Tilting At The FISA Windmill

H/T Jim.

What Is America’s Spy Court Hiding From the Public?

That's what David D. Cole, Jameel Jaffer and Theodore B. Olson want to know, and that's why they wrote the linked Op-Ed piece in the NYT. Well, they also wrote the piece so the rest of us would know they're asking that question, via a petition to the SCOTUS.

In case you're not familiar with these three legal musketeers, they're actually fairly prominent in the legal world:

Mr. Cole is the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. Mr. Jaffer is the executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and was a deputy legal director at the A.C.L.U. Mr. Olson was a solicitor general under President George W. Bush and is a member of the Knight Institute’s board.

What they're doing in their quixotic attempt to get to the bottom of exactly what the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) is up to is this:

The Halper Memos

Yesterday John Solomon made available the recently declassified asset (Confidential Human Source, or CHS) reports regarding the use of Stefan Halper ("Mitch") in the Crossfire Hurricane (CH) investigation--mostly as it pertained to the Carter Page FISA. Thanks to the actions of disgraced former AG Bluto Barr, this material is essentially only of historical interest at this point. Nevertheless, it may be of interest to readers here for the insights that it offers into how FBI counterintelligence (CI) investigations are run. I say that, knowing that CH is an example of the abuse of the FBI's CI authorities--because what we see in this paperwork is the attempt to make CH *look* normal, even as the investigative guidelines were honored in their breach.

First of all, here's the link to the John Solomon article:

Once-secret FBI informant reports reveal wider-ranging operation to spy on Trump campaign

Goal was to find "anyone" inside GOP campaign tied to Russia who could be get dirt "damaging" to Clinton, newly declassified memos reveal.

Before I go through the actual Halper memos, I'll simply state the big picture that emerges from them. What becomes very apparent is that the background to this series of memos--which begin in mid-August, 2016, shortly after CH was opened--is the Steele dossier. Even though there is discussion of George Papadopoulos as a target--after all, we're supposed to believe that his conversation with Aussie "diplomat" Alexander Downer is what got CH started--the real interest, beyond any doubt, is Carter Page. And that means the Steele dossier, with it's farcical allegations.

Unbelievable

My very bad--I somehow missed this terrific article by John Solomon back on February 5th. While I admit that my interest in the Russia Hoax has flagged due to, well, Barr and Durham, I do follow Solomon. This somehow eluded me, and it offers a picture of just about unbelievable corruption:

FBI's desperate pretext to keep spying on Carter Page: He might write a book!

Newly declassified FISA application shows FBI, without proof, portrayed First Amendment-protected activities as Russian plot.

Solomon is not making that up. Here is the passage from p. 57 of the third renewal FISA against Page in which that pretext is presented to the court:

"The FBI also notes that Page continues to be active in meeting with media outlets to promote his theories of how U.S. foreign policy should be adjusted with regard to Russia and also to refute claims of his involvement with Russian government efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election. [REDACTED - SENSITIVE INFORMATION] The FBI believes that Page may have been instructed by Russian officials to aggressively deny, especially in the media, any Russian involvement with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The FBI believes this approach is important because, from the Russian government's point of view, it continues to keep the controversy of the election in front of the American and world medium, which has the effect of undermining the integrity of the US electoral process and weakening the effectiveness of the current US administration. The FBI believes Page also may be seeking media attention in order to maintain momentum for potential book contracts."

Where to begin? Let's start with the redaction. Solomon points out that in the copy of the FISA application that was given to the Senate Judiciary Committee just last fall--meaning, it was provided by Trump's FBI Director, Chris Wray--the portion about "the FBI's unsubstantiated theory that Russia had instructed Page to [write a book and do media interviews] was [also] blacked out." On what basis would idle, unsupported speculation have been redacted? It makes you wonder about the "sensitive information" that remains redacted.

America's National Surveillance State

Today at American Greatness there's a book review that I highly recommend. It follows on nicely from yesterdays brief post about Big Business as Big Brother, especially in light of what is clearly an alliance between Big Tech and the Deep State intelligence community.

The review, Deep State, Dark Intentions, is of a book by Barton Gellman about the pervasive surveillance state that America has become: Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State.

