Comey Tickles the Wire
Wiretapping the president — an FBI first.
by George Parry
September 6, 2019, 12:01 AM
“Tickling the wireâ€: That’s the slang expression used by law enforcement personnel to describe the process of trying to breathe life into a moribund or unproductive wiretap. When the subjects of such surveillance fail to discuss their criminal activities over the monitored telephones or at the bugged premises, surreptitious steps can be taken to induce them to do so. For example, in the case of a federal wiretap on a drug dealer’s telephone, if few incriminating communications have been intercepted, the local police can be enlisted to conduct an apparently unrelated car stop, interrogation, and search of the subject. This would be calculated to rattle and worry him in the hope that he would discuss the incident over the monitored telephone and, in doing so, make self-incriminating statements regarding his activities. Other techniques — such as having an informant contact the subject — can be used, but the object is always the same: to agitate the subject and get him to make admissions against interest over the wiretapped line.
As an organized crime prosecutor at the federal and state levels, I worked multiple electronic surveillance cases in which this technique was used quite effectively. But of all the federal and state agencies with which I was privileged to work, the organization that was absolutely the best at “tickling the wire†was the FBI.
This brings us, of course, to the mysterious antics of former FBI Director James Comey, as chronicled in the recently released report by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General regarding his disclosure of sensitive investigative information and “handling of certain memoranda.†Among other things, the report describes a series of private meetings by Comey with Donald Trump. Immediately following each meeting, Comey executed a memorandum setting forth his version of what had transpired.
more
https://spectator.org/comey-tickles-the-wire/
