The FBI’s versatile 302
One of the most interesting things about the Flynn case is how the recent documents have merely repeated and/or verified things we on the right already knew or suspected. Now we have a more complete story. But it’s not as though the general outlines haven’t been fairly clear from the start – although ignored, covered up, denied, and/or lied about by the left.
Actually, they’re still being ignored, covered up, denied, and/or lied about by the left.
If you go back in time, you can find articles such as this one from December of 2018:
On Tuesday, attorneys for Michael Flynn filed a sentencing memorandum and letters of support for the former Army lieutenant general in federal court. The sentencing memorandum reveals for the first time concrete evidence that the FBI created multiple 302 interview summaries of Flynn’s questioning by now-former FBI agent Peter Strzok and a second unnamed agent, reported to be FBI Special Agent Joe Pientka.
Further revelations may be forthcoming soon following an order entered late yesterday by presiding judge Emmet Sullivan, directing the special counsel’s office to file with the court any 302s or memorandum relevant to Flynn’s interview.
Sound familiar? As they say, “the wheels of justice grind slow.”
More from that same 2018 article:
While Flynn’s sentencing memorandum methodically laid out the case for a low-level sentence of one-year probation, footnote 23 dropped a bomb, revealing that the agents’ 302 summary of his interview was dated August 22, 2017. As others have already noted, the August 22, 2017 date is a “striking detail” because that puts the 302 report “nearly seven months after the Flynn interview.” When added to facts already known, this revelation takes on a much greater significance…
Congress has been trying to get to the bottom of this question for months upon months…
“Did the FBI agents document their interview with Lt. Gen. Flynn in one or more FD-302s? What were the FBI agents’ conclusions about Lt. Gen. Flynn’s truthfulness, as reflected in the FD-302s? Were the FD-302s ever edited? If so, by whom? At who’s direction? How many drafts were there? Are there material differences between the final draft and the initial draft(s) or the agent’s testimony about the interview?”…
The most recent iteration of Sullivan’s standing entered in the Flynn case required Mueller’s office to produce “any evidence in its possession that is favorable to defendant and material either to defendant’s guilt or punishment.”…
Of course, this all assumes that the special counsel’s office still has copies of the initial 302s created, which might not be the case given that when Mueller’s “pitbull,” Andrew Weissmann, led the Enron Task Force, his team, among other things, systematically destroyed draft 302s.
Again – that was written in December of 2018, about a year and a half ago.
Fast forward to an interview with Devin Nunes that occurred two days ago:
BARTIROMO: Let me ask you about this…And that is the so-called Flynn 302. Now, the 302s is a reference meaning that this is notes that FBI agents took after they met with Flynn.
Explain what you think is in the 302 of Flynn. And why have we not seen the exchanges, the notes that the FBI agents took after their meeting in January 2017, when they ambushed General Flynn? Where is the Flynn 302, Congressman?
(LAUGHTER)
NUNES: Well, the 302 is still missing, Maria.
So here is what we know. This report, when it was taken down, after that report was transcribed, we had people at the highest level, the FBI, come and brief us. Plus, we have other sources that also gave us the same information that the FBI agents essentially said, look, there’s nothing to see here, Flynn wasn’t lying.
And that’s what we were told on the record. So we knew this at the beginning of 2017. So you can imagine my astonishment when it began to leak out in the press that General Flynn was being busted for lying to the FBI, and that that’s what the Mueller team, the dirty Mueller team, that’s what they were going to bust him on.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
NUNES: And I told people at the highest levels of the FBI and the DOJ, I said, what are you doing here? Like, we have, on the record, from the highest-level people that he didn’t lie to the FBI…
If that’s what you’re using, if you’re going to drop the charges on Flynn’s son or whatever conspiracy theory they were pedaling against General Flynn they had no possible way to bust him or indict him for lying to the FBI, because then that means that the FBI had lied to us, OK?
Now, so what happened? What happened is that that report was doctored, Maria.
And that report, we know it was doctored, because the lovebirds, we have the text messages of them doctoring the report. But here is the problem.