Gellman was one of the journalists to whom Snowden leaked the NSA files that revealed the full scope of the post 9/11 surveillance state put in place by our Deep State. While the blurb at Amazon describes the book--in the first instance--as "a gripping inside narrative of investigative reporting as it happened", the review spares us that part and instead focuses on the second aspect of the book that will be of most interest: the "deep dive into the machinery of the surveillance state."

As the reviewer, Lucja Cannon, notes, most Americans will be unfamiliar with the history of surveillance in the United States. I suspect that most Americans are under the impression that, until FISA was enacted in 1978, Americans were somehow protected from government surveillance by the 4th Amendment's warrant requirement. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Before FISA there were no legal restraints on government surveillance in the national security sphere. Let me repeat that: there were no legal restraints on national security surveillance. The real restraints were technological. And to this day there are no definitive SCOTUS cases on these issues--the existing precedents basically affirm the pre-FISA state of affairs. 

This places FISA on somewhat shaky grounds from a constitutional standpoint. However, nobody has been really interested in challenging the constitutionality of FISA. From the government's practical perspective, FISA allowed the government to get what it needed done, with the added benefit of a legislative imprimatur on its surveillance activities. From the civil liberties standpoint, FISA offered a "warrant" requirement--albeit an anomalous one--and, from a practical standpoint FISA cases weren't going to end up in actual trials. The result was a sort of standoff, but one which was ripe for government abuse--as I've pointed out in citing Robert Bork's views on FISA, expressed at the time of its passage. Bork's view was that, by making national security surveillance an essentially administrative matter--despite all the external trappings of a "FISA court" and "applications" and "warrants"--the result would be that nobody would really be accountable in the sense of facing criminal accountability. I think that's what we're seeing now in the wake of the Russia Hoax. Bork's view appears to have been vindicated.

Briefly: FISA As Deep State Joke; Housekeeping

I'm embedding this excellent and important Maria Bartiromo interview from yesterday. Featured are Devin Nunes and Kash Patel--former federal prosecutor and defender, investigator for Nunes on the HPSCI, NSC official, and most recently a top official at DoD. 

The interview begins with the Clinesmith wrist-slap-a-doodle last Friday. For anyone who was less than appalled by Shipwreckedcrew's ill-informed and frankly absurd gaslighting of that travesty of justice, please listen to this interview. I've made my views known in comments: SWC either doesn't understand or misrepresents the nature of extensions of FISA warrants. Since these extensions authorize the collection of new data 'going forward' they are essentially new warrants--which is why each application for an extension must stand on its own and cannot merely reference the 'original' application. Any mistakes or omissions in the 'original' must be corrected and all new information made known to the FISC. To suggest, as SWC does, that Clinesmith's forgery only affected the final 'extension' but not the 'original' misconceives the nature of the whole process. It also ignores what I've stressed--the nature of Carter Page's probably 10 year long cooperation as an intelligence asset of the US government (both CIA and FBI) was known by all relevant FBI personnel before the 'original' FISA application was submitted. It was not fully disclosed and, in fact, the extent and nature of Page's cooperation was deliberately misrepresented--that was a lie to the FISC.

Now, however, we learn that the FISC--under the direction of John Robert's Obama-judge appointee--is openly in bed with the Russia Hoaxers and the Uniparty Resistance. That's the obvious takeaway from this interview, which gives a frankly dismaying picture of the demise of constitutional order in the United States. Listen and consider what's being said. That FISA has turned out to be a sick Deep State joke perpetrated on the American people and their republic is perhaps the least of what's now known.

One interesting omission from the discussion is the true role played by Bluto Barr and John Durham. It's possible that Maria held back because she's angling to maybe entice Barr to appear on her show. I doubt he'll do it. On that score, I've seen sundance's argument that Barr was an agent of a vast coverup from the beginning. I personally doubt that and believe that he simply blinked when push came to shove. I base that on Barr's public statements going back some years--including before his memo to Rosenstein. It's enough for me to understand that Barr betrayed his own oath of office, and then had the gall to accuse Trump of that offense--on the flimsiest of pretexts. Here's the interview:

The Carter Page Lawsuit--Clarification And Speculation

I spent part of today reading the complaint in the Carter Page lawsuit, which I discussed in passing yesterday (Paul Sperry: Whither John Durham?). Overall, as I expected, the complaint is a fine piece of legal writing. However, I want to discuss some important points regarding FISA--which, of course, is the heart of the lawsuit. I'm spending some time on this because I'm more optimistic that Page's suit will be successful than I am that Durham will forge ahead with additional important criminal prosecutions after the Clinesmith sentencing on Friday.

