Justice OIG Report: Carter Page was a US "Operational Contact" not a Russian Spy

UPDATED: FBI Withheld Information from FISA Court that Cast Doubt on Steele Memo

As I have repeatedly emphasized here and elsewhere during the past couple years, Carter Page was not a Russian agent - he was an operative for an agency of the U.S. intelligence community (likely the CIA) at the time he infiltrated the Trump Campaign, a fact that was not revealed to a federal judge in obtaining a series of FISA warrants beginning in October 2016 to wiretap him and members of the Trump Campaign and incoming Administration. See, e.g., https://caucus99percent.com/content/wsj-confirms-carter-page-was-coopera... see, also, https://progresspond.com/2017/06/23/heres-the-backstory-behind-russiagat...

The just released report of the Justice Department Office of Inspector General states on page viii: DOJ OIG Releases Report Review of Four FISA Applications ...
https://oig.justice.gov › press

As more fully described in Chapter Five, based
upon the information known to the FBI in October 2016,
the first application contained the following seven
significant inaccuracies and omissions:
1. Omitted information the FBI had obtained from
another U.S. government agency detailing its
prior relationship with Page, including that Page
had been approved as an "operational contact"
for the other agency from 2008 to 2013, and
that Page had provided information to the other
agency concerning his prior contacts with certain
Russian intelligence officers, one of which
overlapped with facts asserted in the FISA
application;

Carter Page made statements to the the FBI, not revealed to the FISA Court, that "would have contradicted the notion that Page was conspiring with Russia."

[Update 1] At page 123, the Report further reveals that even after the fact that Page had a "consensual monitoring agreement" with another agency, the FBI nonetheless withheld this essential fact when it sought and obtained a total of four FISA warrants that eventually expired in July, 2017:

While FISA discussions were ongoing, on or about August 17, 2016, the
Crossfire Hurricane team received information from another U.S. government
agency relating to Page's prior relationship with that agency and prior contacts with
Russian intelligence officers about which the agency was aware. We found that,
although this information was highly relevant to the potential FISA application, the
Crossfire Hurricane team did not engage with the other agency regarding this
information until June 2017, just prior to the final Carter Page FISA renewal
application. 262 As we discuss later in this chapter, when Case Agent 1 was explicitly
asked in late September 2016 by the 01 Attorney assisting on the FISA application
about Page's prior relationship with this other agency, Case Agent 1 did not
accurately describe the nature and extent of the information the FBI received from
the other agency.

Also in August, while FISA discussions were ongoing, the Crossfire Hurricane
team conducted a consensually monitored meeting between an FBI CHS and Carter
Page in an attempt to obtain information from Page about links between the Donald
J. Trump for President Campaign and Russia. During the operation, which we
describe in greater detail below, Page made statements to the CHS that would
have, if true, contradicted the notion that Page was conspiring with Russia.

[Update 2] "Page also made statements that contradicted the Steele reporting received by the [FBI Crossfire Hurricane] team in September, in particular the assertion that Manafort was using Page as an intermediary with Russia." [pp. 123-24]

On September 21, the OGC attorneys met with the 01 Unit Chief and
described the reporting from Steele concerning Carter Page that the team had
recently received. According to notes of the meeting, the OGC Attorney and OGC
Unit Chief told the 01 Unit Chief about the allegations contained in the Steele
reporting that Page had a secret meeting with a high-level Russian official in July
2016, that Page may have received a Russian dossier on Hillary Clinton, and that
there was a "well-developed conspiracy" between associates of the Trump
campaign and Russian leadership being managed, in part, by Carter Page. The 01
Unit Chief told us that he recalled that the Steele reporting was "what kind of
pushed it over the line" in terms of the FBI being ready to pursue FISA authority
targeting Page. He recalled thinking that if the information bears out during the
drafting process, there would probably be sufficient information to support a FISA
application targeting Page. Conversely, he said that without the Steele reporting
concerning Page, he would not have thought they could establish probable cause
based on the other information the FBI presented at that time (Page's historical
contacts with Russia).
...
The FISA request form drew almost entirely from Steele's reporting in
describing the factual basis to establish probable cause to believe that Page was an
agent of a foreign power, including the secret meeting between Carter Page and
Divyekin alleged in Steele's Report 94 and the role of Page as an intermediary
between Russia and the Trump campaign's then manager, Paul Manafort, in the
"well-developed conspiracy" alleged in Steele's Report
95.[p. 126]