BARTIROMO: That’s right.
NUNES: The original report that was used to brief the United States Congress, that report is missing. It’s gone. Poof. It’s out of — we can’t find it.
BARTIROMO: Unbelievable. And it was doctored. OK.
You may also recall that the public became more widely aware of the FBI’s method of “recording” interrogations, the 302, back during the “investigation” of Hillary Clinton’s emails. It was a shock to many of us who previously had been unfamiliar with the FBI’s use of the 302, which relies on the agents’ words. In this day and age of recordings of ordinary police interrogations, it is stunning that the FBI continues to employ the 302 instead, but it is exceptionally useful if the agency wants to retain the ability to exonerate someone like Hillary Clinton and frame someone like General Flynn.
In July of 2016 I wrote a lengthy post about 302s in the context of the Hillary investigation. In it, I quoted this article from June of 2011 which described the way the 302 works:
FBI procedure calls for agents to take notes during interviews and use them as the basis for a typewritten summary report, called a form 302. These 302s become exhibits at trial. Along with an agent’s own testimony, they serve as the primary record of an interviewee’s statement.
Because the substance of the reports is so important — and because the reports are inherently subjective — defense lawyers often seek to pick them apart. putting the agent on the defensive. This is particularly the case when defendants are charged with obstruction or lying to FBI agents…
The FBI’s policy allows for statements to be recorded on a limited, highly selective basis; such recordings must have prior approval from bureau chiefs. Former agents say this is extremely rare…
Those in favor of the current FBI approach to audiotapes allege that any blanket, one-size-fits-all policy would be a logistical nightmare for the already-taxed agency. Furthermore, recordings could reveal FBI interview tactics or strategies.
That last sentence takes on special significance in the light of the Flynn interrogation and subsequent coverup of documents, doesn’t it?
Make it a law that FBI interviews with any and all witnesses be recorded, audio and video, and that every such recording is by this law Brady material to be provided to the defendant and his/her counsel without redaction or seal. Further that each and every witness in every case be interviewed and recorded and that failure to do so makes the witness’ testimony inadmissible as evidence against a defendant. Make it a ten-year minimum Federal felony to violate this law. In the meantime, fire each and every FBI agent and employee and turn their buildings around the country to some better and high use … say, maybe, animal shelters or dormitories for homeless and helplessly insane people.
When the FBI’s behavior is moving towards what we’d expect from the KGB, we’ve got a problem.
“… a logistical nightmare for the already-taxed agency.”
Oh those poor FBI agents lavishing thousands of hours on framing Flynn. The FBI has been outed as the Federal Bureau of Intimidation. It should be totally reconstructed or simply disbanded.
It does seem–given the current availability of technical means–both audio and video–to record interviews in their entirety, and not just incidentally to also gather a lot more information as to the attitude and demeanor–the “tells”–of the person being interviewed/interrogated–that hanging on to a plainly outdated memorialization technique that relies on an Agent’s memory and, then, on his hand transcribed 302s, is just an excuse to keep a technique that is obviously subject to a lot of human error and, moreover–as we are witnessing–makes it easy to do all sorts of manipulation of evidence, of whatever the person being interviewed says.
I would think that there are probably ways to make sure that such AV records are not tampered with, and have a proper “chain of custody.”
I would also make it the law that if such a recording was tampered with it could not be used in evidence, and if it “disappeared,” those who were going to be charged using that as evidence would have to have their prosecutions dismissed “with prejudice,” so they couldn’t be brought again at a later time.
Those government employees who were in that “chain of custody” of an interview tape that was found to have been tampered with or “lost” would also be facing their own charges, followed by being fired.
I wrote this comment on the Flynn posting, but it deals with a lot more than Flynn, so please forgive me for putting it here.
The real problem we face is that the depth of corruption and illegality routinely practiced by the Obama administration probably exceeds anything we ourselves can imagine, much less communicate to those who have been fed a steady diet of adulation of Obama.
It actually surprises me how fast the “rotten to the top” hypothesis has taken off, and it concerns me that it may backfire. If Obama is indicted, it will hand a perfect election issue to the Democrats – perfect for them being racially divisive! Talk about right in their wheelhouse!