While the complaint is, as I said, well written and presents the case clearly, even to readers not familiar with FISA's technical legal requirements, it's not perfect, from my standpoit. What I'll do is draw attention to a certain laxness in paragraph 8 of the complaint. I'll then explain why the matters discussed in that paragraph have always fascinated me and raised suspicions that I think are significant. Unfortunately, I've seen no evidence that those suspicions have attracted any investigative attention.

So, paragraph 8 of the complaint is key to the whole lawsuit--it sets out the legal requirements for obtaining a FISA surveillance warrant:

8. In accordance with core principles of the U.S. Constitution, reinforced by the nation’s legal and cultural aversion to spying on its citizens, Congress and the executive branch have enacted rigorous requirements that must be met before electronic surveillance of a U.S. citizen is legally permitted. To surveil an American citizen, the FISA requires that there be probable cause that the target is an “agent of a foreign power” who is “knowingly engag[ing]…in clandestine intelligence activities.” In short, to legitimately obtain a FISA warrant against Dr. Page, the FBI had to demonstrate that he was a Russian agent who was knowingly engaging in intelligence activities on behalf of Russia.

Here's the 'laxness' that I object to in this paragraph. The requirements for obtaining a FISA warrant are incompletely stated in the first bolded portion.

Paul Sperry: Whither John Durham?

Paul Sperry today has a very thorough review of where the John Durham investigation stands and where it may be headed. The article naturally focuses on Kevin Clinesmith, the disgraced former FBI lawyer who has pled guilty to making false statements to the FISA court (FISC) with regard to the final application for FISA coverage of Carter Page. Clinesmith is due to be sentenced later this week:

New Evidence Implicates FBI Higher-Ups in Dishonesty of Anti-Trump Lawyer

Sperry begins by noting that "defenders of the FBI" [sic] claim that Clinesmith's false statement--he altered a CIA document that was submitted to the FISC, causing the document to say the opposite of what it originally said--was a "lapse of judgment" or some such thing. Clinesmith himself has maintained that he never intended to mislead anyone. He'd also like to offer you a deal on a famous bridge in New York. 

However, says Sperry, there is new information that may portend a reinvigorated Durham investigation:

Briefly Noted: About The Lindsey Docs

 What's to say?

Makes you think whether Lindsey dropped these largely useless docs as a decoy while he tries to persuade Trump not to declassify the juicy ones. https://t.co/QalRRqU8jM

— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) January 16, 2021

This just isn't serious. For example:

If it is not there then 1) it was never created, or 2) it was removed.

— shipwreckedcrew (@shipwreckedcrew) January 16, 2021

Hoax narratives, hoax investigations--the only thing real is the coverup. The samples I've seen go on and on in the same vein. Relevant questions not asked, no challenges of patent obfuscation. The witnesses were clearly not afraid to mislead or even lie to the Senate. Bear in mind, many of these witnesses were not powerful people or people with powerful friends. In the DC scheme of things they were basically the little people who had done what they were told to do. They're protecting people above them.

Whither Durham's Russia Hoax Investigation?

Yesterday we heard that John Durham's Russia Hoax investigation is:

making "excellent progress"

adding prosecutors to his team.

moving "full speed ahead"

"remains full steam ahead,”

“is definitely still happening,”

Does that explain why Stefan Halper and FBI Agent Stephen Somma are as hard to find as, well, Joseph Mifsud?

That would appear to be the subtext of an excellent article at Fox:

Who's hiding 'Russiagate' informant Stephen Halper, and why?

Questions raised over what became of the subpoena -- and no-show -- of FBI informant Stefan Halper and his handler, Stephen Somma

Halper, of course, is the highly paid, corpulent, CIA/FBI crack(head) operative who was at Ground Zero for all things related to Michael Flynn and Donald Trump--including the setup of Carter Page. Stephen Somma is the New York agent who was both the case agent for the CI investigation of Page as well as the handler for Halper. 

