DOJ finds problems with FBI wiretaps
WASHINGTON – An internal Justice Department review found new problems with the FBI’S management of secret wiretap applications, concluding that the documents supporting the requests routinely contained errors or “inadequately supported facts.”
In an analysis of more than two dozen wiretap applications drawn from eight FBI field offices during the past two months, the DOJ inspector general concluded that “we do not have confidence” that the bureau followed standards to ensure the accuracy of the wiretap requests.
The report builds on a harshly critical assessment of the FBI’S surveillance activities issued in December, focusing on its handling of multiple wiretap applications for the monitoring of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
In the December review, the inspector general identified 17 inaccuracies in the surveillance applications, effectively inflating the justification for monitoring Page starting in the fall of 2016.
That report prompted a new wave of criticism of the FBI’S handling of its investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and seriously threatened the renewal of continuing surveillance authorities deemed critical by the Justice Department. The most vocal of those critics was President Donald Trump who repeatedly called the Russia investigation a “witch hunt.”
The new assessment by the inspector general effectively concludes that its early critique of the FBI was not an aberration. In four of the 29 applications reviewed, the report found that the supporting documents – known as “Woods Files” – for the wiretap applications could not be located. In three of those instances, agents did not know if the underlying information existed at all.
“Files identified apparent errors or inadequately supported facts in all of the 25 (fully complete) applications we reviewed, and interviews to date with available agents or supervisors in field offices generally have confirmed the issues we identified,” the report concluded.
“We believe that the repeated weaknesses in the FBI’S execution of the Woods procedures in each of the 29 applications we reviewed to date ... raise significant questions about the extent to which the FBI is complying with its own requirement that (surveillance) applications be supported by documentation in the Woods File,” the report found.
The inspector general’s review also included an examination of 34 reports generated by the FBI and the Justice Department’s National Security Division which assessed the accuracy of surveillance applications involving 42 subjects, between 2014 and 2019.
In cases involving 39 of the 42 subjects, the inspector general identified “about 390 issues, including unverified, inaccurate, or inadequately supported facts, as well as typographical errors.”
The FBI said Monday that it was implementing more than 40 actions to address the inspector general’s finding.