But of course, if the key players escape justice, it is all but guaranteed that there will be further coup attempts. So how can we throw this proverbial “nuclear hand grenade” – the one that nobody can throw far enough to avoid being killed by it themselves?! I think the only answer is to let the enemy decide to throw it, or not, and suffer the consequences.
We should not pursue charges against Obama, but vigorously seek to indict those who helped him; those who certainly actually hatched the plans. Let those criminals decide whether to throw the grenade at Obama, and I predict most won’t. If any do, they will be destroying themselves, not us. It goes without saying that we cannot offer plea deals for betraying Obama. They will be dead-end losers, hardly examples to encourage future imitation of their treachery.
After we have indicted and successfully prosecuted a few dozen henchmen (especially those scum of the FBI), the truth will dawn on even the part of America that worships Obama. His legacy will be in tatters, and he will have deserted his team. For such an immoral poseur, that will be the ultimate punishment.
Ray Van Dune:
Yes, the Democrats will shout “racist” if Obama is indicted. But I think the Democrats have worn out that card. The vast majority of the black people I have been fortunate to know possess the intelligence and the respect for the rule of law to understand and accept that Obama has broken the law, provided that Barr and Durham present a clear case with sufficient evidence. I also think the reason why they have taken so long to build it is because it is going to go to the top.
Cap’n Rusty, I hear you and admit if I was asked until recently, I might have said the same things as you. But I have become very concerned about the strain on America of another racist episode, and the possibility it could even cost us another term for President Trump.
The fangs of this coup were within the Intel Community organizations, and they must be pulled! But I am not in favor of setting a precedent of indicting a former President – I think it would be safer to let the American people draw the obvious conclusions themselves, rather than potentially trigger a tit-for-tat destructive succession process.
Believe me, it takes all the self-control I can summon up to say that, rather than call for bringing down the fire on Obama that he so richly deserves!
Re 302s–I think that using 302s may have been OK in the past when (perhaps) these federal employees at the FBI could usually be trusted to play things straight, to not try to cook the evidence–(but then, again, maybe I am being way too naive about how things were in the “good old days”).
Now, however?
I think that by their actions–going back at least a decade or two–the people at the FBI and the DOJ, in particular, have forfeited, have run through any confidence about their fidelity and honesty, the trust and confidence in them and their actions that the actions of their predecessors might have built up with the American people, with citizens.
That trust and confidence in them and their motives and actions is just gone, and it isn’t going to come back any time soon–if ever.
And that’s why, if we are to have any confidence at all in the accuracy and completeness of the evidence they gather through interviews/interrogations, using 302s should be immediately discontinued, in favor of video and audio recording interviews with suspects/witnesses.
Here’s an article from January of 2018 in the Political Insider.
“Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe asked to speak privately with White House chief of staff Reince Priebus following a February 2017 intelligence briefing. The scene is described in “Media Madness,” Howard Kurtz’s new book on the press and its relationship with the Trump administration. McCabe said he asked for the meeting to tell Priebus that “everything” in a New York Times story authored by Michael S. Schmidt, Mark Mazzetti, and Matt Apuzzo was “bullsh-t.”
The story was yet another one of those anonymous “bombshells” you’ve heard so much about during the Trump era. It was headlined “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence”
McCabe claimed to want Priebus to know the FBI’s perspective that this story was not true. Priebus pointed to the televisions that were going non-stop on the story. He asked if the FBI could say publicly what he had just told him. McCabe said he’d have to check, according to the book.
McCabe reportedly called back and said he couldn’t do anything about it. Then-FBI director James Comey reportedly called later and also said he couldn’t do anything.
And what happened next? A week later, CNN airs a breaking story about Priebus, claiming that the FBI rejected a “White House request to publicly knock down media reports about communications between Donald Trump’s associates and Russians known to U.S. intelligence.”
See the trap that McCabe set for Priebus?
