I’m going to walk through a long-held hypothesis of sorts, surrounding how multiple institutions within government were weaponized around politics. The foundation is what we already know about how the intelligence apparatus was politically weaponized by multiple Obama-era officials.
Jeff Carlson has assembled a strong and in-depth outline covering most of the weaponized intelligence agencies and how they related to “spygate” – SEE HERE –
However, there has also been a strong suspicion that most of the corrupt origination activity would never surface.
The downstream ramifications to the institutions of our IC apparatus would be too destructive. What follows below is the story that will never reach sunlight officially.
When reading the Department of State (DoS) letter today, I cannot avoid reviewing the information against the backdrop of known DoS corrupt political activity that extends beyond the Clinton emails scandal. For this explanation, here’s the excerpt that matters:
Forget Clinton’s motives for a moment. We all know her “request” was a proactive measure due to the likelihood her clearance was going to be forcibly revoked. Requesting the removal avoids multiple political and logistical issues of her security file being damaged by a forced revocation. The request is transparent in motive; so lets get beyond the surface issue.
The “researchers” who Secretary Clinton designated is the topic of interest; and the redacted identifications therein are telling. The Executive Order referenced is HERE. The subsection [Sec. 4.4 (a)(2)] involves:
Sec. 4.4. Access by Historical Researchers and Certain Former Government Personnel.
(a) The requirement in section 4.1(a)(3) of this order that access to classified information may be granted only to individuals who have a need-to-know the information may be waived for persons who:
(1) are engaged in historical research projects;
(2) previously have occupied senior policy-making positions to which they were appointed or designated by the President or the Vice President; or
(3) served as President or Vice President.(link)
Essentially what this tells us is that Secretary Hillary Clinton used her authority to waive the ‘need to know‘ limit on the people she listed. In essence, she gave unlimited access to her “researchers” for an unspecified reason.
When I see the wording, immediately I think of two distinct reasons for Clinton to grant her researchers with top-level security access to classified information: (1) to participate in searches of FISA databases (ie. ‘queries’); and (2) to make unmasking requests for any results within those search query results.
Keeping in mind these appear to be State Department access / authorized researchers. The DoS is one of the intelligence authorized access portals. [FBI, DOJ-NSD, NSA, CIA, DoD are others.] In short, Clinton ‘researchers’ would have access to compartmented intelligence gathering systems, ie. FISA intelligence systems.
Now, remember all of the ‘unmasking requests’ attributed to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Powers? Hundreds of them. Ambassador Samantha Powers is a top-level official, for Obama a cabinet level official, within the Department of State.
In October of 2017, HPSCI lead investigative House member Trey Gowdy questioned Ambassador Powers about those unmasking requests.
Prompted to 04:38. Just hit play:
Brett Baier: “You are also looking, and have talked to the former Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power. We reported that she requested or her officer requested 260 plus efforts to unmask, in other words, get who was talking about picked up in surveillance. How did she answer that question? Why so many?”
Trey Gowdy: “Well, I’ll tell you broadly, uh Brett, I think if she was on your show, she would say those attempt to unmask may have been attributed to her. But they greatly exceed, by an exponential factor, the requests that she actually made. So that’s her testimony, uh, and, and she was pretty emphatic.
The surveillance community, the intelligence community, has assigned this number of requests to her – her perspective, her testimony is: ‘they may be under my name, but I did not make those requests‘.”
“So, we’ve got to get to the bottom of that; if there was someone else making requests on behalf of a principal in the intelligence community we need to know that because we are getting ready to reauthorize a program, that’s really important to the country, but also has a masking component to it.”
Can you see the possibilities here?
We already know the intelligence systems were weaponized for political opposition research. The FBI assembled a FISA-Title-1 surveillance warrant on U.S. citizen Carter Page, using completely fraudulent information and misled the FISA court.
Those FISA issues are still being investigated by the Goodlatte/Gowdy Joint House Committee and, the DOJ (Rosenstein) is working earnestly to block any declassification of documents that would evidence the corruption. Additionally, Inspector General Michael Horowitz is also investigating corruption within the FISA process.
However, we don’t need to wait for the House or IG to tell us the FISA(702)(16)(17) search queries were weaponized for political use, because FISA Court Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer already outlined the investigative findings of NSA Director Mike Rogers in his admissions to the FISC (FISA Court).
Reminder:
And, while conducting all this “research”, what have they ever dug up on Trump?
Nothing. Imagine how frustrating THAT is.