Briefly: Carter Page Sues All The Bad FBI Boys And Girls

I'll give a link to FR (wink, wink), and you can go from there to Twitchy if you want:

BAM! Carter Page files $75 million lawsuit against James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, and others

Page is being represented by Leslie McAdoo Gordon, with whom you'll be familiar. Perhaps as significant as this announcement is this:

Yep.

One of two big projects I'm working on. Second one drops in January. https://t.co/UVX0Lx1W24

— Leslie McAdoo Gordon (@McAdooGordon) November 27, 2020

For details on the lawsuit, consult Margot Cleveland.

Or Maybe THIS Is What Lindsey Was Talking About?

Lindsey Graham's office today released an unclassified summary of an FBI Counterintelligence investigation of an individual who was believed to be cooperating with the Russian intelligence services--a Russian 'asset'. It's the kinda stuff that's hard to make up. The Counterintelligence investigation was of Igor Danchenko--Christopher Steele's so-called 'Primary Sub-source (PSS).' The investigation began in 2009 as a Preliminary Investigation, but was upgraded to a Full Investigation. The investigation was closed in 2011. 

When the FBI learned in December, 2016, that Danchenko was Steele's PSS they searched their records and learned about the investigation. In other words, they knew all this when they interviewed Danchenko in late January, 2017, regarding his role in providing material to Steele for the 'dossier.' Danchenko was not questioned about his relationship with the Russian intelligence services at that time, and the FBI continued to claim that Danchenko's 'dossier' material was reliable as they sought three renewals of the Carter Page FISA. They apparently saw no reason to inform the FISA court that the probable cause for Carter Page FISA was heavily based on material provided by a person they suspected of being a Russian spy.

Interestingly, the FBI sought a FISA on Danchenko in the second half of 2010. However, before the FISA could be processed Danchenko left the country. Here's how the investigation was left:

Because the Primary Sub-source had apparently left the United States, the FBI withdrew the FISA application request and closed the investigation. The record documenting the closing of the investigation stated that consideration would be given to re-opening the investigation in the event that the Primary Sub-source returned to the United States. 

In other words, as of the last time the FBI was involved with Danchenko before they interviewed him in January, 2017, they believed they had probable cause to believe that Danchenko was an agent of the Russian government--a spy. Apparently the FBI lost track of Danchenko, who later reentered the US. 

The details of the investigation itself aren't terribly important--read them for yourselves. From my perspective Danchenko comes across as rather clumsy and probably not terribly stable--which fits in with what we've heard about him to this point.

The real point is that the FBI knew all this about Danchenko and their own past concerns that he was a Russian spy. They knew this by December, 2016, and knowing this they failed to inform the FISA court and probably also withheld this information from DoJ as well. They should have terminated the Carter Page FISA at that point. Instead, they fraudulently renewed the FISA three times.

I have to say, I'm flabbergasted. 

On the other hand, this certainly looks more and more like Durham has a legitimate shot at proving a big picture conspiracy--a conspiracy on the part of FBI management to defraud the government of the FBI's honest services in furtherance of the attempted political goal of ousting the President of the United States from the office of the presidency on false pretenses through the means of criminal false statements to the FISA court. And they did all this while utilizing material provided by a suspected Russian spy which was known to be unreliable, but which they presented to the court as highly reliable.

Productive Slow News Day

Today was naturally a slow news day. I don't count FISC Chief Judge Boasberg reporting that the FBI is still engaging in  "widespread violations of the querying standard" for 702 surveillance as news. News would be if something had been done about the violations. You can read about it at the link but, if nothing is going to happen, this really only serves as a sort of reminder that some things never change:

National security surveillance court finds FBI regularly does not follow rules

The largely secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court identified 'widespread violations' concerning improper searches for information on American citizens

Nevertheless, this was a productive day for me. Not having anything to write about, I decided to back up my system and install an updated OS. Which I did. I like to think that my time was put to better use than Judge Boasberg's.

What's Up With The Carter Page Woods File?

A few days ago, September 1st to be exact, Sara Carter broke a story about the Woods file re the Carter Page FISA going missing, and having to be recreated by Team Mueller. Or something like that:

Carter Page’s FISA Related ‘Woods File’ Docs Disappeared, Was It ‘Malice Or Incompetence’

Unfortunately, from Carter's account it's difficult to be sure exactly what the story is. Here's how Carter explains it:

The original Woods file on former campaign advisor Carter Page went missing more than two years ago, and according to sources who spoke to SaraACarter.com, those documents had to be recreated by the FBI and former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team in 2018 from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Application used by the bureau to obtain the warrant on Page.

