Sources and Methods

One of the oft’ told horror stories in the runup to the release of the House Intel Committee memo was that it would scandalously harm national security by disclosing sources and methods.

This is largely true! Not the harm national security part.  But the memo did indeed disclose that the FBI used highly disreputable and biased sources obtained by nefarious methods in order to find a backdoor to spying on a presidential campaign, and this is indeed highly scandalous.  If I were the FBI and DOJ, I would want to keep these sources and methods secret too.

It is appalling that this happened in at least one instance.  But it raises an even bigger question: was this truly a one-off (bad enough), or was it representative of a more systematic practice (which would be far worse)?

I can understand why DOJ and the FBI would fight tooth-and-nail (including, if some late reporting is correct, Rosenstein threatening to subpoena House Intel Committee member/staff text and emails) to prevent the revelation of “sources and methods” in this instance.  What was revealed when the rock was turned over was quite shocking, and it cannot rest here. It is necessary to know whether the entire FISA process is routinely corrupted.