By Kimberley A. Strassel | The Wall Street Journal
Did the bureau engage in outright spying
against the 2016 Trump campaign?
About That FBI ‘Source’
The Department of Justice lost its latest battle with Congress
Thursday when it allowed House Intelligence Committee members to view
classified documents about a top-secret intelligence source that was part of
the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign. Even without official
confirmation of that source’s name, the news so far holds some stunning
implications.
Among them is that the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of
Investigation outright hid critical information from a congressional
investigation. In a Thursday press conference, Speaker Paul Ryan bluntly noted
that Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes’s request for details on this secret
source was “wholly appropriate,” “completely within the scope” of the
committee’s long-running FBI investigation, and “something that probably should
have been answered a while ago.” Translation: The department knew full well it
should have turned this material over to congressional investigators last year,
but instead deliberately concealed it.
House investigators nonetheless sniffed out a name, and Mr.
Nunes in recent weeks issued a letter and a subpoena demanding more details.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s response was to double down—accusing
the House of “extortion” and delivering a speech in which he claimed that
“declining to open the FBI’s files to review” is a constitutional “duty.”
Justice asked the White House to back its stonewall. And it even began spinning
that daddy of all superspook arguments—that revealing any detail about this
particular asset could result in “loss of human lives.”
This is desperation, and it strongly suggests that whatever is
in these files is going to prove very uncomfortable to the FBI.
The bureau already has some explaining to do. Thanks to the
Washington Post’s unnamed law-enforcement leakers, we know Mr. Nunes’s request
deals with a “top secret intelligence source” of the FBI and CIA, who is a U.S.
citizen and who was involved in the Russia collusion probe. When government
agencies refer to sources, they mean people who appear to be average citizens
but use their profession or contacts to spy for the agency. Ergo, we might take
this to mean that the FBI secretly had a person on the payroll who used his or
her non-FBI credentials to interact in some capacity with the Trump campaign.
This would amount to spying, and it is hugely disconcerting. It
would also be a major escalation from the electronic surveillance we already
knew about, which was bad enough. Obama political appointees rampantly
“unmasked” Trump campaign officials to monitor their conversations, while the
FBI played dirty with its surveillance warrant against Carter Page, failing to
tell the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that its supporting
information came from the Hillary Clinton campaign. Now we find it may have
also been rolling out human intelligence, John Le Carré style, to infiltrate
the Trump campaign.
Which would lead to another big question for the FBI: When? The
bureau has been doggedly sticking with its story that a tip in July 2016 about
the drunken ramblings of George Papadopoulos launched its counterintelligence
probe. Still, the players in this affair—the FBI, former Director Jim Comey,
the Steele dossier authors—have been suspiciously vague on the key moments
leading up to that launch date. When precisely was the Steele dossier delivered
to the FBI? When precisely did the Papadopoulos information come in?
And to the point, when precisely was this human source
operating? Because if it was prior to that infamous Papadopoulos tip, then the
FBI isn’t being straight. It would mean the bureau was spying on the Trump
campaign prior to that moment. And that in turn would mean that the FBI had
been spurred to act on the basis of something other than a junior campaign
aide’s loose lips.
We also know that among the Justice Department’s stated reasons
for not complying with the Nunes subpoena was its worry that to do so might
damage international relationships. This suggests the “source” may be overseas,
have ties to foreign intelligence, or both. That’s notable, given the highly
suspicious role foreigners have played in this escapade. It was an Australian
diplomat who reported the Papadopoulos conversation. Dossier author Christopher
Steele is British, used to work for MI6, and retains ties to that spy agency as
well as to a network of former spooks. It was a former British diplomat who
tipped off Sen. John McCain to the dossier. How this “top secret” source fits
into this puzzle could matter deeply.
I believe I know the name of the informant, but my intelligence
sources did not provide it to me and refuse to confirm it. It would therefore
be irresponsible to publish it. But what is clear is that we’ve barely
scratched the surface of the FBI’s 2016 behavior, and the country will never
get the straight story until President Trump moves to declassify everything
possible. It’s time to rip off the Band-Aid.
