The biggest of all BIGGER story aspects to the HPSCI Memo, in the downstream coverage, has been entirely overlooked by all Main Stream Media.  The Department of Justice FBI FISA request was for “Title I” surveillance authority.  This is not some innocuous request for metadata exploration – the FBI said American citizen Carter Page was a “foreign agent of a hostile foreign government”; the FBI was calling Carter Page a spy.

“Title I” FISA surveillance of U.S. citizens is the most intrusive, exhaustive and far reaching type of search, seizure and surveillance authority, permitting the FBI to look at every scintilla of Mr. Page’s life.  All communication, travel and contact can be opened and reviewed.  All aspects of any of Mr. Page’s engagements are subject to being secretly monitored.   This is an entirely different level of surveillance authority, the highest possible, and has nothing to do with FISA-702 search queries (Title VII) of U.S. persons.

To present a methaphor, under Title I FISA authority, Carter Page was essentially ‘patient zero’ in an Ebola pandemic.  Labeling him as a foreign agent allowed the FBI to look at every single person he came in contact with; and every single aspect of their lives and their activities in growing and concentric circles; without limits to current time or historic review.

The “Title I” designation as a foreign agent applied retroactively to any action taken by Mr. Page, and auto-generates an exponential list of other people he came in contact with.  Each of those people, groups or organizations could now have their communication reviewed, unmasked and analyzed by the DOJ/FBI with the same surveillance authority granted upon the target, Mr. Page.

Because the consequences of this type of surveillance are so comprehensive; and because  the severity to the immediate loss of constitutional protection (privacy and liberty) is so stark; the U.S. Government -through the FISA court- intentionally makes it very difficult to gain such Title I designated authority over a U.S. citizen.

Sharyl Attkisson picks up from there with her deep dive into exactly what protections are in place, and the extraordinarily high-bar the DOJ needs to pass in order to gain Title I surveillance authority.

The point is: There are strict rules requiring that each and every fact presented in an FBI request to electronically spy on a U.S. citizen be extreme-vetted for accuracy — and presented to the court only if verified.

There’s no dispute that at least some, if not a great deal, of information in the anti-Trump “Steele dossier” was unverified or false. Former FBI director James Comey testified as much himself before a Senate committee in June 2017. Comey repeatedly referred to “salacious” and “unverified” material in the dossier, which turned out to be paid political opposition research against Donald Trump funded first by Republicans, then by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Presentation of any such unverified material to the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court to justify a wiretap would appear to violate crucial procedural rules, called “Woods Procedures,” designed to protect U.S. citizens.

Yet Comey allegedly signed three of the FISA applications on behalf of the FBI. Deputy Director Andrew McCabe reportedly signed one and former Attorney General Sally Yates, then-Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein each reportedly signed one or more.  (read more)

To think that unverified claims, gossip, media reports, and generally salacious political opposition research could be included in an application to remove an Americans’ right to privacy and liberty is really the BIGGER story being clouded in this entire discussion.

….And keep in mind, amid all of this exhaustive FBI surveillance and DOJ national security division digging into every aspect of his life, Mr. Carter Page has never been accused of any crime, wrongdoing, or subsequent criminal conduct.

It appears the entire reason to label Mr. Page as a Title One “foreign agent” was so the DOJ National Security Division and FBI Counterintelligence Division, could use Mr. Page’s short contact with the Trump campaign as an excuse to monitor everyone else within the campaign before, during and after the election.

After announcing an intent to retire from congress & find a role for himself within the Justice System, congressman Trey Gowdy waxes philosophically about politics having  infected the highest ranks of that system.  In this role Gowdy is attempting to forward-position himself as the heir apparent to Robert Mueller. The positioning is transparent: The Institutions Must Be saved.

Gowdy has, as a survival instinct, split himself away from accepting what those institutions represent today – and how they have been manipulated. Instead Mr. Gowdy replaces current reality by projecting his vision of the institutional intent as formed by his own moral compass. Unfortunately, corruption is fully metastasized within the upper-ranks.  Curative approaches will not work; culling is needed.

The FBI FISA abuses are symptomatic; they are not the disease itself. Chairman Nunes, Chairman Goodlatte and Chairman Grassley have accepted the pathology reports (Horowitz) and are working on a curative treatment. Gowdy cannot bring himself to believe the scope of the pathology within his beloved institutions.  Mueller is of the same ideological mind as Gowdy from the position of having created the system that must now be deconstructed and rebuilt anew.

