# Why did the FBI lie about Carter Page on the FISA warrent? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 13, 2018, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-fbi-lie-about-carter-page-on-the-fisa-warrent/819524 "2018-08-13T15:34:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 14
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-fbi-lie-about-carter-page-on-the-fisa-warrent/819524/261 "2019-12-16T04:33:14Z")
> [@EasyPhil](#): > > You posted a very long quote but it’s clear from the IG Report that Steele not only wasn’t credible, his work was commissioned by Fusion GPS on behalf of the Clinton political machine. The gang leader of the Bloods goes to the police and tells them, “The Crips are planning to rob that bank.” Should the police set up a watch on the bank? Do we suspect that there might be a reason that the leader of the Bloods is ratting out his rival gang the Crips? What do you think the police will actually do in this scenario? > [@](#): > > The Dossier was opposition research which the FBI knew but didn’t tell the FISA court at any time for any of the renewals with the exception I believe of a foot note. It’s clear to everyone that the FBI lied to and misled the court even Comey acknowledges that. You know better than Comey? What’s your credentials? I agree with them and with Horowitz. But I have actually paid attention to what they said which is that the officers should have updated the section on Steele as they went, rather than forgetting about it and simply appending “continuing cause”. They were deficient in that regard and that was wrong of them. The one agent was wrong for failing to report Page’s contacts with the CIA. I do not claim otherwise. But, it is relatively clear that these failures were because of _laziness_. If you can find the part in the document where Hillary Clinton appears, waves a wand in the face of one of the agents, and convinces him to investigate a person out of political animosity, then go for it. But it’s not there. It really isn’t. “Deficient and wrong” is not synonymous with “malevolent”. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-fbi-lie-about-carter-page-on-the-fisa-warrent/819524/262 "2019-12-16T04:37:20Z")
> [@EasyPhil](#): > > Where’s you evidence that Carter Page is an agent of a foreign government? That he said that he is aware that he is working for and providing information to Russian intelligence officers. [https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=22027879&postcount=225](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=22027879&postcount=225) Would you be willing to hold a poll of people to ask whether they see that assertion demonstrated in the quotes provided? ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-fbi-lie-about-carter-page-on-the-fisa-warrent/819524/263 "2019-12-16T04:40:42Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > But, it is relatively clear that these failures were because of _laziness_. Inserting text into an email someone else wrote is not “laziness”. “Malevolent” is much more apt. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-fbi-lie-about-carter-page-on-the-fisa-warrent/819524/264 "2019-12-16T04:49:32Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > Inserting text into an email someone else wrote is not “laziness”. “Malevolent” is much more apt. It is sometimes synonymous, yes. It’s unclear from the text how much he was faking. He could have been wholly falsifying, he could have been summarizing the overall message that he’d gotten from the CIA in a way that is frowned upon (i.e. modifying a quote). There’s no obvious motive for a wholesale fabrication and, it should be pointed out, the principal concern with identifying Page’s status with the CIA was to ensure that _they weren’t wasting time investigating a CIA agent_, not because they were concerned about FISA. For their purposes if Page was a CIA agent, that would be **a good thing**. It would mean that they could just walk over to him and ask him what he knew. Boom, Bob’s your uncle. All this FISA crap and listening to Page’s pizza deliveries would become unnecessary. The indication would seem to be that he determined that Page’s connection wasn’t worth noting, and it was easiest to just edit the CIA’s response to make that more clear in their response. It was an edit in the normal sense of the word - correcting text for clarity. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-fbi-lie-about-carter-page-on-the-fisa-warrent/819524/265 "2019-12-16T05:04:06Z")
[Hanlon's razor - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor) btw [https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=22023727&postcount=185](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=22023727&postcount=185) ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-fbi-lie-about-carter-page-on-the-fisa-warrent/819524/266 "2019-12-16T15:02:45Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > It was an edit in the normal sense of the word - correcting text for clarity. I’d say it’s fundamentally wrong to modify what someone else wrote and pass it off as original. If the meaning is thought to be unclear, it should always suffice to supply the unmodified original followed by comments that provide clarification. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-fbi-lie-about-carter-page-on-the-fisa-warrent/819524/267 "2019-12-16T15:11:56Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > I’d say it’s fundamentally wrong to modify what someone else wrote and pass it off as original. > > If the meaning is thought to be unclear, it should always suffice to supply the unmodified original followed by comments that provide clarification. I don’t disagree. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-fbi-lie-about-carter-page-on-the-fisa-warrent/819524/268 "2019-12-16T15:16:08Z")
