawful electronic surveillance was.
Early in 2016 NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers was alerted of a significant uptick in FISA-702(17) “About” queries using the FBI/NSA database that holds all metadata records on every form of electronic communication.
The NSA compliance officer alerted Admiral Mike Rogers who then initiated a full compliance audit on/around March 9th, 2016, for the period of November 1st, 2015, through May 1st, 2016.
While the audit was ongoing, due to the severity of the results that were identified, Admiral Mike Rogers stopped anyone from using the 702(17) “about query” option and went to the extraordinary step of blocking all FBI contractor access to the database on April 18, 2016 (keep these dates in mind).
Here are some significant segments:
The key takeaway from these first paragraphs is how the search query results were exported from the NSA database to users who were not authorized to see the material. The FBI contractors were conducting searches and then removing, or ‘exporting’, the results. Later on, the FBI said all of the exported material was deleted.
Searching the highly classified NSA database is essentially a function of filling out search boxes to identify the user-initiated search parameter and get a return on the search result.
FISA-702(16) is a search of the system returning a U.S. person (“702”); and the “16” is a check box to initiate a search based on “To and From“. Example, if you put in a date and a phone number and check “16” as the search parameter the user will get the returns on everything “To and From” that identified phone number for the specific date. Calls, texts, contacts etc. Including results for the inbound and outbound contacts.
FISA-702(17) is a search of the system returning a U.S. person (702); and the “17” is a check box to initiate a search based on everything “About” the search qualifier. Example, if you put a date and a phone number and check “17” as the search parameter the user will get the returns of everything about that phone. Calls, texts, contacts, geolocation (or gps results), account information, user, service provider etc. As a result, 702(17) can actually be used to locate where the phone (and user) was located on a specific date or sequentially over a specific period of time which is simply a matter of changing the date parameters.
And that’s just from a phone number.
Search an ip address “about” and read all data into that server; put in an email address and gain everything about that account. Or use the electronic address of a GPS enabled vehicle (about) and you can withdraw more electronic data and monitor in real time. Search a credit card number and get everything about the account including what was purchased, where, when, etc. Search a bank account number, get everything about transactions and electronic records etc.
Just about anything and everything can be electronically searched; everything has an electronic ‘identifier’.
The search parameter is only limited by the originating field filled out. Names, places, numbers, addresses, etc. By using the “About” parameter there may be thousands or millions of returns. Imagine if you put “@realdonaldtrump” into the search parameter? You could extract all following accounts who interacted on Twitter, or Facebook etc. You are only limited by your imagination and the scale of the electronic connectivity.
As you can see below, on March 9th, 2016, internal auditors noted the FBI was sharing “raw FISA information, including but not limited to Section 702-acquired information”.
In plain English the raw search returns were being shared with unknown entities without any attempt to “minimize” or redact the results. The person(s) attached to the results were named and obvious. There was no effort to hide their identity or protect their 4th amendment rights of privacy:
But what’s the scale here? This is where the story really lies.
Read this next excerpt carefully.
The operators were searching “U.S. Persons”. The review of November 1, 2015, to May 1, 2016, showed “eighty-five percent of those queries” were unlawful or “non-compliant”.
85% !! “Representing [redacted number]”.
We can tell from the space of the redaction the number of searches were between 1,000 and 9,999 [five digits]. If we take the middle number of 5,000 – that means 4,250 unlawful searches out of 5,000.
The [five digit] amount (more than 1,000, less than 10,000), and 85% error rate, was captured in a six-month period.
Also notice this very important quote: “many of these non-compliant queries involved the use of the same identifiers over different date ranges.” They were searching the same phone number, email address, electronic “identifier”, or people, repeatedly over different dates. Specific people were being tracked/monitored.
Additionally, notice the last quote: “while the government reports it is unable to provide a reliable estimate of” these non lawful searches “since 2012, there is no apparent reason to believe the November 2015 [to] April 2016 coincided with an unusually high error rate”.
That means the 85% unlawful NSA database exploitation was likely been happening since 2012.
Again, remember that date, 2012.
Who was FBI Director? Robert Mueller.
Who was his chief-of-staff? Aaron Zebley.
Tens of thousands of searches over four years (since 2012), and 85% of them are illegal. The results were extracted for?…. (I believe this is all political opposition use; and I’ll explain why momentarily.)
OK, that’s the stunning scale; but who was involved?
Private contractors with access to “raw FISA information that went well beyond what was necessary to respond to FBI’s requests“:
And as noted, the contractor access was finally halted on April 18th, 2016.
[Coincidentally (or not), the wife of Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson, Mary Jacoby, goes to the White House the next day on April 19th, 2016.]
None of this is conspiracy theory.
All of this is laid out inside this 99-page opinion from FISC Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer who also noted that none of this FISA abuse was accidental in a footnote on page 87: “deliberate decisionmaking“:
This specific footnote, if declassified, would be key. Note the phrase: “([redacted] access to FBI systems was the subject of an interagency memorandum of understanding entered into [redacted])”, this sentence has the potential to expose an internal decision; withheld from congress and the FISA court by the Obama administration; that outlines a process for access and distribution of surveillance data.
Note: “no notice of this practice was given to the FISC until 2016“, that is important.
Summary of this aspect: The FISA court identified and quantified tens-of-thousands of search queries of the NSA/FBI database using the FISA-702(16)(17) authorization to search the NSA database. The database was repeatedly used by persons with contractor access who unlawfully searched and extracted the raw results without redacting the information and shared it with an unknown number of entities.
The outlined process certainly points toward a political spying and surveillance operation; and we are not the only one to think that’s what this system is being used for.
Back in 2017 when House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes was working to reauthorize the FISA legislation, Nunes wrote a letter to ODNI Dan Coats about this specific issue:
SIDEBAR: To solve the issue, well, actually attempt to ensure it never happened again, NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers eventually took away the “About” query option permanently in 2017. NSA Director Rogers said the abuse was so inherent there was no way to stop it except to remove the process completely. [SEE HERE] Additionally, the NSA database operates as a function of the Pentagon, so they went one step further. On his last day as NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers -together with ODNI Dan Coats- put U.S. cyber-command, the database steward, fully into the U.S. military as a full combatant command. [SEE HERE]
There is little doubt the NSA database was used by Obama-era officials, from 2012 through April 2016, as a way to spy on their political opposition. Quite simply there is no other intellectually honest explanation for the scale and volume of database abuse that was taking place.
When we reconcile what was taking place and who was involved, then the actions of the exact same principal participants take on a jaw-dropping amount of clarity.
All of the action taken by CIA Director Brennan, FBI Director Comey, ODNI Clapper and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter make sense. Including their effort to get NSA Director Mike Rogers fired.
Russia-Gate, the Steele Dossier and even the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (drawn from the dossier and signed by the above) were needed to create a cover-story and protect themselves from discovery of this four-year weaponization, political surveillance and unlawful spying.
This is why President Obama was willing to push the Russiagate story with his activity in December of 2016 after the election. Obama wasn’t only dirtying up President Trump, Obama was using Russiagate as a cover for the spying that took place using the NSA database.
Even the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel makes sense; Mueller was FBI Director when the use of the NSA database surveillance began. Aaron Zebly was his chief-of-staff.
The beginning decision to use FISA (702) as a domestic surveillance and political spy mechanism appears to have started in/around 2012. Perhaps sometime shortly before the 2012 presidential election and before John Brennan left the White House and moved to CIA. However, there was an earlier version of data assembly that preceded this effort.
Political spying 1.0 was actually the weaponization of the IRS. This is where the term “Secret Research Project” originated as a description from the Obama team. It involved the U.S. Department of Justice under Eric Holder and the FBI under Robert Mueller. It never made sense why Eric Holder requested over 1 million tax records via CD ROM, until overlaying the timeline of the FISA abuse:
The IRS sent the FBI “21 disks constituting a 1.1-million-page database of information from 501(c)(4) tax exempt organizations to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The transaction occurred in October 2010 (link)
Why disks? Why send a stack of DISKS to the DOJ and FBI when there’s a pre-existing financial crimes unit within the IRS.
All of the evidence within this sketchy operation came directly to the surface in early spring 2012.
The IRS scandal was never really about the IRS; it was always about the DOJ asking the IRS for the database of information. That is why it was transparently a conflict when the same DOJ was tasked with investigating the DOJ/IRS scandal. Additionally, Obama sent his chief-of-staff Jack Lew to become Treasury Secretary; effectively placing an ally to oversee/cover-up any issues. As Treasury Secretary Lew did just that.
Lesson Learned – It would appear the Obama administration learned a lesson from attempting to gather a large opposition research database operation inside a functioning organization large enough to have some good people that might blow the whistle.
The timeline reflects a few months after realizing the “Secret Research Project” was now worthless (June 2012), they focused more deliberately on a smaller network within the intelligence apparatus and began weaponizing the FBI/NSA database. If my hunch is correct, that is what will be visible in footnote #69:
How this all comes together:
Fusion GPS was not hired in April 2016 simply to research Donald Trump. As shown in the evidence provided by the FISC, the Obama administration was already doing surveillance and spy operations. The Obama administration already knew everything about the Trump campaign and were monitoring everything by exploiting the FISA database.
However, after the NSA alerts in/around March 9th, 2016, and particularly after the April 18th shutdown of contractor access, the Obama FBI needed Fusion GPS to create a legal albeit ex post facto justification for the pre-existing surveillance and spy operations. Fusion GPS gave them that justification in the Steele Dossier.
That’s why the FBI small group, which later transitioned into the Mueller team, were so strongly committed to and defending the formation of the Steele Dossier and its dubious content. The Steele Dossier was a tool needed to get a FISA Title-1 warrant, that became the cover and justification for a pre-existing surveillance operation.
The Steele Dossier becomes the investigative virus the FBI wanted inside the system. To get the virus into official status, they used the FISA application as the delivery method and injected it into Carter Page.
The FBI already knew Carter Page; essentially Carter Page was irrelevant, what they needed was the FISA warrant and the Dossier in the system {Go Deep}.
Fusion GPS was hired by Hillary Clinton to research Trump; however, the Obama administration was already doing surveillance and spy operations, using FBI contractors. The FBI needed Fusion GPS to give them something, a plausible justification for already existing surveillance and spy operations.
Fusion-GPS gave them the justification they needed for a FISA warrant with the Steele Dossier. Ultimately that’s why the Steele Dossier was so important; without it, the Obama administration was naked with their NSA database abuse.
Investigating ‘Russiagate’, as dirty and unseemly as it was, takes you to a place where politics infected the DOJ/FBI and every participant carries plausible deniability. However, investigate the 2016 illegal surveillance of Donald Trump’s campaign via the NSA database and all of that activity can never be justified.
If you understand the distinction above, then you start to realize why John Solomon is focusing on Russiagate. Beware the person who picks up the flag at the front of the parade, for they are likely steering the crowd for a reason.
If DNI Tulsi Gabbard focuses on the known FBI surveillance of the GOP candidates in 2016, by focusing on how FBI contractors exploited access to the NSA database to conduct political opposition research, then suddenly the entire story takes on a simpler to understand context.
Declassify the Rosemary Collyer 99-page FISA report and outline the FBI contractors doing the surveillance.
Stop focusing so much attention on Russiagate, it’s the shiny thing fraught with plausible deniability. Focus instead on declassifying and releasing the real story of how the NSA database has been used to conduct political surveillance for over a decade.
Obama conducted full spectrum political surveillance and spying operations exploiting the NSA database from 2012 to 2016.
All republican candidates were under surveillance.
THAT is the BIG STORY that will shake up DC.
FOR CONTEXT:
♦ Heat Street (Louise Mensch) Dated November 7th 2016:
Two separate sources with links to the counter-intelligence community have confirmed to Heat Street that the FBI sought, and was granted, a FISA court warrant in October, giving counter-intelligence permission to examine the activities of ‘U.S. persons’ in Donald Trump’s campaign with ties to Russia. (link with multiple internal links)
♦ The New York Times (MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT, MATTHEW ROSENBERG, ADAM GOLDMAN and MATT APUZZO ) Dated January 19th 2017:
[…] The F.B.I. is leading the investigations, aided by the National Security Agency, the C.I.A. and the Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit. The investigators have accelerated their efforts in recent weeks but have found no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, the officials said. One official said intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House. (link)
♦ The New York Times (Charlie Savage) Dated January 12th 2017:
WASHINGTON — In its final days, the Obama administration has expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.
The new rules significantly relax longstanding limits on what the N.S.A. may do with the information gathered by its most powerful surveillance operations, which are largely unregulated by American wiretapping laws. These include collecting satellite transmissions, phone calls and emails that cross network switches abroad, and messages between people abroad that cross domestic network switches. (link)
♦ National Review (Andrew McCarthy) Dated January 11th 2017:
[…] To summarize, it appears there were no grounds for a criminal investigation of banking violations against Trump. Presumably based on the fact that the bank or banks at issue were Russian, the Justice Department and the FBI decided to continue investigating on national-security grounds. A FISA application in which Trump was “named” was rejected by the FISA court as overbroad, notwithstanding that the FISA court usually looks kindly on government surveillance requests.
A second, more narrow application, apparently not naming Trump, may have been granted five months later; the best the media can say about it, however, is that the server on which the application centers is “possibly” related to the Trump campaign’s “alleged” links to two Russian banks — under circumstances in which the FBI has previously found no “nefarious purpose” in some (undescribed) connection between Trump Tower and at least one Russian bank (whose connection to Putin’s regime is not described). (link with more links)
♦ The Guardian (Julian Borger) Dated Wednesday January 11th, 2017:
The Guardian has learned that the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court over the summer in order to monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials. The FISA court turned down the application asking FBI counter-intelligence investigators to narrow its focus. According to one report, the FBI was finally granted a warrant in October, but that has not been confirmed, and it is not clear whether any warrant led to a full investigation. (link)
♦ New York Times ( MATTHEW ROSENBERG, ADAM GOLDMAN and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT ) March 1st 2017:
WASHINGTON — In the Obama administration’s last days, some White House officials scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election — and about possible contacts between associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump and Russians — across the government. Former American officials say they had two aims: to ensure that such meddling isn’t duplicated in future American or European elections, and to leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators.
[…] More than a half-dozen current and former officials described various aspects of the effort to preserve and distribute the intelligence, and some said they were speaking to draw attention to the material and ensure proper investigation by Congress. All spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing classified information, nearly all of which remains secret, making an independent public assessment of the competing Obama and Trump administration claims impossible.
The F.B.I. is conducting a wide-ranging counterintelligence investigation into Russia’s meddling in the election, and is examining alleged links between Mr. Trump’s associates and the Russian government. Separately, the House and Senate intelligence committees are conducting their own investigations, though they must rely on information collected by the F.B.I. and intelligence agencies. (link)
