I’m reposting a prior research outline
below because something odd is happening in the background of this story. I’m
not sure what it is, but there are small -seemingly disconnected- issues
surfacing, that might tie back to this much bigger and purposefully avoided
story. I have learned to trust my instincts on this.
One – The FISA
reauthorization legislation was dropped by Nancy Pelosi and all media
conversation immediately vaporized. Two –
Crowdstrike is very concerned about this story every time it surfaces. Three – If
you understand the scale and scope of surveillance… does that explain the
behavior of some people today [legislative (politicians), judiciary (judges),
Pentagon (military)]
Are black files being used in 2020? With
the release of recent transcripts and
the declassification of material from
within the IG report on the Carter Page FISA, there is a common misconception
about how the intelligence apparatus began investigating the Trump campaign. In
this outline we hope to provide some deep source material that will explain the
origin, and specifically why the those inside the Intelligence Community began
using Confidential Human Sources.
During the time-frame of December 2015 through April 2016 the NSA
database was being exploited
by contractors within the intelligence community doing
unauthorized searches.
On March 9, 2016, oversight personnel
doing a review of FBI system access were alerted to thousands of unauthorized
search queries of specific U.S. persons within the NSA database.
NSA Director Mike Rogers was made aware. Subsequently NSA Director Rogers
initiated a full compliance review of the system to identify who was doing the
searches; & what searches were being conducted. On April 18, 2016, following the
preliminary audit results, Director Rogers shut down all FBI contractor access
to the database after he learned FISA-702 “about”(17) and “to/from”(16) search
queries were being done without authorization. Thus begins the first discovery
of a much bigger background story.
When you compile the timeline with the
people involved; and the specific wording of the resulting review, which was
then delivered to the FISA court; and overlay the activity that was taking
place in the GOP primary; what we discover is a process where the metadata
collected by the NSA was being searched for political opposition research and
surveillance.
Additionally, tens-of-thousands of
searches were identified by the FISA court as likely extending much further
than the compliance review period: “while the government reports it
is unable to provide a reliable estimate of the non compliant queries since 2012,
there is no apparent reason to believe the November 2015 [to] April 2016 period
coincided with an unusually high error rate”.
In short, during the Obama administration
the NSA database was continually used to conduct surveillance. This is the
critical point that leads to understanding the origin of “Spygate”, as it
unfolded in the Spring and Summer of 2016.
It was the discovery of the database
exploitation and the removal of access as a surveillance tool that created
their initial problem. Here’s how we can tell. GOP candidates and all needed to be
researched.
However, when Donald Trump won New
Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina the field was significantly whittled.
Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Kasich and Carson remained.
On Super Tuesday, March
2, 2016, Donald Trump won seven states (VT, AR, VA, GA, AL, TN, MA)
it was then clear that Trump was the GOP frontrunner with momentum to become
the presumptive nominee. On March
5th, Trump won Kentucky and Louisiana; and on March
8th Trump won Michigan, Mississippi and Hawaii.
The next day, March 9th, NSA security alerts warned
internal oversight personnel that something sketchy was going on. This timing is not coincidental. As FISA Judge Rosemary Collyer
later wrote in her report, “many
of these non-compliant queries involved the use of the same identifiers over different date ranges.”
Put another way: attributes belonging to a specific individual(s) were being
targeted and queried, unlawfully. Given what was later discovered, it seems
obvious the primary search target, over multiple
date ranges, was Donald Trump.
There were tens-of-thousands of unauthorized search queries; and as
Judge Collyer stated in her report, there is no reason to believe the 85% non compliant rate was
any different from the abuse of the NSA database going back to 2012.
As you will see below the NSA database was how political
surveillance was being conducted during Obama’s second term in office. However,
when the system was flagged, and when NSA Director Mike Rogers shut down
“contractor” access to the system, the system users needed to develop another
way to get access.
Mike Rogers shuts down access on April 18, 2016. On April 19, 2016,
Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson’s wife, Mary Jacoby visits the White House.
