FBI violated own rulebook by taking steps to recruit, use Trump campaign ‘spy’: Experts
The FBI’s own guidelines restrict the deployment of informants to spy on Americans, such as the bureau’s decision to plant a human source among Donald Trump’s presidential campaign aides.
The cautionary regulation is contained in the FBI’s nearly 700-page Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide. The restrictions are prompting national security analysts to say the FBI should have heeded its own rulebook, which encourages alternatives to human spies in any investigation, much less one into a presidential political campaign.
The FBI should have focused, they say, on Russian agents who were meddling in the election by hacking computers and by spewing false information on social media.
Instead, the bureau, by striking up what seemed to be innocent during President Obama’s administration, took the momentous step of recruiting a national security academic, Stefan Halper, to spy on Trump associates professional contacts.
Mr. Halper was a “confidential human source,” an official category of spy that is regulated by the FBI’s domestic investigations directive. The FBI completed an updated document in 2013 and posted online a redacted version in 2016.
Human sources are regulated under a program called “Otherwise Illegal Activity,” or OIA. It is called “otherwise illegal” because spying on Americans would be against the law if, as the policy says, the spying is “engaged in by a person acting without authorization.”
Thus, the protocol says the confidential informant must be approved by the Justice Department, meaning an Obama political appointee might have given the go-ahead in summer 2016.
The guideline says a human source should be used only in limited circumstances, which includes “when that information or evidence is not reasonably available without participation in the OIA.”
The rules also say that “otherwise illegal activity” should be “limited or minimized in scope to only that which is reasonably necessary.”
A U.S. official told The Washington Times that the bureau should have targeted Russian intelligence officials first to determine whether there was evidence that they were contacting or colluding with Trump people before authorizing domestic spying by what the source called an “agent provocateur.”
John Dowd, President Trump’s former defense counsel, said the FBI had a duty to notify, not spy on, Trump people.
“If you are concerned that the Russians are trying to penetrate a campaign or meddle with the election campaign process, you include the candidates and their top security professionals in that effort,” Mr. Dowd told The Times.
Obama Justice Department officials considered informing the Trump campaign that it was the target of Russian intelligence but opted not to, according to the final majority Republican report from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
The committee report recommended: “When consistent with national security, the intelligence community should immediately inform U.S. presidential candidates when it discovers a legitimate counter-intelligence threat to the campaign, and promptly notify Congress.”
J.D. Gordon, a former Pentagon spokesman and Trump campaign national security adviser, rejected Democrats’ arguments that the FBI informant was protecting the Republican candidate.
“Obama associates are misleading Americans about FBI surveillance of the Trump campaign,” he said. “If the FBI merely wanted to ‘protect’ the campaign and avoid tipping off the Russians, as we’re being told, they should have informed Mr. Trump of specific allegations about suspected individuals before the surveillance began. Failing that, it looks like one large sting-and-smear operation against the entire campaign, including Mr. Trump.”
https:// www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/may/30/fbi-guidelines-stefan-halper-shouldnt-be-used-spy-/