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VDH - Why FISA-gate is scarier than Watergate
[Wash Times] The Watergate scandal of 1972-74 was uncovered largely because of outraged Democratic politicians and a bulldog media. They both claimed that they had saved American democracy from the Nixon administration’s attempt to warp the CIA and FBI to cover up an otherwise minor, though illegal, political break-in.In the Iran-Contra affair of 1985-87, the media and liberal activists uncovered wrongdoing by some rogue members of the Reagan government. They warned of government overreach and of using the "Deep State" to subvert the law for political purposes. We are now in the midst of a third great modern scandal. Members of the Obama administration’s Department of Justice sought court approval for the surveillance of Carter Page, allegedly for colluding with Russian interests, and extended the surveillance three times. But none of these government officials told the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that the warrant requests were based on an unverified dossier that had originated as a hit piece funded in part by the Hillary Clinton campaign to smear Donald Trump during the current 2016 campaign. Nor did these officials reveal that the author of the dossier, Christopher Steele, had already been dropped as a reliable source by the FBI for leaking to the press. Nor did officials add that a Department of Justice official, Bruce Ohr, had met privately with Steele ‐ or that Mr. Ohr’s wife, Nellie, had been hired to work on the dossier. Posted by: Besoeker 2018-02-08 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=507613 |