Note that Dick Durbin [said yesterday](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-sen-dick-durbin-on-face-the-nation-december-15-2019/) that the U.S. Government owes Carter Page an apology: > [@CBS news interview](#): > > MARGARET BRENNAN: Inspector general laid out significant errors by the FBI. And specifically, I want to ask you about what an FBI lawyer did when he retroactively changed an email that was presented as part of evidence regarding a Trump campaign associate, Carter Page. Jim Comey is on Fox this morning and he said Carter was treated unfairly. Does the U.S. government owe Carter Page an apology? > > SEN. DURBIN: Well, I can certainly tell you, based on what we saw, they do. ---
**Author:** ![EasyPhil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e47c2d/32.png) [@EasyPhil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EasyPhil)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-fbi-lie-about-carter-page-on-the-fisa-warrent/819524/269 "2019-12-16T15:26:10Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > I’d say it’s fundamentally wrong to modify what someone else wrote and pass it off as original. > > If the meaning is thought to be unclear, it should always suffice to supply the unmodified original followed by comments that provide clarification. We can’t provide that kind of benefit of doubt in this instance because there was a pattern and practice of omitting exculpatory information from the warrant applications. It wasn’t a simple mistake. The FBI needed to hide this information to get the warrant and continue it’s renewal and that’s exactly what they did. ---
**Author:** ![EasyPhil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e47c2d/32.png) [@EasyPhil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EasyPhil)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-fbi-lie-about-carter-page-on-the-fisa-warrent/819524/270 "2019-12-16T15:32:04Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > That he said that he is aware that he is working for and providing information to Russian intelligence officers. > > [https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=22027879&postcount=225](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=22027879&postcount=225) > > Would you be willing to hold a poll of people to ask whether they see that assertion demonstrated in the quotes provided? Comey, the former director of the FBI has acknowledged the problems with the FBI and the FISA process. Everyone now knows what the FBI did. Here’s the quote from the IG Report again. Carter Page was working with the CIA and they confirmed that with the FBI who hid that from the FISC. > [@](#): > > Omitted information the FBI had obtained from > another U.S. government agency detailing its > prior relationship with Page, including that Page > had been approved as an “operational contact” > for the other agency from 2008 to 2013, and > that Page had provided information to the other > agency concerning his prior contacts with certain > Russian intelligence officers, one of which > overlapped with facts asserted in the FISA > application; ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-fbi-lie-about-carter-page-on-the-fisa-warrent/819524/271 "2019-12-16T15:35:48Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > Note that Dick Durbin [said yesterday](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-sen-dick-durbin-on-face-the-nation-december-15-2019/) that the U.S. Government owes Carter Page an apology: I’m sure that they’ll give it but my sense is that they got lazy on the Steele section, as said, because they had sufficient continuing cause. That is just my sense, but I am not authoritative on that in any way. That’s a technical no-no. In theory, the judge might have seen that Steele was crap, if his portion got updated with their findings, and the new material might not have been all that impressive.\* But my sense is that they simply lost interest in the probable cause portion since they were past that. The new material was sufficient for continuing and that’s the criteria for continued monitoring. Again, this may be the wrong analysis but my sense from my own life is that if you strap people with a process that they don’t feel serves a purpose, that they’ll give it lip service or bypass it altogether. I would not be surprised if you could solve this particular issue by simply modifying the re-up request to not include anything except what has been discovered in the monitoring period since the last application, rather than asking them to include old, historical notes on how things were started. Functionally, as said, that’s irrelevant. So long as everything was properly predicated at every stage, continuing is reasonable. You don’t stop the investigation when you’ve genuinely found bodies, regardless of what you discover about the initiating data. But as said, I’m sure that they will apologize to Page. But I also doubt that they’ll mean it, because they know what’s under the black and that there’s a reason for those things to be black. And, similarly, I doubt that people will perform better to the current standards just because you have chastised them. “Try harderer” is rarely a solution. Determining why the people are doing bad and finding a way to improve the process so that they do better naturally is the real solution in nearly all cases. You have to work with human nature, not against it. - This is given for the sake of argument. We do not know what the new material was, for the most part. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-fbi-lie-about-carter-page-on-the-fisa-warrent/819524/272 "2019-12-16T15:48:04Z")
> [@EasyPhil](#): > > Comey, the former director of the FBI has acknowledged the problems with the FBI and the FISA process. Everyone now knows what the FBI did. Here’s the quote from the IG Report again. Carter Page was working with the CIA and they confirmed that with the FBI who hid that from the FISC. I do not disagree with any of that. But that is also not, “Hillary Clinton made them do evil things, out of spite, through magical means.” They did things that were opposed to what they were supposed to do in the FISA request and re-authorization system. There is an authoritarian argument that, that is completely unacceptable and wrong. That argument is undeniably true within its own viewpoint of the world. As said in the previous post, I don’t think that viewpoint works as well, in practice, as working with rather than against human nature. If you are concerned about the FISA process, it is more useful to figure out why they were bad at the process and to use this as a case study rather than to view this as a vehicle for “shaming all them people”. They’ll apologize, but I doubt that much would change. But, I’ll also note, that it is the Liberals who are most concerned with ensuring that FISA has guard rails a hundred feet tall. Donald Trump can be quoted encouraging torture, which is pretty well the exact opposite of following FISA meticulously. You might want to consider the question why it is that the party which is less concerned about police abusing their power should suddenly be all up in arms on this one. Usually, they would be the ones offering the defense for this sort of matter. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-fbi-lie-about-carter-page-on-the-fisa-warrent/819524/273 "2019-12-16T19:48:00Z")
And let me continue that thought on further. Let’s say that the United States used to be Great and we want to be Great Again. I would suggest that that point in time was after the Second World War, right? The 50s and early 60s? When, do you believe, the UN was created? 2014? Who lead the creation of it? Was it Zimbabwe? Who lead the movement to make sure that torture was not a component of war, because it is cruel and unusual and that country has a foundational belief that it is **not** a valid method of establishing criminal activities and that you must always go through due process, citizen or not? When was NATO established? Was that 2014? A MAGAer has zero place to complain about FARA violations. If you want to Make America Great Again, I would say that there is only one point in time\* where we decided that we didn’t give a crap about due process. At that same time, we were in a recession, at least in part brought about by spending a lot of money blowing up parts of Iraq for no obvious reason, using falsified information that the White House forced the CIA to manufacture. I’m willing to buy that the 50s and 60s were when America was great. If you’re aware of some metric that points to greatness, at any level, during the Bush II presidency, then go for it. But even then, I am pretty sure that that’s not the time period that Trump is trying to reference when he says, “great _again_”. I would suggest that if you want to be great again, doing the _opposite_ of everything that we were doing at that point in time is a fucking stupid strategy. - In living memory ---
**Author:** ![EasyPhil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e47c2d/32.png) [@EasyPhil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EasyPhil)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-fbi-lie-about-carter-page-on-the-fisa-warrent/819524/274 "2019-12-16T19:54:21Z")
I have no idea what time period Trump is referring to when he says “Make America Great Again” and clearly this episode isn’t making the country “great again”. The irony is that you have people cheering the “surveillance state” on no matter what tactic is used as long as it used against the “Orange Man”. This “Russia” nonsense is just as bad as the “weapons of mass destruction” nonsense. You think people would have learned a lesson, obviously they haven’t. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-fbi-lie-about-carter-page-on-the-fisa-warrent/819524/275 "2019-12-16T19:56:19Z")
So why do you think the FBI did what they did? ---
**Author:** ![EasyPhil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e47c2d/32.png) [@EasyPhil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EasyPhil)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-fbi-lie-about-carter-page-on-the-fisa-warrent/819524/276 "2019-12-16T19:59:19Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > So why do you think the FBI did what they did? Currently I don’t have enough information to determine why…Does it really matter though? The reputation of the FBI has been badly damaged by those at the top. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-fbi-lie-about-carter-page-on-the-fisa-warrent/819524/277 "2019-12-16T20:01:35Z")
> [@EasyPhil](#): > > I have no idea what time period Trump is referring to when he says “Make America Great Again” and clearly this episode isn’t making the country “great again”. So, if it was not that this occurred in a way that implicated Trump in crime, which way do you think he would go on the subject? Is Trump above falsifying information about people? ---
**Author:** ![EasyPhil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e47c2d/32.png) [@EasyPhil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EasyPhil)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-fbi-lie-about-carter-page-on-the-fisa-warrent/819524/278 "2019-12-16T20:07:15Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > So, if it was not that this occurred in a way that implicated Trump in crime, which way do you think he would go on the subject? > > Is Trump above falsifying information about people? If Busch, Clinton, Obama weren’t above falsifying information about people I don’t see why Trump would be any different, just look at the recent stuff about Afghanistan. If Clinton had won the election, you probably wouldn’t see any of this brought to light. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-fbi-lie-about-carter-page-on-the-fisa-warrent/819524/279 "2019-12-16T20:08:16Z")
> [@EasyPhil](#): > > I have no idea what time period Trump is referring to when he says “Make America Great Again” Petty follow-up, but: You don’t say? ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-fbi-lie-about-carter-page-on-the-fisa-warrent/819524/280 "2019-12-16T20:14:13Z")
Anyways, I’ve copied half the document out into the thread. Everyone is free to read the whole thing and determine whether I gave an unfair representation of it. I do not believe that you will find that I have. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-fbi-lie-about-carter-page-on-the-fisa-warrent/819524.md?page=13) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-fbi-lie-about-carter-page-on-the-fisa-warrent/819524.md?page=15)