We know that he and Peter Strzok were bad actors in the FBI. Who will we learn was tainted next?”
https://thepoliticalinsider.com/fbis-andrew-mccabe-priebus-russian-collusion/
This story illustrates the devious techniques the Coup Cabal was using. I heard Reince Priebus repeat that story on Hannity last night.
Never talk to an FBI agent without a lawyer or a tape recorder or both at your side. Very sad that it has come to this.
The FBI has been a lot of politics and power plays going back to its inception with good old J. Edgar Hoover who worked hard to control the message. In the book ‘No Heroes’ by Danny Coulson who worked the Oklahoma City bombing and talked about various screw ups. He describes how the FBI agents were to keep written notes about their activities, write up official reports which were reviewed by their betters and then once the editing was done and spelling corrected all of the field notes were to be destroyed, at least that’s what I remember from reading the book about 20 years ago.
Not exactly a good way for a government agency to conduct itself and be open and transparent whatever those words mean any more. Millions of dollars spent to bring down Trump with a bunch of fabrications and damn lies.
This is why there’s strong sense among some that the FBI needs to be abolished & all its duties moved into US Marshalls or something completely new from the ground up.
I nominate LTG Flynn for that role.
What part of “you have a right to remain silent…. anything and everything you say will and can be used against you in a court of law”, did American citizens talking to the feds NOT UNDERSTAND?
It’s like a bunch of cats pretending to be humans.
Millions of dollars spent to bring down Trump with a bunch of fabrications and damn lies.
This isn’t even half or 10% of the issues. Prepare your heart, there is more.
One would be a fool, if consenting to a meeting with FBI agents, to not bring a recording device (IPhone) to the same. That and a lawyer present should do the trick.
“Make it a law that FBI interviews with any and all witnesses be recorded, audio and video, and that every such recording is by this law Brady material to be provided to the defendant and his/her counsel without redaction or seal.”
This case has destroyed what credibility the FBI still had after other scandals involving the lab, etc. And my daughter is an FBI agent,
This is why there’s strong sense among some that the FBI needs to be abolished & all its duties moved into US Marshalls or something completely new from the ground up.
Fire the top three echelons, then split it up. Also, put legal representation of the government in a different department from that of policing. Posit four federal LE departments: one devoted to maintaining prisons, jails, &c; one devoted to security on federal civilian installations (including cyber security), dignitary protection, and providing supplementary manpower (“DoD” police) to the MPs on military installations; one devoted to investigations of violations of federal law, broken up into specialized bureaux (drug trade, immigration, general smuggling, fraud, racketeering, tax evasion, counterfeiting, espionage, abuses by local police and other officials, bribery); and one devoted to a miscellany of functions (the Marshall Service, stationary services like the point-of-entry inspectorates and the border guard, crime lab, statistical collection, consultative services with state and local government &c). The military, with it’s MPs and it’s interservice investigatory agencies would have a hand in, as would the civil defense apparat (given the LE functions performed by the Coast Guard). So, four departments and fragments of two others.
One problem is the barnacle laden mess that is the federal criminal code. The code needs to be scarified and the sentencing schedule recalculated according to what’s typical at the state level. Note, in New York, you have to be quite willful to get slapped with an indictment for a process crime.
The purpose of NOT going digital is exactly that – let Dem HR Clinton lie and have an illegal server with Top Secret memos, but no indictment. And prosecute a Rep Gen. Flynn who didn’t exactly remember his (legally questionable) recorded call, when questioned by dirty cops in an unethical perjury trap.
Yes on taping all interviews.
Yes on firing all the top 3 levels of the FBI – and handing off their functions into smaller departments.
We also need a “Government Police” office whose job is make sure all Fed employees are obeying all federal laws and internal regulations, especially police and intelligence agencies. Similar to the “Military Police”, whose job is to punish soldiers who violate laws.
It would also be better to have more transfers between agencies, and even have “term limits” for serving in the Fed. Gov’t. Like, 10 years and you stop getting any salary increases; after 12 years you start losing 1% each quarter and get transferred to a non-managerial job. Top folk go to other organizations outside the Federal system, and top private sector/ state & local gov’t folk get hired for the Federal systems.