These omissions and falsehoods contained in the FBI's FISA warrant applications substantially taints the legal basis for electronic surveillance and undermines the legality of the Russiagate investigation. The report also shows that while the Bureau's Crossfire Hurricane investigators knew that Page had contradicted the Steele Memo's allegations about Manafort, this was omitted from the warrant application.

[UPDATE 3]Here's the backstory that nobody else is mentioning: the FBI had in fact been wiretapping Manafort since 2014 because of his interference with the CIA's regime change operations in the Ukraine, but surveillance was pulled when he was appointed Trump's Campaign Manager. Because of this "gap" in coverage, FISA authorization had to be obtained for someone else. Page was infiltrated into the Campaign in March, and a FISA application was deemed urgent. Granted in October, it allowed the NSC staff access to everyone "two hops removed" from Page (virtually the entire Trump Campaign and afterwards, the incoming Administration). That warrant application was deemed so important, it was sought at any cost, even by falsifying the warrant application. At least, that's my conclusion. It will be spun otherwise, as the report pins blame on lowly FBI Case Agent and a Justice Department attorney. More Updates as details emerge from the 484 page report released this afternoon as time is found to digest them.

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Unfortunate that JFK did not live to dismantle Alan’s agency. The world has suffered decades of regime change operations under the guise of promulgating “democracy”.

This genie will not willingly return to its bottle. More and better resource grabs are sure to follow.

God help us all!

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Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

Roy Blakeley's picture

@ovals49 Many would say that JFK did not survive because he sought to dismantle the CIA.

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@Roy Blakeley
Although Eisenhower was all in for covert action to suppress the Red Menace, JFK became acutely aware of the danger of the largely autonomous, self funded (drugs and weapons) expression of American foreign policy that the CIA had become, as evidenced by the Bay of Pigs fiasco. I do not believe that his nascent efforts to bring effective executive oversight to the enterprise and his demise were unrelated.

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Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

snoopydawg's picture

I'm hoping that it will expose the people who put us on this non stop Russian propaganda nonsense and they will be held all. But I'm not holding my breath. The IC aren't going to let someone destroy their image. Hope I'm wrong.

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snoopydawg's picture

17 discrepancies in the report

He has other articles on this on his home page. So far I'm not seeing a smoking gun that would see people charged for anything. We have covered so many aspects of the creation of the FBIs investigation into Trump's campaign so it'll be interesting if any one else will take the investigation that far. If not then the fix is in just like it was for the investigation into Hillary's private email server.

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@snoopydawg wipe away the CIA fingerprints behind this, just as they have a half dozen major connected scandals going back to Iran-Contra and BCCI. Not sure if they can make this one go away as well. The system has less credibility and resilience than it once did. These are tired old men serving a crumbling edifice of Empire. They and the controlled opposition, the Cold War Dems, may actually manage to kill the whole thing this time.

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snoopydawg's picture

@leveymg

This is what I'm thinking too. Both Barr and Mueller are fixers like you said and that is exactly what they are doing. The CIA and especially Brennan got caught working inside the country and those two are helping him out of his jam. Mueller' investigation was so one sided I'm surprised more people didn't see that. He never talked to the key players that were against Trump. And he only addressed the Russian interference by agreeing with Brennan's report that stated he had high confidence that Russia did the deed and he believed something. Wow John. It'd be nice if you had provided evidence of that.

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snoopydawg's picture

@leveymg

I just read this.

Bolton thinks the DNC hack was a false flag by Obama

This was before he came on board with Trump, but it's one thing I haven't thought of. Thoughts?

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CB's picture

@snoopydawg
in this instance. He is Machiavellian enough to use truth or deception depending on whether it advances his agenda or not.

