FBI management gets yet another F- from DOJ Inspector-General

5-4-20  A new IG report found 29 of 29 FISA applications, most under Wray's tenure, "contained significant flaws that violated the Bureau’s own rules designed to ensure the accuracy of evidence submitted to the courts."

https://www.wnd.com/2020/05/jim-jordan-fbi-chief-owes-explanation-agency-misconduct/

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3-31-20   ”We do not have confidence that the FBI has executed its Woods Procedures in compliance with FBI policy," the inspector general writes in a "management advisory memorandum" addressed to FBI Director Christopher Wray.

 

DOJ IG Michael Horowitz (shown) says the FBI could not locate that supporting documentation, known as a Woods File, in four of the 29 cases.  In three of those instances, the IG says, the FBI did not know whether the files ever existed.  In every case in which the FBI could locate the Woods File, the IG found significant problems with the documentation.

  "Our testing of FISA applications to the associated Woods Files identified apparent errors or inadequately supported facts in all of the 25 applications we reviewed," the inspector general says.  "At this time we have identified an average of about 20 issues per application reviewed, with a high of approximately 65 issues in one application and less than 5 issues in another application."

In those 25 applications with a Woods File, the review identified facts that were not supported or not corroborated by documentation in the file, or inconsistent with the supporting documentation.  The inspector general says he did not make a judgement as to whether the problems he identified were material, nor did he speculate about whether the potential errors would have affected the FBI's decision to apply for the wiretap or the court's decision to approve the surveillance.

  The pool of 29 applications come from eight FBI field offices and cover the timespan of 2014 to 2019.  The IG says they all relate to U.S. persons and involve both counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations.  The IG provides two recommendations for the FBI, including that the bureau do a full inventory to make sure every FISA application has a corresponding Woods File.  https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/824510255/justice-department-ig-finds-widespread-problems-with-fbis-fisa-applications
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5-3-2018  The Justice Department’s Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, will soon release a much-anticipated assessment of Democratic and Republican charges that officials at the FBI interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign.  That year-long probe, sources familiar with it tell TIME, is expected to come down particularly hard on former FBI director James Comey, who is currently on a high-profile book tour. It will likely find that Comey breached Justice Department protocols in a July 5, 2016, press conference when he criticized Hillary Clinton for using a private email server as Secretary of State even as he cleared her of any crimes, the sources say. The report is expected to also hit Comey for the way he reopened the Clinton email probe less than two weeks before the election, the sources say.

  The report closely follows an earlier one in April by Horowitz, which showed that the ousted deputy director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, had lied to the bureau’s internal investigations branch to cover up a leak he orchestrated about Clinton’s family foundation less than two weeks before the election. (The case has since been referred to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., for potential prosecution.) Another IG report in March found that FBI retaliation against internal whistle-blowers was continuing despite years of bureau pledges to fix the problem.  Last fall Horowitz found that the FBI wasn’t adequately investigating “high-risk” employees who failed polygraph tests.

  There have been other painful, more public failures as well: missed opportunities to prevent mass shootings that go beyond the much-publicized overlooked warnings in the Parkland, Fla., school killings; an anguishing delay in the sexual-molestation probe into Olympic gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar; and evidence of misconduct by agents in the aftermath of standoffs with armed militias in Nevada and Oregon. FBI agents are facing criminal charges ranging from obstruction to leaking classified material. And then there’s potentially the widest-reaching failure of all: the FBI’s miss of the Russian influence operation against the 2016 election, which went largely undetected for more than two years.

  In the course of two dozen interviews for this story, agents and others expressed concern that the tumult is threatening the cooperation of informants, local and state police officials, and allies overseas. Even those who lived through past crises say the current one is more damaging. “We’ve seen ups and downs, but I’ve never seen anything like this,” says Robert Anderson, a senior official at the FBI who retired in 2015.

  The FBI’s crisis of credibility appears to have seeped into the jury room.  The number of convictions in FBI-led investigations has declined in each of the last five years, dropping nearly 11% over that period, according to a TIME analysis of data obtained from the Justice Department by researchers at Syracuse University.  “We’ve already seen where the bad guys and witnesses look at those FBI credentials, and it might not carry the same weight anymore,” says O’Connor.     https://time.com/magazine/us/5264136/may-14th-2018-vol-191-no-18-u-s/