Russia Hoax Origins: Carter Page Flashback 2

Again, this is a republication of a post from early March, 2020, that first appeared at my original blog. It follows on from the review program I described at the end of The Danchenko Interview: Why An EC And Not A 302?

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A Closer Look At The FBI's Carter Page Investigation (Part 2)

Let's continue with our "Closer Look" at the FBI's investigation of Carter Page, as explained in the Horowitz FISA report.  Part I of our "Closer Look" dealt with the origins of the investigation in the FBI's New York Field Office's (NYFO) dealings with Carter Page--which stretch back to 2009--and stopped at the point that the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was opened (July 31, 2016) and a separate sub-investigation was opened on Page. Here we will look at Horowitz's account of FBI investigative activity with regard to Page prior to the FBI's supposed first knowledge of the Steele "dossier" on September 19, 2016.

Once again I've pasted in several pages from the OIG report--the full section, with footnotes. The page numbering is included as before: (paper doc page number/pdf file page number). My comments are in "quote" format.

(77/110)

IV. Investigative Steps in Crossfire Hurricane Prior to Receipt of Christopher Steele Reporting on September 19

According to FBI officials, the early investigative steps taken in Crossfire Hurricane were structured to maintain a close-hold on the investigation and avoid any impact on the 2016 U.S. elections. FBI officials told us that no steps were (78/111) taken to investigate anyone associated with the Trump campaign prior to the opening of Crossfire Hurricane on July 31. [195] Department officials including Rosenstein, Evans, Laufman, and Gauhar said they did not learn anything at any time suggesting otherwise. We reviewed emails of senior CD officials from the 2 months prior to the opening of Crossfire Hurricane and did not find any communications suggesting any investigative actions relating to Trump campaign personnel were taken prior to July 31, 2016, with the exception of the pre-existing Page and Manafort cases discussed previously.

Curiously, there is no reference to a pre-existing Flynn investigation, although it's well documented that Flynn was being targeted by the USIC.

[Trisha] Anderson [Deputy General Counsel to General Counsel James Baker] told us that the investigation began on July 31 with covert investigative techniques to be "very quiet" prior to the election. We were told that the team's concern was that if the information about the investigation became public, it would disrupt the investigative efforts and could potentially impact the 2016 U.S. elections. Anderson also told us that counterintelligence investigations are typically "conducted in the dark" because any public confirmation of the existence of the investigation "might alert the hostile foreign power ... that we were onto them." She also said that early on in the investigation, FBI managers overseeing the Crossfire Hurricane team "took off the table any idea of legal process" in conducting the investigation, because the FBI was "trying to move very quietly." The FBI did not use national security letters or compulsory process prior to obtaining the first FISA orders.

At the outset of the investigation, as described earlier in this chapter, Strzok and SSA 1 [Joe Pientka] traveled [to London] to verify the FFG [Downer] information while analysts conducted open source and database research on the Crossfire Hurricane subjects and monitored their travel. Analysts also developed profiles on each of the four subjects and reviewed FBI files for information and to identify potential FBI CHSs with useful contacts for the investigation. [196] Additionally, almost immediately after opening the Page, Papadopoulos, and Manafort investigations on August 10, the case agent [in New York] assigned to the Carter Page investigation, Case Agent 1 [Stephen Somma], contacted OGC about the possibility of seeking FISA authority for Carter Page. As we discuss in Chapter Five, FBI documents indicate that by late August, [Somma] had been told that he had not yet presented enough information to support a FISA application targeting Carter Page.

The described investigative steps are, in general, standard, required, steps. The exact nature of these steps will vary depending on the specific facts of an investigation--travel to London is obviously exceptional--but many are the same for all investigations. Failure to take such logical investigative steps would raise question during file reviews.

Somma, in New York, was obviously very keen to take action against Carter Page. As we saw in Part I, NYFO had nowhere near enough data to apply for a FISA on Page, but Somma asked about that virtually as soon as Crossfire Hurricane was opened. I have to wonder whether FBI lawyers in NYFO were consulted. If they were, and if they gave Somma the go-ahead to consult with OGC regarding a FISA on Page, their judgment would certainly be suspect.

