FISA Footnotes
FISA Footnotes
FISA Footnotes
APR 15 2020
The Honorable Charles E. Grassley
Chairman
Committee on Finance
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
Thank you for your letter requesting the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau
of Investigation declassify portions of Inspector General Horowitz's Report regarding the
Crossfire Hurricane investigation. I agree transparency is now needed more than ever.
Having reviewed the matter, and having consulted the heads of the relevant Intelligence
Community elements, I have declassified the enclosed footnotes. I consulted with the Attorney
General William Barr, and he has authorized the ODNI to say that he concurs in the
declassification insofar as it relates to DOJ equities.
Sincerely,
Enclosure
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Cc:
The Honorable Richard Burr
The Honorable Mark R. Warner
The Honorable Adam Schiff
The Honorable Devin Nunes
The Honorable William P. Barr
The Honorable Gina C. Haspel
General Paul M. Nakasone, USA
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Footnote Text After Declassification and Redactions
17 According to Steele, his cooperation with our investigation was done with the consent of his government.
21 We did not review the entirety of FISA collections obtained through FISA surveillance and physical searches targeting Carter Page. We
reviewed only those documents collected under FISA authority that were pertinent to our review.
61 Criteria used by agents and analysts to weigh the risks and benefits are: (1) access:
(2) suitability:
(3) susceptibility:
(4) accessibility:
(5) security:
63 CHSPG Section 3.5.1.1 Special approval and notification requirements also are necessary for CHS operations in extraterritorial
jurisdiction, such as tasking a CHS to contact the subject of an investigation who is located in a foreign country. The requirements and
notifications differ, for example, depending on whether the CHS operating is a national security extraterritorial operation or a criminal
extraterritorial operation involving a sensitive circumstance. Approval from an FBI Assistant Director is necessary for national security
extraterritorial operations,
164 During October 25, 2018 testimony before the House Judiciary and House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight,
Papadopoulos stated that the source of the information he shared with the FFG official was a professor from London, Joseph Mifsud.
Papadopoulos testified that Mifsud provided him with information about the Russians possessing "dirt" on Hilary Clinton. Papadopoulos raised
the possibility during his Congressional testimony that Mifsud might have been "working with the FBI and this was some sort of operation" to
entrap Papadopoulos. As discussed in Chapter Ten of this report, the OIG searched the FBI's database of Confidential Human Sources (CHS),
and did not find any records indicating that Mifsud was an FBI CHS, or that Mifsud's discussions with Papadopoulos were part of any FBI
operation. In Chapter Ten, we also note that the FBI requested information on Mifsud from another U.S. government agency, and received a
response from the agency indicating that Mifsud had no relationship with the agency and the agency had no derogatory information on
Mifsud.
(U) We refer to Joseph Mifsud by name in this report because the Department publicly revealed Mifsud’s identity in The Special Counsel’s
Report (public version). According to The Special Counsel’s Report, Papadopoulos first met Mifsud in March 2016, after Papadopoulos had
already learned that he would be serving as a foreign policy advisor for the Trump campaign. According to The Special Counsel’s Report,
Mifsud only showed interest in Papadopoulos after learning of Papadopoulos’s role in the campaign, and told Papadopoulos about the Russians
possessing “dirt” on then candidate Clinton in late April 2016. The Special Counsel found that Papadopoulos lied to the FBI about the timing of
his discussions with Mifsud, as well as the nature and extent of his communications with Mifsud. The Special Counsel charged Papadopoulos
under Title 18 U.S.C. § 1001 with making false statements. Papadopoulos pled guilty and was sentenced to 14 days in prison. See The Special
Counsel’s Report, Vol. 1, at 192‐94.
166 According to Legat, the senior intelligence official stated at the meeting with the USG official that the FFG information "sounds like an
FBI matter."
205 During his time as an FBI CHS, Steele received a total of $95,000 from the FBI. We reviewed the FBI paperwork for those payments,
each of which required Steele's Signed acknowledgement. On each document, of which there were eight, was the caption "CHS Payment" and
"CHS's Payment Name." A signature page was missing for one of the payments.
