Why DOJ Inspector General Horowitz Had to Produce Two Reports Epoch Times, Nov 24, 2019, Brian Cates
Journalist John Solomon was the first to reveal earlier this month that there was another IG report dealing with serious abuses of the FBI’s CHS program that would drop shortly before the FISA investigation report.
So when Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz did indeed release that CHS report this past Tuesday, Solomon’s sources were proven to be accurate yet again.
And then the very next day, while being interviewed on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News, Sen. Lindsey Graham confidently stated that the FISA report release date was “locked” for Dec. 9, just two days before Horowitz is scheduled to appear before Graham’s Senate Judiciary Committee.
Let’s Remember How We Got Here
When Horowitz announced his review of the FBI’s handling of the Clinton Email Investigation back on Jan. 12, 2017, few had any idea what he was going to uncover.
Democrats in Congress were angry at the way then-FBI Director James Comey had handled the investigation, especially when he closed it and then suddenly reopened it upon the discovery of the Anthony Weiner laptop.
Many Democrats were loudly demanding the Inspector General review the matter since they believed Comey’s bungling of this investigation played a direct role in Clinton losing the 2016 Presidential election to Donald Trump.
They got their wish.
But Horowitz’s deep dive into the issues surrounding how former FBI Director James Comey, Deputy Attorney General Andrew McCabe, FBI agent Peter Strzok and others handled that “Midyear Exam” investigation is what directly led him to the Spygate evidence.
So Horowitz ended up having to produce two separate reports.
The first is a much smaller 57-page report detailing how the FBI’s CHS system broke down and how lack of proper oversight allowed all of these abuses to happen, and what changes need to be made to ensure these events are never repeated. This is essentially a policy and regulation change report that is going to be a very boring read for most people.
This CHS abuse report does not go into any specific cases or names; instead, it deals only with tightening up and improving the oversight of the agency’s use of confidential human sources.
It’s clear the system was being abused and Horowitz’s job as the Inspector General was to give recommendations to the FBI about making the proper changes to the rules and regulations to ensure these kinds of acts do not happen again.
In a marked contrast to the brief CHS report, the FISA abuse report is rumored to be over 1,000 pages long. That is because this is the report where Horowitz will go into exhaustive detail into exactly how FBI officials abused the CHS program as well as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Quote(U) Results in Brief (U) We found that the FBI's vetting process for CHSs, known as validation, did not comply with the Attorney General Guidelines. We also found deficiencies in the FBl's long-term CHS validation reports which are relied upon by FBI and Department of Justice (Department or DOJ) officials in determining the continued use of a CHS. Further, the FBI inadequately staffed and trained personnel conducting long-term validations and lacked an automated process to monitor its long-term CHSs. (U) The joint DOJ-FBI committee tasked with oversight of the FBl's CHS program did not meet its composition requirements placing an undue burden on just a few members. The committee also had a backlog of CHSs awaiting continued use determinations, potentially allowing them to operate when they should not have. (U) The FBI also missed an opportunity to identify its non-compliance with established CHS validation requirements because it did not follow its own directives for incorporating new procedures into policy. Further, we identified issues related to the FBI's current validation process for CHSs with characteristics the FBI considers significant and its lack of policy for communicating with CHSs. Lastly, a newly proposed system designed to align its CHS base with its highest priorities will rely on ingesting data from at least one FBI system with known data quality issues.
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