The FBI also sent names of individuals associated with the Trump campaign to other U.S. government agencies and a foreign intelligence agency and requested any information about those individuals. McCabe said that requesting a name trace from other U.S government agencies is a standard step in counterterrorism and counterintelligence cases that assists investigators by providing information on the (79/112) kind of network surrounding a person in whom the FBI is interested. He told us that the FBI requests a name check on an individual who is the subject of an investigation, or who the FBI is considering as a subject, but is not certain that an investigation is warranted. McCabe said that the FBI also uses the information received from such name checks to eliminate individuals as subjects. The FBI received information from the name trace requests and serialized that information to the Crossfire Hurricane case file.

The standard trace searches would include CIA--we know that CIA was contacted, below. Much information that used to require coordination with other agencies is now available through shared databases. Please note, however, the misleading nature of McCabe’s statement. Yes, it’s true that name traces are standard operating procedure in a Preliminary Investigation. However, that is not what we’re talking about here—Crossfire Hurricane was opened as a Full Field Investigation [FFI]. The push to get a FISA followed almost immediately. This was not a situation in which the FBI was uncertain whether a FFI was warranted. Their minds were made up.

As we describe in Chapter Five, on or about August 17, 2016, the Crossfire Hurricane team received information from another U.S. government agency advising the team that Carter Page had been approved as an operational contact for the other agency [CIA] from 2008 to 2013 and detailing information that Page had provided to the other agency regarding Page's past contacts with certain Russian intelligence officers. However, this information was not provided to NSD attorneys [DoJ National Security Division] and was not included in any of the FISA applications. We also found no evidence that the Crossfire Hurricane team requested additional information from the other agency prior to submission of the first FISA application in order to deconflict on issues that were relevant to the FISA application.

This describes the results of the standard trace search the FBI sent to CIA regarding Page. The CIA appears to have provided rather full information, including that Page had been a CIA asset for five years--a fairly long time, which is probably explained by the amount of time Page worked in Russia. Horowitz makes two very pertinent observations without additional comment: 

1. The FBI did not provide this crucial information to DoJ attorneys. If they had, I doubt that the FISA would have been approved. The same, of course, is true regarding FBI misrepresentations of the FBI's prior relations with Page in New York. 

2. The FBI did not request "additional information" about Page from the CIA. What "additional information" would that have been? In the circumstances one would assume that the FBI would have--should have--wanted to know how the CIA assessed Page's reliability and stability and the reasons for discontinuing use of Page as an asset. All of this information would be highly relevant not only to any FISA application but also to whether Page was a viable possible Russian contact in the Trump campaign. But we saw in Part I that such considerations do not appear to have concerned the NYFO. From this we see that they didn't concern FBIHQ, either.

My assumption is that the CIA discontinued use of Page in 2013 because that was the year that Page began cooperating with the FBI's attempted prosecution of Russian officials in New York. The CIA--unlike Somma, apparently--would have understood that the Russians would catch on to Page's identity and affiliation with US intel agencies sooner rather than later, and that Page was therefore 'burned' as an operational contact.

FBI officials told us that the early steps in the investigation focused on developing information about the four subjects and conducting CHS operations to obtain relevant subject specific information. According to McCabe, using sources is a logical first step in an investigation to learn what information the FBI may have access to that could be of value in the investigation. Agents told us that CHS operations can be an effective tool for quickly obtaining information, including, for example, the telephone numbers and email addresses of the named subjects. In determining how to use CHSs in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, [Pientka] and the case agents told the OIG that they focused their CHS operations on the predicating information and the four named subjects. [Somma] told the OIG that the team "had a very narrow mandate" and that was "a mandate to look at these four individuals ... and see if there's any potential cooperation between themselves and the Russian government ... that was our goal in that investigation." He added that they were focused on the information provided by the FFG [Downer] and "we wanted to prove or disprove it, [as] best we could" but also "wanted to make sure that it didn't get broadcast out and we didn't harm the electoral process." Case Agent 2 stated that the core of the investigation was "literally looking at the predication and saying, okay, who reasonably could have had been in a position to receive suggestions from the Russians?"

All of this sounds quite reasonable, but notice that there's a subtle difference between Pientka/Somma and Case Agent 2. All of them say that they were "focused ... on the predicating information." Pientka/Somma say they wanted to "prove or disprove it." Case Agent 2, on the other hand, seems to have accepted the predication as a given--as unquestionably reliable--so that the question becomes one of asking: "Who reasonably could have had been in a position to receive suggestions from the Russians?" However, as we'll see, there is reason to doubt that Pientka/Somma were as critically minded as they now profess to have been. The reality appears to have been that the "predication" was actually accepted uncritically throughout the Crossfire Hurricane "team"--taken as gospel.

