A Justice Department watchdog investigation into the FBI’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act procedures, spurred on by serious flaws in the bureau’s pursuit of secret surveillance in its Trump-Russia investigation, found “significant” and “widespread” problems with how the FBI followed one of its important rules.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report said, “The FBI conducted an inventory of all Woods Files for each FISA application associated with dockets from January 2015 to March 2020.”
“Based on FBI documentation, we determined that out of the more than 7,000 FISA applications during that time, there were at least 183 instances (including the 4 that the Office of Inspector General previously identified) where the required Woods File was missing, destroyed, or incomplete at the time of the FBI’s inventory.”
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The DOJ watchdog called the missing Woods Files “a significant lapse in the FBI’s management of its FISA program.”
The “Woods Procedures” are intended to ensure that FISA applications are accurate and related to specific facts supporting probable cause, the existence and nature of any related criminal investigations or prosecutions involving the subject of the FISA application, and the existence and nature of any prior or ongoing asset relationship between the subject and the FBI.
The DOJ watchdog had released a management advisory memo in March 2020 indicating that its audit found “non-compliance” with Woods Procedures in the 29 FISA applications it reviewed, all of which had been approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court between 2015 and 2019. The DOJ soon notified the FISA court of 209 errors in those FISA applications, deeming four of the errors to be “material.”
Horowitz’s memo in March 2020 was a follow-up to his separate report in December 2019, in which the watchdog criticized the DOJ and the FBI for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to the FISA warrants for Trump campaign associate Carter Page and for the bureau’s reliance on British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s discredited dossier. Horowitz also criticized the bureau for not sharing potentially exculpatory information from confidential human sources with the FISA court.
The DOJ watchdog said the FBI’s Trump-Russia explanations were “unsatisfactory across the board” but was unable to determine whether the mistakes were “gross negligence” or “intentional misconduct.”
At least some of the Page FISAs were subsequently ruled “invalid” by the DOJ. FBI Director Christopher Wray agreed there had been illegal surveillance.
The inspector general said in the new 60-page report that “further audit work identified over 200 additional instances of Woods Procedures noncompliance — where Woods Files did not contain adequate supporting documentation for statements in the 29 applications — although the FBI and NSD subsequently confirmed the existence of available support elsewhere.”
The DOJ watchdog “also identified at least 183 FISA applications for which the required Woods File was missing or incomplete.”
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The report stated, “We observed that the Woods Files generally did not contain evidence of the thoroughness or completeness of this supervisory review.” Thus the report concluded that “the widespread Woods Procedures non-compliance that we identified in this audit raises serious questions about the adequacy and execution of the SSA review process in place at the time of the applications we reviewed.”