The deer that was a horse..
the left shows its loyalty and unity by seeing the horse..
if you do not see the horse your a traitor to the one making the declaration
too tired to repeat myself after 10 years of it..
arent you all glad?
Given my penchant for Artificial intelligence and coding such things..
the idea that a video in the near future may mean something as proof is going to be as slippery as anything else…
this is because of something called GAN general adversarial networks..
basically you feed one network truth, and lies and train it on that. The competing network feeds the first one with lies only that it tries to pass off as truth…
eventually, what you get is a network that can make video that humans cant tell are completely fabricated… and this is the infancy of such.. Kaggle just had a competition in trying to detect such false imagery..
all the faces in this image are fake… not real.. they do not exist anywhere
https://wp.technologyreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/screen-shot-2018-12-14-at-10.13.53-am-9.png?resize=1032,688
these are even better and from the article below
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/fg8rphN6Rlw8XQr_zolsoeSgu34=/0x0:3049×2048/920×613/filters:focal(1294×850:1780×1336):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/63999278/fake_ai_faces.0.png
A spy reportedly used an AI-generated profile picture to connect with sources on LinkedIn // A rare example of AI fakes fooling people in the wild
https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/13/18677341/ai-generated-fake-faces-spy-linked-in-contacts-associated-press
Tom Grey —
I get where you’re coming from, but “Government Police” is too close to the KGB or Stasi or Mukhabarat for my tastes. It’s absolutely guaranteed that such an organization would become political and run by the McCabes and Strzoks. Think of how Internal Affairs Division is portrayed in every cop show or movie.
Artfldgr:
Yes, I was thinking about the possibility of fake video. Perhaps there’s only a tiny window of time in which video would work, before it becomes too easy to manipulate it. It’s very troubling. I wonder whether they’ll be able to invent technology to come up with a video method that will be impossible or nearly impossible to counterfeit.
NEO…
i am not talking about manipulating real video…
you can generate them from whole cloth!
while more complicated, and too complex for me to describe
this is not counterfeiting either… its generating
and there are some ways to do so…
however, whatever method you use, will become part of the new method of generation, and so, you make them better by improving the detective part of the GAN..
The movie the irishman used such stuff (similar) to de-age the actors
wasnt very good in my opinion, but they always use technology early
however… soon your going to see some old actors as new actors do not have to look like the oldsters, just imitate their mannerisms as GAN changes an actor, young or old, into humphrey bogart…
oh… and dont worry about the voices… they are also done this way and are excellent… the best training comes from those books on recording… you have the words and the voices…
wait… i have a friend who was famous for writing and lost it… i was going to hit him up with another idea he one a horror award (in Germany) on one i gave him years ago, basically murder by kindness… i wanted to do another that incorporated the things you can do with all this odd technology we are not familiar with… after all… now you can type out words and you can have obama or trumps voice (with vocal mannerisms) perfectly read it back to you or to some place else.
here is an example of obama saying things with image
its very close… and its warning you about the tech… funny funny
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ54GDm1eL0
its a perfect example… on the left is obama talking.. on the right is someone else doing the actual talking as the GAN is converting his movements and voice into obamas… [Jordan Peele]
fun fun..
[ah what i can do and my honesty stops me… too bad i cant rub two coins together]
Ok… if i had some coins i would tell you all how to protect from this in official videos… if the video didnt have X, then it was not generated officially… but there is no way otherwise…
so a camera with some software and so on, can be an official source of what it sees and validated in a way that we would know it matches the source events…
but no one is interested in my tech..
wasted my life and have nothing for retirement trying..
so now i just sit on it and watch…
its not like i havent been doing tech at the top level for 35 years..
and looking for my next gig…
Artfldgr:
I have no trouble believing that it’s very far along, in the way you describe.
At some point it may become impossible to prove what is true and what is false.
It’s already doubtful that most people care all that much what is true and what is false. I certainly do.
Its possible to prove what was made by what device and whether its been edited
the same way we knew that hillary emails were not changed… (1 million prize if you could figure out how to change it, even one character and not have it known)