During the period of Nov 2015 to April 2016, the Obama administration, through the FBI under James Comey and Andrew McCabe, was conducting a political spying operation against all republican presidential primary candidates using the power of their offices.
The intent was two-fold. (1) Tracking the candidates to identify activity; and (2) conducting opposition research to be fed to the campaign of Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton.
This surveillance activity was happening in concert with Comey, McCabe and a small group inside the FBI, running a defensive operation for the issues surrounding Hillary Clinton’s prior use of private email servers -which included classified information transmission- during her tenure as Secretary of State. SOURCE: DNI
Documentary evidence of the Obama spying operation surfaced as an outcome of the NSA compliance officer discovering the FBI activity.
The compliance officer reported the activity to National Security Agency Director, Admiral Mike Rogers.
The spying operation is not an issue of FISA-702, or any FISA system or process. However, the availability of FBI access to the NSA database is what triggered the discovery of the spy operation.
That FBI access is created under the auspices of FISA, but FISA-702 or any aspect therein was not the issue. The issue was the spying operation.
FISA and using the NSA database to conduct the electronic surveillance, was simply the tool to exploit the electronic communication (metadata) of the targets.
The Obama administration was spying on their political opposition and telling the Clinton team the results of their surveillance.
Put another way, the United States government was spying on political candidates for office in order to control the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
After Director Mike Rogers was made aware of the operation, the exploitation of the NSA database, the NSA Director blocked the FBI from access and begun an investigation.
That investigation culminated in Director Mike Rogers informing the regulatory body in charge of protecting the database from exploitation.
FISC SIDEBAR: With the NSA now collecting the private electronic communication of Americans, the FISA Court was assigned the responsibility of oversight; intended to protect the growing metadata library and ensure the 4th Amendment provisions to the constitution were maintained.
The FISC oversight was intended to stop the government from reviewing the private records of Americans, the NSA database, without a warrant.
Because the NSA database was used by the Obama administration, the FBI, to conduct political spying operations, the only normal compliance venue Director Mike Rogers had to reveal the spying was to inform the FISA court (FISC).
NSA Director Mike Rogers was a cabinet member working for President Obama at the time the Obama administration was exploiting the NSA database.
Director Mike Rogers does not appear to have informed congressional oversight. That would have violated the chain-of-command, and the President held absolute power.
Director Rogers could have chosen to inform the congressional Gang-of-Eight of the issue. He did not.
[This is an issue Director Rogers would later address by moving custodial control of the NSA database to Cyber Command (a DoD agency)].
NSA Director Mike Rogers informed the FISA Court of the issue by detailing who the people were who were searched within the database and what the results were over the timeframe of Nov ’15 to April ’16.
The compliance officer provided the audit-trail, audit logs showing who was being spied on, who was being searched (queried), how often and how many times. The audit-trail also showed who was logging in to conduct the spy operations, and what FBI authorized workstations they were using.
Director Rogers informed the court he had blocked FBI access and removed part of the functionality for how the system could be exploited.
The internal investigation by the NSA compliance officer and Rogers was completed and sent to the FISA Court in October 2016, with additional information sent in March 2017.
The FISA Court then responded in April 2017, where Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer outlined the events in a heavily redacted 99-page opinion. Citation HERE.
President Obama conducting political spying operations, through a politically weaponized FBI, against the Republican opposition elements is colloquially called “Spygate.”
Hillary Clinton manufacturing a political dirty trick against Donald Trump accusing him of a Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy, is called “Russiagate.”
President Obama and every member of his cabinet that was involved in the spying operations, used Clinton’s “Russiagate” to cover up Obama’s “Spygate.”
The two controversies are distinct and separate.
Within the evidence trail that documents the Obama spying operation exists: (1) the NSA audit-trail, and, more importantly, (2) the specific document where the NSA notified the FISA Court. Those have never been seen.
While a redacted 99-page response from the court has been reviewed in granular detail, the missing piece of the puzzle; the evidence that proves the operation beyond any reasonable doubt; is the NSA investigative outcome, the notification to the FISC given by NSA Director Mike Rogers to the FISA Court.
The NSA report to the FISA Court is a specific, actionable, discoverable document. I have been on the hunt for that notification report for 8 years.
Now you know why this position is so important.
