Confirmation of the trip would lend credence to a retired British spy’s report that Cohen strategized there with a powerful Kremlin figure about Russian meddling in the U.S. election. (read more)
It is almost certain that CIA Director John Brennan was the source for the most recent U.K. statement about Mueller having electronic records claiming Michael-Cohen-Travel. This is pertinent because in a recent interview with Rachel Maddow the former CIA Director made some remarkable admissions.
As noted by Jeff at Marketswork:
Now we come to the segment where I believe Brennan may have slipped badly – and exposed some potentially illegal tactics (19:18 mark):
BRENNAN: When I left office on January 20th of 2017, I had unresolved questions in my mind about whether or not any of those U.S. persons were working in support of the Russian efforts.
MADDOW: And those were referred, those concerns about specific U.S. persons referred to the FBI.
BRENNAN: We call it incidental collection in terms of CIA’s foreign intelligence collection authorities. Any time we would incidentally collect information on a U.S. person, we would hand that over to the FBI because they have the legal authority to do it. We would not pursue that type of investigative, you know, sort of leads. We would give it to the FBI.
So, we were picking things up that was of great relevance to the FBI, and we wanted to make sure that they were there – so they could piece it together with whatever they were collecting domestically here.
That’s not how incidental collection is supposed to work. And the collection doesn’t sound incidental.
FISA Title I and III provisions relate to the conduct of electronic surveillance and physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes of persons, facilities, or property inside the United States.
Section 702 permits the government to target for surveillance foreign persons located outside the United States for the purpose of acquiring foreign intelligence information. To carry out monitoring under Section 702, the government chooses targets, which cannot be individuals known to be US persons.
The law specifies that a “significant” purpose of the monitoring must be to obtain “foreign intelligence information”. Again, U.S. Citizens cannot be the primary target.
Targeting procedures are designed to ensure that only foreign persons located outside the U.S. are targeted for foreign intelligence collection purposes. Minimization procedures are intended to protect any U.S. person information that is incidentally acquired in the course of Section 702 collection.
There are many loopholes to the entire process. The FBI can query acquired Section 702 data. And they can do so using U.S. person inquiries – without a warrant. But U.S. persons are not supposed to be a target of the initial Section 702 collection.
Here’s why Brennan probably chose the surveillance route he did.
Unlike Title I and Title III FISA surveillance, Section 702 collection is not subject to individual formal FISA Court approvals. Due to frequency of collection, instead of issuing individual court orders, the FISC approves annual certifications submitted by the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence.
What Brennan discussed sounds eerily similar to what Devin Nunes uncovered in March 2017:
Devin Nunes– “I recently confirmed that on numerous occasions, the intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition. I have seen intelligence reports that clearly show the President-elect and his team were at least monitored and disseminated out in intelligence, in what appears to be raw—well I shouldn’t say raw—but intelligence reporting channels.
Details about persons associated with the incoming administration, details with little apparent foreign intelligence value were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting. From what I know right now, it looks like incidental collection. We don’t know exactly how that was picked up but we’re trying to get to the bottom of it. This is normal incidental collection. It was normal foreign surveillance.
I think the NSA’s going to comply. I am concerned – we don’t know whether or not the FBI is going to comply.”
Centinel2012 