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If we look upon this Gowdy interview, and his framework of Robert Mueller, from the perspective of Alec Guinness in Bridge On The River Kwai things make sense.

As a prisoner of war, Guinness builds a bridge for the Japanese enemy. He doesn’t want to help the enemy, but he’s proud of the purpose the bridge building has given to his men. He is a proud man and if he builds a good bridge his men will be treated better.

WATCH: (In this scene, Guinness splits)

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While building the bridge, Guinness allows himself to forget the fact it will be used by the enemy to advance against his own interests; the bridge means something to Guinness that causes him to lose sight of its intended purpose. WATCH:

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Gowdy/Mueller are essentially Major Guinness and the corrupted political Justice system is the bridge.

No amount of moral intention will stop the bridge from being used for Machiavellian purpose so long as the bridge is allowed to remain available and operational for the enemy.

Eventually, at the very last minute, Major Guinness realizes that…

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Hopefully, in time, Gowdy will realize the err in his view.  It’s not his fault, he’s never had a father role and he’s latching on to institutions as stability mechanisms.

A very well-centered kitchen counsel appears to know they need to keep wobbly Gowdy away from the most important discussions and plans.

Following up to earlier interviews with James Kallstrom, former Assistant Director of the FBI, and Representative John Ratcliffe (R-TX) who has reviewed the underlying FISA application documents, Maria Bartiromo interviews Representative Peter King.

Representative Peter King discusses his disgust with former FBI Director James Gowdy.

Following up to earlier interviews with James Kallstrom, former Assistant Director of the FBI, and Representative John Ratcliffe (R-TX) who has reviewed the underlying FISA application documents, Maria Bartiromo interviews Representative Peter King.

Representative Peter King discusses his disgust with former FBI Director James Gowdy.

Maria Bartiromo interviews James Kallstrom, former Assistant Director of the FBI and Representative John Ratcliffe (R-TX).  The discussion topic is the HPSCI memo and possible crimes outlined as committed by the senior members of the FBI.

Mr. Kallstrom outlines the malfeasance and FBI corruption as it pertains to the FBI specifics.  Congressman Ratcliffe has viewed the underlying source material for the HPSCI memo and discussed how DOJ Deputy Bruce and Nellie Ohr are connected to a pipeline of information from the Clinton Campaign directly to the DOJ and FBI.

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We shared a discussion thread a few weeks ago about how the media are enmeshed within the entire story of the DOJ and FBI corruption.  The media engagements with the parties swirling around the Clinton-Steele Dossier and DOJ corruption are so pervasive they cannot currently report on the story without exposing their own duplicity.  Michael Isikoff found that reality yesterday when he discovered his reporting was being used by the FBI.

FBI investigator Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page have been shown in their text messages to be leaking stories from the Clinton Investigation, the Trump investigation and the Mueller investigation to journalists at Politico, The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. –SEE HERE–

(Source Link – pdf Page #5) 

Additionally, Christopher Steele has stated in U.K. court records the person in charge of the Clinton Campaign’s opposition research firm, Glenn Simpson from Fusion GPS,  arranged and coordinated for Mr. Steele to talk to several journalists (CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Yahoo News and Mother Jones) while Mr. Steele was also the primary source of information for the FBI investigators (including Strzok and Page):

(Source – page #8)

Make sure you read that full response from Christopher Steele above to see the scope of the media engagements he was conducting.

As more evidence surfaces the relationship between journalists, Fusion-GPS, Chris Steele and the media’s DOJ/FBI sources begins blending together.  The FBI was using media reports, which were based on Fusion-GPS pitches, to bolster its investigative documents to the FISA court:

According to the U.K records, Christopher Steele reports this September 2016 meeting with Isikoff was arranged by Glenn Simpson. According to Michael Isikoff today on his podcast, he met Christopher Steele at a Washington, D.C. hotel in Sept. 2016. They were joined by his “old friend” Glenn Simpson, the founder of opposition research firm Fusion GPS, who Isikoff now defines as a “private investigator.”

So Christopher Steele was meeting with journalists, the journalists were writing articles; the FBI was leaking to media and simultaneously citing those same articles as underlying evidence to support their counterintelligence investigations; and all of this was used to validate the investigative documents the FBI was receiving from Christopher Steele; who, along with the leaking FBI officials, was also the source of the media articles.