Bolton: Russian hacks could actually have been by Obama administration
...
“It is not at all clear to me, just viewing this from the outside, that this hacking into the [Democratic National Committee] and the Republican National Committee] computers was not a false flag,” Bolton said. “So the question has to be asked, why did the Russians run their smart intelligence service against Hillary’s server, but their dumb intelligence service against the election?” Bolton did not mention that Comey’s statement might have meant there was no foreign intrusion into Clinton’s server.

Shawn then asked Bolton — who has been mentioned as a possible appointee in Donald Trump’s State Department — whether he was accusing someone in “the administration or in the intelligence community” of the alleged false flag.

“We just don’t know,” Bolton said. “But I believe that the intelligence community has been politicized in the Obama administration to a very significant degree.”
...
Asked by Shawn about people who might be bothered by the false flag claim, Bolton said there needs to be more information about how the intelligence community came to its conclusion.

“We would want to know who else might want to influence the election and why they would leave fingerprints that point to the Russians,” Bolton said. “That’s why I say until we know more about how the intelligence community came to this conclusion, we don’t whether it’s Russian-inspired or a false flag.”
...

Bolton desperately wanted to become National Security Advisor under Trump. This ploy succeeded when Trump gave him his wish April, 2018. Take note that Bolton almost immediately started to stick knives into Trump's back. His one great success was to get Trump to abandon the INF treaty.

BTW, Bolton soon reversed himself and started blaming Russia for meddling in the elections.

As you can see in this video, Mattis had him pegged from the start.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd0fVREENzM]

Like John McCain, I'll will celebrate when John Bolton finally breathes his last and is placed under the rocks from which he slithered. These two men have left nothing but death and destruction in their wake.

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snoopydawg's picture

@CB

because he knew that we were pivoting to Russia and he was in agreement on the goal. Even the republicans that are defending Trump not being in Vlad's pockets say that Russia interfered with the election. Of course both parties will continue selling this pig because they are all in the pockets of the defense industries and a possible war with Russia will see lots of new weapons.

And that is why Russia's defense budged it so much lower than ours. Their defense industries are not for profit and are owned by the government while ours are for profit and the will build weapons and then go look for a war to use them in.

Thanks for excerpting the article. In one of Obama's last public speeches he said that there is no way an outside organization could influence our elections. But that was because he thought Trump was looking for ways to nullify it if he lost. But thems your words, Barry.

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Roy Blakeley's picture

@leveymg Muller was an apparatchik as I have said many times, so we agree completely on that. Barr is a CIA guy. There is no doubt about that. However, some CIA people do not want the CIA to meddle in domestic elections. The fact that Barr and Durham have announced that they are investigating criminally indictable offenses suggests that there may not be a full coverup. Brennan and Clapper have signaled that they fear they will be indicted, and my view is that the entire impeachment production has been to discredit Barr and shift focus away from Barr's investigation.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Roy Blakeley

The reports are that either Horowitz or Durham have said that their investigations will bring criminal charges. So yeah maybe there is still some hope for justice.

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Roy Blakeley's picture

@snoopydawg expects to bring criminal charges. Brennan and Clapper have both lawyered up in response to the Barr/Durham announcement and Clapper has said that everything that he and Brennan did in the lead up to the 2016 election was at Obama's behest. That sounds like they expect to be indicted.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Roy Blakeley

I still want to see justice for his role in starting Russia Russia Russia because he setup Papadopoulus. How people can't see through this ruse is beyond me.

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@Roy Blakeley

Source

"I have the utmost respect for the mission of the Office of Inspector General and the comprehensive work that went into the report prepared by Mr. Horowitz and his staff. However, our investigation is not limited to developing information from within component parts of the Justice Department. Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S. Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened." -US Attorney John Durham

Horowitz also found that the Steele dossier provided "probably cause" to spy on Carter Page, and that the FISA application "drew heavily...upon the Steele reporting to support the government's position that Page" was a Russian agent.

Horowitz was restricted to talking to people still working and not to people who have left the agencies. Lots of good info in this article. Really this is a must read because it details easier the breakdown of the report.

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@snoopydawg As the OIG Report acknowledges, Carter Page was an “operational contact” for an unnamed US Government agency. Had Page not been infiltrated into the Trump Campaign by his Agency handlers, there would have been no legal cause for commencing an FBI investigation.