In other words, Carter is saying that the entire Woods file went missing and had to be recreated. The way that would work would be like reverse engineering: You look at the actual FISA application, figure out what statements needed to be supported with a reference to a case document, and include that document.

Joe Pientka To The Senate

As a witness, apparently. TGP is full of speculation about former Peter Strzok sidekick Joe Pientka and his wife, Melissa Pientka. I like a good conspiracy theory as much as the next person, but I believe there are simpler explanations. The original twitter thread by Catherine Herridge is sober enough, however.

My assumption from Herridge's account is that Pientka is cooperating with the Senate investigators voluntarily--unlike former head of FBI counterintelligence, Bill Priestap, who will only appear if subpoenaed. My takeaway from this is that it almost certainly means that Pientka has already cooperated fully with both IG Horowitz's FISA related investigation as well as with John Durham's more wide ranging investigation. Signs have, IMO, always pointed in that direction--it has long been apparent that Pientka disagreed with the framing of Flynn and, in the wake of that "awakening," may have realized the full scope of the Russia Hoax.

Thus, I assume that Pientka's period of cooperation with the Durham investigation is now complete and Pientka has been made available to the two Senate committees. More to the point, this almost certainly also means that Durham believes he has no further need to keep Pientka's cooperation confidential--Pientka's cooperation has already been put to whatever use it could have for investigative purposes. And that's another sign that an important phase of Durham's investigation--the pre-inauguration phase--is drawing to a close. A fact that disgraced former FBI Director James Comey is, no doubt, painfully aware of.

Herridge (edited only to form a continuous narrative):

Clinesmith Is Lying About Lying

That's the contention of Andy McCarthy's latest:

Clinesmith’s Guilty Plea: The Perfect Snapshot of Crossfire Hurricane Duplicity

McCarthy contends that, while Clinesmith's guilty plea allocution may have been legally sufficient, it was just barely so. McCarthy's expressed hope is that DoJ will have much more to say about that when it comes time for sentencing. In McCarthy's view it was only a "sort of" guilty plea.

In “admitting” guilt, Clinesmith ended up taking the position that I hoped the judge, and especially the Justice Department, would not abide ... 

... in my view, Clinesmith is lying about lying. His strategy is worth close study because it encapsulates the mendaciousness and malevolence of both “Crossfire Hurricane” (the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation) and the “collusion” never-enders who continue to defend it. A defendant’s lying about lying does not necessarily make a false-statement guilty plea infirm as a matter of law. The bar is not high. Still, his story is ridiculous, in a way that is easy to grasp once it’s placed in context.

And so McCarthy proceeds to provide the context in masterful fashion. I highly recommend the article.

For our purposes, I want to point out just a few things.

First, McCarthy makes this very important point:

Clinesmith’s Motives Mirror His Superiors’ Motives

Stephen Somma Again

Commenter Bebe drew my attention to Margot Cleveland's excellent article today (I was at the dentist):

FBI Lawyer’s Guilty Plea Suggests Spygate Corruption Goes Way Higher 

FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith’s guilty plea suggests another area ripe for inquiry: FBI Agent Stephen Somma’s misrepresentation of Trump campaign details to a secret federal court.

Cleveland's article largely focuses on the Horowitz FISA report and, specifically, the role of Case Agent 1--Stephen Somma--in persuading DoJ Office of Intelligence attorney Stu Evans that Carter Page's past cooperation with the CIA wasn't relevant to the FISA application targeting Page. Stu Evans, not entirely coincidentally, was a thorn in the side of Peter Strzok and the Crossfire Hurricane (CH) Team in their quest for a FISA on Page, but Evans is now reported to be cooperating extensively with John Durham.

I won't repeat the details that Cleveland provides, but I do want to suggest a line of inquiry that Durham may be looking into--or, more likely, looked into long ago.

