From Clarice Feldman's FB timeline (you should all 'Friend' her on FB)....
From an email response to BOTW today ) :
As a lawyer and a 30 year veteran of the FBI--most of which time was spent investigating counterintelligence matters, including Russian matters in NY in the 1980s--you can imagine that I'm taking a lively interest in this. For that reason, I want to bring to your attention a bit of a slip that you made. I want to be clear at the outset that my comments are not intended to be merely pedantic--they have a very important bearing on this whole matter, as it developed, which I'll address at the conclusion.
You repeat, without comment, CNN's assertion that "the FBI must provide the court with information showing suspicion that the subject of the warrant may be acting as an agent of a foreign power.”
This gives a significantly misleading view of the matter.
In fact, a FISA order can be issued only when a Full Investigation has been approved. That means that a FISA order must "piggyback" on the authorization of Full Investigation, satisfying at a minimum the same criteria. Here is what is stated in the Attorney General Guidelines for FBI National Security Investigations and Foreign Intelligence Collection:
Full investigations. Full investigations are authorized, generally speaking, when there are specific and articulable facts giving reason to believe that a threat to the national security may exist. Like preliminary investigations, full investigations may relate to individuals, groups, organizations, and possible criminal violations, as specified in Part II.B.
My contention, based on experience with these matters, is that "specific and articulable facts giving reason to believe" goes well beyond mere "suspicion."
Further ...
The ability to provide "specific and articulable facts giving reason to believe that a threat to the national security may exist" only gets you a Full Investigation. To get a FISA order there is an additional bar. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) states re electronic surveillance that
agents need to demonstrate probable cause to believe that the "target of the surveillance is a foreign power or agent of a foreign power,"
I'm sure you're aware that the legal standard of "probable cause goes well beyond CNN's careless--or worse--paraphrase of "suspicion."
Here's why these considerations are important for this case.
CNN tells us that in the summer of 2016 two attempts were made to obtain a FISA order, but that both were rejected. According to CNN the order was finally obtained when it was more "narrowly focused." Color me skeptical.
FISA is, by its nature and just like any type of electronic surveillance, a blunderbuss type of tool or investigative technique. That's why "minimization" procedures are used. The "unmasking" we've all heard so much about amounts to an override of those mandatory minimization procedures. In other words, the inherent "broadness" of a FISA order is remedied by those minimization procedures. For that reason, an application for a FISA order will not ordinarily be rejected as over broad, since that can be remedied by the minimization procedures. Therefore, my educated guess is that the two rejections were occasioned by a failure to demonstrate probable cause that any individual named in the application (Paul Manafort, Carter Page, whoever ...) was an agent of a foreign power--not for lack of a narrow focus.
That is the significance of the "dossier," which you so rightly point out, and that's why the American people deserve to know the truth about how these FISA orders were obtained. Who was this judge who rubber stamped the FBI's collusion with foreign powers and individuals to come up with the now debunked "dossier?" Was the FISA application--on the third try--truly submitted in the good faith belief in the accuracy of its assertions, as the authors would have sworn? From everything we've heard about that "dossier," that seems a stretch.
