The Russia Hoax involves the world of foreign intelligence collection and of counterintelligence. The agencies involved in this work gather information in various ways, but the use of confidential human sources remains, even in this day of sophisticated electronic data gathering, remains an essential part of that process. Essential, yet problematic. Evaluating the human motives of a CHS is always difficult at best, and even an evaluation of their reliability can be problematic. It's as complex as human nature and the human personality. Conclusions regarding a CHS can and should never be final, yet workers in the intel world are human, too. A source who lies in one situation may be truthful in another--nothing is simple. The dangers of being too trusting in a long term source who tells you what you want to hear, or of distrusting a source for various reasons--including being the bearer of bad news--are always factors to be borne in mind. Bureaucratic rules and guidelines, while necessary, will never be able to cover all situations and subjective considerations cannot be eliminated.
Here's what I'm leading up to. One aspect of the OIG report that Cleveland singles out is this:
Exempting Sources Like Steele from Routine Validation
A third important point gleaned from last week’s IG report on confidential human sources concerns the attorney general guidelines’ requirement that all long-term sources receive an enhanced validation every five years, except “those CHSs providing information for use in national security investigations or foreign intelligence collections.”
So, under the guidelines, while the FBI must seek and obtain the approval of the Human Source Review Committee (HSRC) every five years for most confidential sources, individuals, such as Steele, who feed the FBI unverified information from supposed foreign-intelligence collections are exempt. Not that a HSRC review would likely matter, in any event, since the HSRC must rely on the Annual Validation Reports and other relevant FBI documentation which, as the IG report revealed, intentionally omits negative information about CHSs.
Note that Cleveland rightly points out that the fact that the AG Guidelines do not require that a CHS used in "national security investigations or foreign intelligence collections" be subject to "an enhanced validation every five years" is, from one point of view, irrelevant. That point of view is the fact that OIG documented that the FBI "intentionally omits" documenting negative information about confidential human sources. (See the article for more on that.) Apart from other considerations, Cleveland again rightly cites OIG's concerns that the failure to document such negative information can adversely affect not only investigations but even, potentially, agent safety.