Consider for starters: The entire predication is said to have rested on the information received from Alexander Downer--the Aussie diplomat/intel operative. Did the FBI actually address the issue of how trustworthy Downer was in this matter or any other? Did FBI analysts, busily checking "open source and database research on the Crossfire Hurricane subjects" also do some checking into Downer's background? Were they aware of his blatant connections to the Clinton Foundation? After all, it's not as if Russia is the only country in the world that would like to influence a US election. "Allies" have their preferences, too--as Downer's ties to the Clinton organization show. Nor was a Clinton preference limited to the Aussies. Brit PM (at the time) David Cameron publicly stated--in Parliament--as early as December 16, 2015, that Trump's comments on immigration and international travel were 'divisive, stupid and wrong'.

These are just two examples of quite a few that strongly suggest that our "allies" were not neutral observers of the 2016 election. Of course it's a distinct possibility that even FBI personnel involved in Counterintelligence don't bother to keep up with international news, but the simple fact is that the FBI was on notice that our "allies" were taking sides in this election. That simple fact should have entered into the evaluation of any professional intelligence agency of information received from a foreign power--allied or not. One guesses that our "allied" intel services--those interested in influencing US politics--regularly pinched themselves when they considered that they were dealing with such a credulous agency as the FBI. It shouldn't be necessary to state this, but since it hasn't been stated widely in the US media perhaps it's just as well to get that out in the open before moving on.

As summarized in Chapter Ten, the Crossfire Hurricane team conducted three CHS operations prior to the team's initial receipt of Steele's reporting on September 19, 2016. All three CHS operations were with individuals who were still with the Trump campaign. The first was a consensually recorded meeting in August 2016 between Carter Page and an FBI CHS [Stefan Halper]. During the meeting, Page discussed his recent trip to Moscow, a pending "October Surprise" discussed further in Chapters Five, Seven, and Ten, and his involvement with the Russian energy company Gazprom. Page also told the CHS that he had "literally never met" Paul Manafort, had "never said one word to him," and that Manafort had not responded to any of (80/113) Carter Page's emails. 197 [Pientka] and [Somma] told the OIG that this meeting was important for the investigation as it helped the team determine where Page lived and what he was currently working on as well as developing a successful contact between an established FBI source and one of the Crossfire Hurricane targets.

This consensual recording of Page was quite remarkable--or should have been, for the Crossfire Hurricane "team." Consider the topics that Page discussed--quite candidly, it appears: 

1. Page's "recent" trip to Moscow. Well, that trip took place back in June, but OK. Here we have Page speaking--on "tape"--about the trip to Moscow that the Steele "dossier" makes so much of, and that the FBI relied heavily upon to apply for their FISA on Page. Remember? Steele claimed that Page met "secretly" with Russian officials close to Putin. In other words, by the the time the FBI began the application process they possessed not just Steele's unverified "narrative"--they also had a recording of Page discussing that same trip with an FBI asset whom Page apparently trusted! 

2. Page also discussed "a pending 'October Surprise.'" What was that October Surprise? Page believed that by October the "conspiracy theory" (Page's words) about the Hillary emails would be exposed as nonsense. Remember? That was the "Russian hacking" narrative, the one that the FBI somehow declined to investigate in any meaningful sense--like, obtaining the actual server. And yet that would definitely have been "Russian meddling" in an election. Page's comment cast doubt on Downer's story about his meeting with Papadopoulos, and therefore strikes at the heart of the supposed "predication" for the entire Crossfire Hurricane investigation. 

3. Page also recounted that "he had 'literally never met' Paul Manafort, had 'never said one word to him,' and that Manafort had not responded to any of Carter Page's emails. And yet Steele claimed in his "dossier" that Manafort was the evil genius coordinating Trump campaign collusion with Putin--using Carter Page as his 'legman.' 

As you can see from this, when it came time to submit that crucial first FISA application the FBI faced a decision. They could provide DoJ and the FISA court with all relevant information regarding Carter Page or they could slant the application by only providing the Steele "dossier" narrative. 

Let's have a show of hands. Who is surprised to learn that this remarkably relevant recording of Page--which strikes at the heart of the predication for Crossfire Hurricane as well as at Christopher Steele's credibility--was NOT presented to either DoJ or the FISC? Because it wasn't. Does that sound like the action of investigators who were disinterestedly seeking to "prove or disprove" the predication? And yet Pientka and Somma had the nerve to claim to OIG that this was a highly successful recording of Page because they also learned "where Page lived and what he was currently working on." Words fail me.