FUBAR!  This is exponentially bonkers.

This is a circle of information, all coming from Glenn Simpson at Fusion GPS, who was the opposition research firm being financed by Hillary Clinton, along with FBI officials who were using their own strategic leaks to validate their own investigation.

Think about the scale of the reporting, and reporting on reporting, of anonymous leaks, false leaks, lies from “people with knowledge of the matter”, “government officials involved in the matter”, “people familiar with the matter”, “government sources” etc. all going in one unified and semi-coordinated direction – against the aggregate Trump administration.

Now, it actually gets even more convoluted.

Christopher Steele has sworn under oath that he met with multiple journalists (at least eight organizations) in September, mid-October, and late-October 2016: “at Fusion’s instruction“.  (pdf page #7)

Overlay upon that sworn admission with what Glenn Simpson (Fusion-GPS) told the House Intelligence Committee while also under oath about his involvement in sharing information derived from Christopher Steele:

(Testimony – pdf link, page #147)

…”without my knowledge and against my wishes”? 

Huh?

FBI Director James Comey admits to leaking his ‘memos’ to the New York Times.  FBI #2 Counterintelligence Agent Peter Strzok and FBI Attorney Lisa Page are caught in their text messages leaking to Politico, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

The FBI is caught, in at least one FISA application, using Yahoo media reports provided by them AND their investigative source Christopher Steele to establish a basis for FISA “Title I” surveillance; the most intrusive and wide-open search and surveillance authority possible.

The Clinton Campaign is paying Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research against Donald Trump.  In addition to Glenn Simpson pushing that opposition research into the media, Fusion GPS is also providing that opposition research –including information from contacts with media– directly to the FBI:

(pdf link – page #4)

… In addition to using the Fusion-GPS opposition research to underpin their counterintelligence investigation, the FBI then turn around and leak the same opposition research information to the media to create secondary support for their counterintelligence investigation.

Tell me again how the media can possibly write about this now?

The problem is not just corruption with the U.S. Justice System, the DOJ and the FBI; the problem is corruption within the media.

We’re talking about thousands of hours of media TV pundits, thousands more columns written, and almost every scintilla of it based on originating intelligence sources -from the larger intelligence system- that are now being exposed as duplicitous and conspiratorial in the scale of their malicious intent.

This larger story-line has traveled in one direction. The narrative has only traveled in one direction. Each thread converging on codependent trails for collective stories all going in one direction. One big engineered narrative endlessly pushed. Think about how far the collective media have traveled with this story over the past eighteen months.

Now, in a period of a few weeks, it has become increasingly obvious the collective journey, using all that expended effort, was going in the wrong direction.

The media have fully invested themselves in eighteen months of narrative distribution in only one direction. Not a single MSM entity has questioned their travel as a result of false leaks or false sources in the totality of time they have covered the DOJ and FBI story.

Nothing within their collective need to will-an-outcome will change the media’s proximity to facts when the truthful story behind the DOJ and FBI corruption is finally exposed. The media are so far away from the place where this story ends, they have no inherent capability to even begin to travel in the opposite direction, toward the truth.

The only way they could align with the truth is to admit that virtually every scintilla of their reportage over the past 18 months was inherently false. There’s not a single media outlet capable of doing that.

Think about a New York Times, CNN, New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, Mother Jones, Yahoo News or Washington Post journalist now having to write an article deconstructing an entire foundation of lies they participated in creating.

Do we really think such a catastrophic level of corrupted journalism could reconstitute into genuine reporting of fact-based information?

Impossible.

The media are pointing out that a Federal District Court Judge, has ruled against the release of the memos former FBI Director James Comey wrote to himself while acting head of the FBI.  However, one little thing they fail to notice:

WASHINGTON DC – A federal judge has rejected requests from news organizations to release memos of former FBI Director James Comey’s conversations with President Donald Trump, adding that publicizing the documents could harm special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg on Friday sided with the Department of Justice after multiple news organizations, including CNN and USA Today, sued for the public release of Comey’s memos after their Freedom of Information Act requests were denied. (read more)

ADD:  Thank goodness for DaveNYviii  who reminds us that Senator Chuck Grassley has the Comey memos:

(Link to Grassley Letter)