208 (U) A 2015 report concerning oligarchs written by the FBI’s Transnational Organized Crime Intelligence Unit (TOCIU) noted that from January
through May 2015, 10 Eurasian oligarchs sought meetings with the FBI, and 5 of these had their intermediaries contact Steele. The report
noted that Steele’s contact with 5 Russian oligarchs in a short period of time was unusual and recommended that a validation review be
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completed on Steele because of this activity. The FBI’s Validation Management Unit did not perform such an assessment on Steele until early
2017 after, as described in Chapter Six, the Crossfire Hurricane team requested an assessment in the context of Steele’s election reporting.
Handling Agent 1 told us he had seen the TOCIU report and was not concerned about its findings concerning Steele because he was aware of
Steele’s outreach efforts to Russian oligarchs. We found that the TOCIU report was not included in Steele’s Delta file. Handling Agent 1 said
that he found preparation of the TOCIU report “curious” because he believed that TOCIU was aware of Steele’s outreach efforts and fully
supported them.
210 AS we discuss in Chapter Six, members of the Crossfire Hurricane team were unaware of Steele's connections to Russian Oligarch 1.
Person possibly
211 Sensitive source reporting from June 2017 indicated that a affiliated to Russian Oligarch 1 was aware of Steele's election investigation as
of early July 2016.
214 Steele told us that the source network did not involve sources from his time as a former foreign government employee and was
developed entirely in the period after he retired from governmental service.
242 The FBI advised the OIG that the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was a national security investigation, and these activities therefor
involved national security extraterritorial CHS operations,
244 Person 1
339 The Primary Sub‐source also told the FBI at these interviews that the subsource who provided the information about the Carter Page‐
Sechin meeting had connections to Russian Intelligence Services (RIS).
342 In late January 2017, a member of the Crossfire Hurricane team received information
that RIS may have targeted Orbis and research all publicly available information
about it.
However, an early June 2017 USIC report indicated that two persons affiliated with RIS
were aware of Steele's election investigation in early July 2016. The Supervisory Intel Analyst told us he was aware of these reports, but that he
had no information as of June 2017 that Steele's election reporting source network had been penetrated or compromised
347 The FBI received information in early June 2017 which revealed that, among other things, there were
personal and business ties between the
sub‐source and Steele's Primary Sub‐source; contacts between the sub‐source and an individual in the Russian Presidential Administration in
June/July 2016;
and the sub‐source voicing strong support for
candidate Clinton in the 2016 U.S. elections. The Supervisory Intel Analyst told us that the FBI did not have Section 702 coverage on any other
Steele sub‐source.
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350 In addition to the information in Steele's Delta file documenting Steele's frequent contacts with representatives for multiple
Russian oligarchs, we identified reporting the Crossfire Hurricane team received from indicating the potential for Russian
disinformation influencing Steele's election reporting. A January 12, 2017, report relayed information from outlining an
inaccuracy in a limited subset of Steele's reporting about the activities of Michael Cohen. The stated that it did not have high
confidence in this subset of Steele's reporting and assessed that the referenced subset was part of a Russian disinformation campaign to
denigrate U.S. foreign relations. A second report from the same five days later stated that a person named in the limited subset
of Steele's reporting had denied representations in the reporting and the assessed that the person's denials were truthful. A
USIC report dated February 27, 2017, contained information about an individual with reported connections to Trump and Russia who claimed
that the public reporting about the details of Trump's sexual activities in Moscow during a trip in 2013 were false, and that they were the
product of RIS "infiltrate[ing] a source into the network" of a who compiled a dossier of that
individual on Trump's activities. The noted that it had no information indicating that the individual had special access to RIS
activities or information.
354 We did not review the entirety of FISA collections obtained through FISA surveillance and physical searches targeting Carter Page. We
reviewed only those documents collected under FISA authority that were pertinent to our review.
