Anybody wanna know what is involved in getting a FISA warrant granted ... or, alternatively:
What all would be involved in subverting the process to obtain one corruptly/illegally ?
Well, you're in luck ... here's a quick little primer by someone who's done it (the former, not the latter ... which is apparently nearly impossible):
Five Questions the Nunes Memo Better Answer
Yeah, I've read that article, and several like it, that go to great lengths to explain how it's darned near impossible to do something nefarious when dealing with a secret federal court in a non-adversarial manner that has virtually no accountability and even less transparency. <snort>
I've also read articles that point to things like, in 2013 the FBI and DOJ made 1,588 requests to the FISC for authority to conduct electronic surveillance, 100 percent of which were granted, and only 34 were modified by the court in some way before being granted, which points to the FISC being a rubber stamp.
People counter those with the reason the FISA court rejects so few requests is that the US Government is
just that good at their job, and would never approach a FISC judge without having all their ducks in a row, as it would be embarrassing to have an application rejected by the Court (oh, you don't want to be
that guy), plus the government's motives are and always have been right and just and pure as the driven snow.
Remember a few years ago when Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Mark Udall (D-Colo.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), and Al Franken (D-Min.) all called for the FISA court to please consider releasing portions of its opinions to the public by "writing summaries of its significant interpretations of the law in a manner that separates the classified facts of the application under review from the legal analysis, so as to enable declassification."?
The presiding judge of the FISA court denied the request, saying that they can't release even summaries of the court’s opinions to the public, because the legal analysis in most opinions is “inextricably intertwined” with classified information. So, oversight or not, you'll just have to trust us, I guess.
Over the last few months we've seen witnesses before the very Congressional committees who directly oversee the Intelligence and Justice departments rebuff, evade or outright refuse to answer questions put to then by the members of those committees regarding FISA process and applications.
I don't think the FISA Court is a rubber stamp, nor do I think it's virtually impossible to manipulate it for political purposes. I also don't think it requires a gajillion participants in a conspiracy, one of which must necessarily include a FISA judge, for there to be a conspiracy. History has shown us that all it takes is about half a dozen, and even that's too many to keep it from getting out.
On a related note, other than Comey's Clinton email lalapalooza, when was the last time you saw the FBI issue a statement of any kind regarding one of it's investigations? Never. But they're all up in it over this super sekrit memo, which is derived from information Congress got from the FBI, information which the FBI fought for months to keep from giving to the committee that overseas the FBI. If the information in the memo is a load of crap, the FBI can simply dismiss it as a load of crap. But instead they're crapping their pants over it, because they know it's not a load of crap. They're so desperate to keep the memo from being released that they sent five, count 'em, FIVE, high ranking FBI officials to the White House to try and convince the man who has sole plenary power to declassify and release whatever he wants, to not do that. Even one or two is pushing it, but sending five comes close to at least the appearance of trying to intimidate the President of the United States.
There are half a dozen or more high ranking individuals at the DOJ and FBI who have been fired, reassigned, demoted or quit since it got out that the FBI began a counterintelligence investigation into a presidential candidate in June of 2016. That's an extraordinarily high number under any circumstances. That's enough smoke that it certainly should be looked at.
But, hey, I'm just flappin' my fingerlips. I believe everything the government tells me.