How can one know that Page was being handled? The (unnamed) US Government agency knew exactly what Page was doing. As the Horowitz report acknowledges, during the summer of 2016, the FBI talked to that Agency about Page. At the very least, his handlers at the other agency let Page get on with the task of worming his way into the Trump Campaign, and jetting off to Moscow, knowing full well that the FBI was treating that as the basis for investigating the campaign for cooperation with Russian espionage. Both agencies also were obviously aware that Page had previously carried out consensual surveillance against Russian intelligence from 2008 through 2013. He even testified at trial against one SVR officer who was put on trial in 2014 after Page, referred to as "MALE-1" in court documents, wore an FBI wire. After that, the Russians also knew who Page was working for, and what he was doing. Seemingly, the only one who didn't know was the FISA Judge - and, later, the American people.

Furthermore, there would have been no Russiagate as we knew it without Carter Page and fabrications about him inserted into the Steele Memo. In view of FBI omission of material, exculpatory evidence from the FISA warrant applications, added to the outright falsification of these facts about Page by DOJ, all evidence gathered pursuant to the Carter Page line of investigation must be excluded.

When one considers that the Carter Page “evidence” also taints the case brought against Manafort, and that the case for an FBI investigation of the Trump Campaign for alleged collusion was largely based in the activities of one or more CIA agents provocateur, the Russia collusion case for Impeachment is poisoned apples.

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snoopydawg's picture

@leveymg

I have said that from the beginning after we found out that the FBI tried entrapping people in Trump's campaign and that they got the FISA warrants after the bogus Steele dossier. There was one point that stood out for me that showed that, but I can't remember it right now.

Maybe not so much that impeachment is, but that the people who have been charged and sentenced was. If you lie to get a FISA warrant then anything that comes from it is definitely the FotPT. The case against Manafort was created by the woman in Ukraine. Chaupulla? Anyway the Obama justice department found lots of info on him in 2014, but then they sat on it until they needed it.

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@Roy Blakeley But, it only identifies a couple FBI/DOJ small fry as individually culpable. Definite whitewash. Durham has a broader investigative mandate and reportedly disagrees that the Bureau leadership wasn't responsible and biased. I've read he's going to tell a much more complete narrative that desribes the role of the other (unnamed) US Government Agency in sending up Page and the other agents provocateur. We will see.

This is getting interesting and beginning to conform with what we already had determined for ourselves on this mighty fine little board. ;0)

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@leveymg For the usual slaughter.

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snoopydawg's picture

was never going to be serious.

There is no "documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions to open the four individual investigations" into the Trump campaign aides George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, the former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and the former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Papadopoulus was setup by Misfud. Anyone can see that. Misfud told him that Russia had dirt on Hillary. Papadopoulus didn't get the information from some Russian agent, but from someone who had ties to both Hillary's foundation and Mueller. So why would this have allowed the FBI to get a FISA warrant?

The Trump tower meeting was another setup by people connected to Clinton's team. The state department had to clear the Russian woman's passport so she could attend the meeting. After it she met with Simpson from Fusion GPS. I'm smelling a rat, but then I didn't really expect much to come from it. But I'm still disappointed that Trump is wimping out. Why doesn't he tell the NSA to release the information that shows Russia hacked the DNC computers? VIPs and others have proof that he was setup and supposedly they spoke to him. And yet here we are with the Russia Gaters believing that Trump played with Vlad to win the election. Even though Mueller stated that He saw no connection between Trump's campaign and anyone in Russia. Flynn too was railroaded. Will he still go to prison?

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Roy Blakeley's picture

@snoopydawg Natalia Veselnitskaya, actually met with Glenn Simpson before and after the Trump Tower meeting. The meeting was clearly a setup to embarrass Trump and provide evidence for a FISA court application (i.e. the Trump campaign meeting with a Russian agent).

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@Roy Blakeley

I can never remember it. Just the details related to her. The FBI tried to entrap Trump and people in his campaign 7 times according to one article I read. Things might get interesting...stay tuned.

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