362 Her signature also specifically authorized overseas surveillance of Carter Page under Section 705(b) of the FISA and Executive
Order 12333 Section 2.5.
365 In Chapter Five, we describe how the FBI did not specifically and explicitly advise OI about the FBI's assessment before the first FISA
application that Person 1 was the sub‐source who provided the information relied upon in the application from Steele reports 80, 95, and 102;
that Steele had provided derogatory information regarding Person 1; and that the FBI had an open counterintelligence investigation on Person
1. As noted previously, in the next chapter, we describe the information from the Primary Sub‐source interview concerning Person 1 and the
information that was not shared with OI about inconsistences between the Primary Sub‐source and Steele concerning information provided by
Person 1.
368 Boente's signature also specifically authorized overseas surveillance of Carter Page under Section 705(b) of the FISA and Executive
Order 12333 Section 2.5.
372 The third renewal application stated that [SEQUESTERED]
377 Rosenstein's signature also specifically authorized overseas surveillance of Carter Page under Section 705(b) of the FISA and
Executive Order 12333 Section 2.5.
379 On May 10, 2019, NSD sent a second letter to the FISC concerning the Carter Page FISA applications, advising the court of two indicants
in which the FBI failed to comply with the SMPs applicable to physical searches conducted pursuant to the final FISA orders issued by the court
on June 29, 2017. According to the letter, the FBI took and retained on an FBI‐issued cell phone photographs of certain property taken in
connection with a FISA‐authorized physical search on July 13, 2017, which NSD assessed did not comport with the SMPs. In addition in a
separate incident on July 29, 2017, the FBI took photographs in connection with another FISA‐authorized physical search and transferred the
photographs to an electronic folder on the FBI's classified secret network. . According to NSD, court staff contacted an NSD official in response
to this letter and asked when the information at issue would be removed from non‐compliant FBI systems, and asked about other cases that
might be impacted by the same problem. On October 9, 2019, NSD sent another letter to the FISC advising the court that the FBI completed
the remedial process for the information associated with the Page FISA applications and information from other cases impacted by the same
problem.
389 Email communications reflect that in March 2017—after the first FISA application and first renewal were filed and before the last two
renewals—the Supervisory Intel Analyst reviewed the first FISA application and the first renewal at OGC’s request to assist with potential
redactions before the Department responded to Congressional information requests. The Supervisory Intel Analyst provided comments to the
OGC Attorney, including advising him that the Primary Sub‐source was not as stated in the FISA applications, and asking
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whether a correction should be made. The Supervisory Intel Analyst did not provide any other comments relating to the Primary Sub‐source,
and he told us that he did not notice anything else potentially inaccurate or incomplete in the applications at that time.
464 The FBI also requested information on Mifsud from another U.S. government agency, and received a response from that agency
indicating that Mifsud had no relationship with that agency.
475 We notified the FBI upon learning during our review that material that the CHS had provided to the FBI were still
maintained in FBI files.
484 Papadopoulos has stated that the source of the information he shared with the FFG was a professor from London, Joseph Mifsud,
and has raised the possibility that Mifsud may have been working with the FBI. As described in Chapter Ten of this report, the OIG searched
the FBI’s database of Confidential Human Sources (CHSs) and did not find any records indicating that Mifsud was an FBI CHS, or that Mifsud’s
discussions with Papadopoulos were part of any FBI operation. The FBI also requested information on Mifsud from another U.S. government
agency and received no information indicating that Mifsud had a relationship with that agency or that the agency had any derogatory
information concerning Mifsud.
526 As described in Chapter Two, the special approval and notification requirements for CHS operations in extraterritorial jurisdiction differ,
for example, depending on whether the CHS operation is a national security extraterritorial operation or a criminal extraterritorial operation
involving a sensitive circumstance. Approval from an FBI Assistant Director is necessary for national security extraterritorial operations,
CHSPG Sections
19.2, 19.3.3. Because the Crossfire Hurricane investigation at the outset was a national security investigation, the extraterritorial CHS
operations in the case required Assistant Director approval.
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