Bob Woodward appraises DOJ inspector general uncovering FBI’s FISA ‘glorious mistake’

From one investigator to another, Bob Woodward told Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz he was impressed with his “amazing discovery” of the FBI’s missteps in its use of surveillance powers during the inquiry into ties between former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.

Although they hail from completely different spheres, the pair offered a window into how journalism can be quite similar to the work of an independent government watchdog during a virtual discussion hosted by Harvard Law School earlier this month.

Multiple times during the hourlong conversation, moderated by professor Jack Goldsmith, the two looked back at Horowitz’s high-profile review completed in December 2019 that criticized the FBI for relying on British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s dossier in obtaining Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants to monitor onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and became a road map for special counsel John Durham’s criminal inquiry into the Russia investigation.

After remarking on the “very aggressive” reporting that informed voters ahead of the 2020 election, Woodward opined that Horowitz’s own findings were similarly illuminating, particularly about Steele’s dossier, which he previously said contained “a lot of garbage in it.” He also said the inspector general’s work revealed weaknesses in how the media conducted themselves during the Russia controversy.

“Certainly, Michael, with the whole FISA, you know, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, exposed the Steele dossier, which was this dossier that turns out was funded in part by the Democrats that had all these allegations against Trump, and we could go through the way that was mishandled,” the Watergate sleuth said.

Calling it a “glorious mistake” for the FBI, Woodward added before offering a brief critique of his own profession’s controversial reporting on the Steele dossier: “And I would say for the media who absorbed a lot of that,” he noted.

“I mean, Michael, you found out that the Steele dossier was relied on by the FBI and the FISA court, and it shouldn’t have been,” Woodward said. “It was suspect. That’s an amazing discovery.”

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Horowitz also referenced his report on the FBI’s Russia investigation, which was later wrapped into Robert Mueller’s special counsel operation. It wasn’t all bad news for the bureau, as the inspector general determined its inquiry was opened with sufficient predication.

More than a year after the report’s release, Horowitz touted how his findings still hold up, boiling down a 600-page report into two major findings. The first, Horowitz said, was “that the FBI complied with its policies in opening the Crossfire Hurricane investigation in July 2016.”

The inspector general’s December 2019 report concluded that the FBI’s investigation was “opened for an authorized investigative purpose and with sufficient factual predication.” However, Durham and the attorney general who assigned him to review the Russia investigation, William Barr, said they disagreed with the determination that it was opened with proper justification.

In addition, Horowitz testified that he was unable to determine whether the FBI’s mistakes during the investigation were due to “gross negligence” or “intentional misconduct.”

Horowitz said the second key conclusion from his report was that “the FBI failed in numerous ways in its representations to the Justice Department and, derivatively, to the court, the FISA court, in seeking FISA applications for Carter Page.”

In particular, the watchdog’s report concluded the FBI’s investigation was filled with serious missteps and concealed exculpatory information from the FISA court, and Horowitz criticized the bureau for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” in its surveillance of Page and for its reliance on the now-discredited and Democratic-funded dossier compiled by Steele. The report added that FBI interviews with Steele’s main source “raised significant questions about the reliability of the Steele election reporting.”

“And those two findings, which have been scrutinized considerably, along with all of the subsidiary ones, have stood the test of time now for 13 months,” Horowitz said before saying the same for his reviews of Operation Fast and Furious and the FBI’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state.

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After Horowitz’s report was released, the FISA court issued a rare public order criticizing the FBI’s handling of the Page applications as “antithetical to the heightened duty of candor.”

The FISA court ordered a review of all FISA filings handled by FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty in Durham’s investigation last year to altering fraudulently a document to claim that Page was “not a source” for the CIA. Clinesmith, who has since left the bureau, was sentenced to probation in January.

The Justice Department told the FISA court last year that at least the final two of four Page FISA warrants were “not valid,” and the FBI was moving to “sequester” all of the information.

FBI Director Christopher Wray agreed there had been at least some illegal surveillance during congressional testimony last February. “I certainly think that it describes conduct that is utterly unacceptable,” Wray said of Horowitz’s report. “We have accepted … every finding in the inspector general’s report, including some that are extremely painful to us as an institution.”

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