The second CHS operation took place in September 2016, between an FBI CHS and a high-level official in the Trump campaign who was not a subject of the investigation. [Somma] told the OIG that the plan for this operation was for the CHS to ask the high-level official about Papadopoulos and Carter Page "because they were ... unknowns" and the Crossfire Hurricane team was trying to find out how "these two individuals who are not known in political circles ... [got] introduced to the campaign," including whether the person responsible for those introductions had ties to RIS [Russian Intel Services]. During the consensually recorded meeting, the CHS raised a number of issues that were pertinent to the investigation, but received little information from the high-level official in response.  [198]

The third CHS operation took place in September 2016, and involved Papadopoulos. The Crossfire Hurricane case agents told the OIG that, during this CHS operation, they were trying to recreate the conditions that resulted in Papadopoulos's comments to [Downer] about the suggestion from Russia that it could assist the Trump campaign by anonymously releasing derogatory information about then candidate Clinton, which we described earlier in this chapter. Among other things, when the CHS asked Papadopoulos whether help "from a third party like Wikileaks for example or some other third party like the Russians, could be incredibly helpful" in securing a campaign victory, Papadopoulos responded that the "campaign, of course, [does not] advocate for this type of activity because at the end of the day it's ... illegal." Papadopoulos also stated that the campaign is not "reaching out to Wikileaks or to whoever it is to tell them please work with us, collaborate because we don't, no one does that. ..." [199]

Let's give credit where it's due. This was an imaginative effort--trying to get Papadopoulos to repeat the words that Downer had attributed to him, and which formed the sole basis for the entire Russia Hoax--according to the FBI. What they got, of course, was something quite different. Papadopoulos forthrightly rejected any notion of the Trump campaign cooperating either with 'the Russians' or with Wikileaks. Oh, sh*t! On tape! There goes the predication for the Russia Hoax!

Naturally, this recording was withheld from both DoJ and the FISC. 

In that regard--the withholding of highly relevant information from the persons whose job it was to critically evaluate that precise information--ask yourself this: Could that have been the action of just one person? The obvious answer is: Don't make me laugh. In an investigation of this sort, involving regular weekly team briefings and legal consultation at every step of the way, there would have been multiple people aware of all these recorded meetings with Page and Papadopoulos. Those same people would also have been involved in preparing and vetting the FISA application. Think of how McCabe was all over the Flynn setup. They all knew. They all knew that they were pulling a fast one on the FISC. 

Below in footnote 199 Horowitz makes a fascinating observation. He states, regarding the Papadopoulos recording, that the relevant office at DoJ (OI, Office of Intelligence) "learned of [this] information from ODAG in May 2018." I take that to mean that OI learned of this bombshell information ... from DAG Rod Rosenstein. Is it possible that this was the beginning of Rosenstein's realization that Team Mueller was a gigantic fraud? That's one of many little mysteries we may be getting the answers to in coming months.

Thereafter, on September 19, 2016, the Crossfire Hurricane team received information from an FBI source (Christopher Steele) on election matters that became an important part of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation and the FBI seeking FISA authority targeting one of the Crossfire Hurricane subjects, Carter Page. The information the Crossfire Hurricane team received from Steele and the team's use of the information is described in the next chapter.

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195. As referenced in Chapter Nine, prior to his involvement with the Trump campaign,
Manafort was the subject of a federal criminal investigation by the Department for alleged white collar offenses. Further, as referenced earlier in this chapter, prior to his involvement with the Trump campaign, Carter Page was the subject of a NYFO counterintelligence investigation for his contacts with Russian intelligence officers.

196. As described in Chapter Ten, early in the investigation, the Crossfire Hurricane team discovered that they had an existing FBI CHS who had previously interacted with three of the named subjects of the investigation [Stefan Halper].

197. As we discuss later in this report, Carter Page's comment about his lack of a relationship with Manafort was relevant to one of the allegations in the Steele reporting that was relied upon in the Carter Page FISA applications, but information about the August 2016 CHS meeting was not shared with the OI attorneys handling the FISA applications until June 2017.

198. We found no evidence that the information learned at this meeting was put to use by the Crossfire Hurricane team or disclosed to the OI attorneys handling the Carter Page FISA applications.

199. The Crossfire Hurricane team did not provide information about this meeting to OI attorneys handling the Carter Page FISA applications. As described in Chapter Eight, OI learned of the information from ODAG in May 2018.