The FISA Double Standard

I refer, of course, to Chuck Ross' fine article, FBI Agents Pushed For A FISA To Investigate Foreign Government Targeting Hillary Clinton. Ross is working off Lindsey Graham's recent revelation of internal FBI debates that concerned a FISA in an investigation that would have targeted an agent of a foreign government that was seeking to influence the 2016 election. That foreign government was reported--as early as early 2015--to be targeting the Hillary campaign even before its formal announcement.

It's impossible to be certain of the identities of the agent or the foreign government. However, Senator Graham maintains that this incident illustrates that the FBI had a double standard for seeking FISAs in the context of the 2016 electin: one standard when the FISA might impact Hillary, and a very different standard when the FISA was pretty much guaranteed to impact Trump--since the so-called 'probable cause' in the case of the Carter Page FISA was known by the FBI to have originated from the Hillary campaign. In such circumstances, the Page FISA and its rationale as regards the Trump campaign was bound to be leaked--as indeed it was.

There are some key differences in the two situations that we should be clear about. Most importantly, the agent of the foreign government targeting the Hillary campaign was not a US Person. Here's the key sentence from one of the internal FBI docs. I'll break the sentence up into bullet points:

The Clinesmith Plea Deal In Light Of The James Wolfe Plea Deal

Since sundance "outed" John Durham's lead investigator he has doubled down on his Grand Conspiracy involving the James Wolfe leak case. That case involved the claim (almost certainly true) that Wolfe--a longtime staffer for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI)--leaked a copy of the Carter Page FISA application to his journalist paramour, Ali Watkin. So, in addition to the criminal issues, all sorts of constitutional issues were involved--including Separation of Powers as between the Executive and Legislative branches and Press freedom under the First Amendment.

Wolfe ultimately pled guilty to lying to the FBI leak investigators but, because the FBI was unable to recover the actual transmissions by which Wolfe allegedly sent text pix of the FISA to Watkins, he was not charged with offenses relating to the actual leak.

HOWEVER, when it came time for Wolfe to be sentenced, DoJ argued for an 'enhancement' to Wolfe's sentence. In other words, they argued that Wolfe should get a stiffer sentence than a first time offender would be expected to receive under the sentencing guidelines for the False Statement statute (18 USC 1001). That DOJ argument for enhancement was supported by an affidavit from FBI SSA Brian Dugan (no, not the serial killer of the same name). In the affidavit Dugan argued that the preponderance of the evidence supported the contention that Wolfe had, in fact, leaked the FISA and that his false statements to investigators should be viewed in that light--as more serious than the bare false statement charge might indicate.

Paraphrasing and expanding a Shipwreckedcrew tweet, I explained how all that worked. The key to understanding this is the distinction between the burden of proof at a trial--proof beyond a reasonable doubt--and the burden of proof for sentencing purposes, which is the much lower standard of the preponderance of the evidence. Thus, while DoJ had not believed that they could prove the leak at a trial beyond a reasonable doubt, they were quite prepared to argue at sentencing that Wolfe should nevertheless receive a stiffer or 'enhanced' sentence based on the understanding that he had, in fact, leaked the FISA:

Clinesmith Plea Hearing Wednesday

Hat tip, commenter JHUM:

Techno Fog
@Techno_Fog

The Kevin Clinesmith plea agreement is now set for August 19.

It will be before Judge James Boasberg - who happens to be the presiding judge over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

9:28 AM · Aug 17, 2020

I assume the liberal Boasberg will nevertheless take a dim view of people who submit forgeries to the FISC. Here are two rulings he has issued this year at the FISC. They're not fire breathing demands for reform, but ...

UPDATED: What's Up With That Clinesmith Guilty Plea?

Earlier I quoted Kevin Clinesmith's lawyer from an article by Adam Mill. According to that version the lawyer, Justin Shur, made the following statement:

Clinesmith’s lawyer, Justin Shur, contends his client “did not try to hide the C.I.A. email from other law enforcement officials as they sought the final renewal of the Page wiretap. Mr. Clinesmith had provided the unchanged C.I.A. email to Crossfire Hurricane agents and the Justice Department lawyer drafting the original wiretap application.”

Based on that I assumed that Clinesmith was trying to "share the blame". In other words, he was saying, in effect: "Hey, I changed the CIA email to mean the exact opposite of what it said, but the other agents and lawyers knew it. I'm not the only one to blame."

Now, however, I'm seeing accounts that are quite different, like this one from ABC: