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Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Lindsey Graham Seeking To Declass 40 Page FBI Memo

Yesterday Sen. Graham did a 44 minute interview with Trey Gowdy. Among other topics of interest, Graham mentioned that he has finally been able to review a classified FBI memo--40 pages long--that was referenced by IG Horowitz in his FISA report. Graham states that he is working to get that memo declassified.

The memo in question documents the three day debriefing of Christopher Steele's supposed "subsource." The relevant portion of the interview can be found between the 9:50 and 11:15 minute marks. Here is my transcription of that portion:

... I believe that the FBI was on notice that it [the Steele dossier] was unreliable, continued to use it anyway. I believe that they misled the FISA court, and here's the key question. 
On January 21st through the 24th the Russian subsource, the guy who provided ALL the material for the dossier, is interviewed by the FBI for three days. He's interviewed again in March. There's a memo about that interview. Horowitz found it. It was 40 pages. My staff has finally got to look at it--it's classified. I'm gonna try to get it UNclassified. The Horowitz Report suggests that the result of the Russian subsource interview put great doubt into the reliability of the dossier in terms of being able to get a warrant.  
Here's the question. Is it possible that an interview of that magnitude--that basically shredded the key document to get a warrant--that the people at the top, McCabe and Comey, were never told, 'Oh, by the way, our entire case has collapsed.' I'm looking at that.

I believe I can answer that question: No. That's not possible.

Chuck Ross at the Daily Caller comments:

The Justice Department’s office of the inspector general revealed in a report released Dec. 9 that the source, who has not been identified, disputed many of Steele’s allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The source told the FBI that Steele misrepresented or embellished the claims by passing off rumor as fact in the 35 page dossier. The inspector general’s report revealed that the FBI failed to disclose the information in two applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) orders against Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide. 
The FBI relied heavily on Steele’s information in applications for the FISAs. The Justice Department deemed two of the four FISA orders against Page to be invalid because of omissions about Steele’s source.

If Graham is stating openly that he's seeking to declassify this memo, I assume he's coordinating those efforts with the Trump administration's ultimate Declassification authority: AG Bill Barr. The existence of this memo is not news to Barr, Durham, or Graham, so the suspicion must be that Barr has decided that the time for declassification is near.

8 comments:

  1. I agree--Graham first being able to review this document at this time suggests to me that it is a first step towards declassification. Let's hope that process goes quickly.

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  2. If declassified, it will be interesting to see why this memo was classified at all when redactions could have been made. Documents previously released from the FBI that had been classified seemed to have been classified only to hide embarrassment to the agency. Release of this memo could cause more than embarrassment.

    DJL

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  3. In October 2016, the FBI hired Christopher Steele as a paid informant (if that's the correct word). I think that a condition of the hire was that Steele identify his own sources somewhat to the FBI.

    At the end of October, however, Michael Gaeta fired Steele -- mostly because Steele was informing journalists. (Gaeta's testimony indicates that Gaeta himself was authorized to fire Steele.)

    I wonder if the FBI subsequently hired -- or at least paid -- the subsource when the FBI interviewed him. It seems to me that the FBI's paying relationship to the subsource might be an obstacle to declassifying the 40-page memo.

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    1. M.S. wrote:

      >> It seems to me that the FBI's paying relationship to the subsource might be an obstacle to declassifying the 40-page memo. <<

      It shouldn't matter whether he's on or off the FBI payroll -- classification is (supposed to be) based on one thing only: potential damage to US national security if the information were disclosed. His employment status vis-a-vis FBI can be redacted while declassify the balance of the interview document.

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    2. But as has been proven way too often over the past 3.5 years classification is really a tool to prevent discovery of governmental malfeasance. Almost certain this memo is classified solely to prevent exposure of FBI malfeasance.

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    3. >> But as has been proven way too often over the past 3.5 years classification is really a tool to prevent discovery of governmental malfeasance. Almost certain this memo is classified solely to prevent exposure of FBI malfeasance. <<

      No disagreement that classification has been abused to protect the guilty from embarrassment; my point simply is FBI source status is orthogonal to the issue of risk to National Security -- as I said, they can redact the info about the source's FBI status, and declassify what he had to say about the accuracy of the Steele Dossier veracity. IOW, it's not a valid reason to keep the 40 page memo classified.

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    4. classification is (supposed to be) based on one thing only: potential damage to US national security if the information were disclosed.

      Classification is based also on potential damage if the sources and methods (not merely the information) were disclosed.

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    5. Those are potential threats to US National security -- there is no separate category for "sources and methods."

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