detailing its prior relationship with carter page including that carter page had been approved as an operational contact for that other agency from 2008 to 2013, that page had provided information to the other agency concerning his prior contacts with certain russian intelligence officers and that an employee of that other agency assessed that carter page had been candid with them. the fbi never followed up on that information. as a result of these seven significant inaccuracies and omissions, relevant information was not shared with and consequently considered by department lawyers and the fisa court. the fisa applications made it appear as though the evidence supporting probable cause was stronger than was actually the case. we also found basic fundamental and serious errors during the completion of the fbi s factual
we concluded current department and fbi policies are not sufficient to ensure appropriate oversight and accountability when such operations potentially implicate sensitive, constitutionally protected activity and that requiring department consultation at a minimum would be appropriate. we make a recommendation to that effect. one investigative tool which the department and the fbi policy does expressly require express advance approval by a senior department official is the seeking of a court order under fisa. when the crossfire hurricane team first proposed seeking a fisa order targeting carter page in mid august 2016, fbi attorneys assisting the investigation considered it a, quote, close call, closed quote and the fisa order was not requested at the time. however, in september 2016, immediately after the crossfire hurricane team received
reporting from christopher steal considering page s election acts for russian 06 fishls, the department was ready to move forward to obtain feis zoo author to surveil page. the steele reporting pushed fisa over the line in terms of establishing probable cause and we concluded that it played a central and essential role in a decision to seek a fisa order. fbi leadership supported relying on steele s reporting to seek a fisa order after being advised of concerns expressed by a department attorney that steele may have been hired by someone associated with a rival candidate or campaign. surveillance authority under fisa can significantly assist the government s efforts to combat terrorism, clandestine intelligence activity and other threats to the national
that that we issued last year on the midyear investigation and among other things, criticized what occurred last year with regard to the handling of that investigation. on going investigations are need to be protected from outside influence. you don t know as an investigator or you shouldn t conclude as an investigator until you are done with the investigation, you shouldn t be reaching your conclusions until that point. so giving preliminary ideas, advice, guidance, statements, can be misleading and you should not be leaching final conclusions until you get to the end of the investigation. there is a lot of mis information about struck and page. prs has attacked former fbi officials as a way to undermine the investigation. for example, the president tweeted that, and i quote, how
liaison s general recollection was, that mr. page was or is someone who is still who had a relationship with the entity, with the other government agency, but that the lawyer should go look at the report for confirmation. the lawyer then had a conversation with the fbi agent who was going to be the affiant, the person who swore out that final application, fisa application. the agent told us and as detailed in here, was concerned about what he learned about what page said publicly and wanted a definitive answer, as he put it, as to whether page because if the agent if carter page was actually telling the truth, it changes one of the predicates to consider him a foreign agent. that was the concern of the agent. it was going to be the agent who would be swearing out if true, it would be helpful