Immediately thereafter, the DNC and Clinton campaign contract Fusion GPS… who
then hire Christopher Steele.
Knowing it was federal “contractors”, outside government with
access to the system, doing the unauthorized searches, the question
becomes: who were the
contractors?
The possibilities are quite vast. Essentially anyone the FBI or intelligence
apparatus was using could have participated. Crowdstrike was a known FBI
contractor; they were also contracted
by the DNC. Shawn Henry was the former head of the FBI office in DC
and is now the head of Crowdstrike; a rather
dubious contractor for the government and a politically
connected data security and forensic company.
James Comey’s special friend Daniel Richman was an unpaid FBI
“special employee” with
security access to the database. Nellie Ohr began working for
Fusion-GPS on the Trump project in
November 2015 and she was a CIA
contractor; and it’s entirely likely Glenn Simpson or people within
his Fusion-GPS network were also contractors for the intelligence community.
Remember the Sharyl Attkisson computer intrusions? It’s all part of
this same network; Attkisson even names Shawn Henry as
a defendant in her ongoing lawsuit. All of the aforementioned names, and so many
more, held a political agenda in 2016.
It seems likely if the NSA flags were never triggered then the contracted
system users would have continued exploiting the NSA database for political
opposition research; which would then be funneled to the Clinton team. However,
once the unauthorized flags were triggered, the system users (including those
inside the official intelligence apparatus) needed to find another back-door to
continue… Again, the timing becomes transparent.
Immediately after NSA flags were raised March 9th; the same
intelligence agencies began using confidential human sources (CHS’s) to run
into the Trump campaign. By activating intelligence assets like Joseph
Mifsud and Stefan
Halper the IC (CIA, FBI) and system users had now created an
authorized way to continue the same political surveillance operations.
When Donald Trump hired Paul Manafort on March
28, 2016, it was a perfect scenario for those doing the
surveillance. Manafort was a known
entity to the FBI and was previously under investigation. Paul
Manafort’s entry into the Trump orbit was perfect for Glenn Simpson to sell his
prior research on Manafort as a Trump-Russia collusion script two weeks later.
The shift from “unauthorized exploitation of the NSA database” to
legally authorized exploitation of the NSA database was now in place. This was
how they continued the political surveillance. This is the confluence of events
that originated “spygate”, or what officially blossomed into the FBI investigation
known as “Crossfire Hurricane” on July 31.
If the NSA flags were never raised; and if Director Rogers had
never initiated the compliance audit; and if the political contractors were
never blocked from access to the database; they would never have needed to
create a legal back-door, a justification to retain the surveillance. The
political operatives/contractors would have just continued the targeted
metadata exploitation.
Once they created the surveillance door, Fusion-GPS was then needed
to get the FBI known commodity of Chris Steele activated as a pipeline. Into
that pipeline all system users pushed opposition research. However, one mistake
from the NSA database extraction during an “about” query shows up as a New
Yorker named Michael Cohen in Prague.
That misinterpreted data from a FISA-702 “about query” is then
piped to Steele and turns up inside the dossier; it was the wrong Michael
Cohen. It wasn’t Trump’s lawyer, it was an art dealer from New York City with
the same name; the same “identifier”.
A DEEP DIVE – How Did It Work? Start
by reviewing the established record from the 99-page
FISC opinion rendered by Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer on
April 26, 2017. Review the details within the FISC opinion.
I would strongly urge everyone to read the FISC
report (full pdf below) because Judge Collyer outlines how the
DOJ, which includes the FBI, had an “institutional lack of candor” in responses
to the FISA court. In essence, the Obama administration was continually lying
to the FISA court about their activity, and the rate of fourth amendment
violations for illegal searches and seizures of U.S. persons’ private
information for multiple years.
Unfortunately, due to intelligence terminology Judge Collyer’s
brief and ruling is not an easy read for anyone unfamiliar with the FISA
processes. That complexity also helps the media avoid discussing it; and as a
result most Americans have no idea the scale and scope of the Obama-era
surveillance issues. So, we’ll try to
break down the language. Documents
follow in this article at:
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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