I bet if the FBI had simply called Apple, they would have gotten good advice.
Exactly!
They did ask Apple for advice, which Apple gave and the FBI disregarded.
Mr. Sewell, the Apple lawyer, explained to the committee that before F.B.I. officials ordered the password reset, Apple first wanted them to try to connect the phone to a “known” Wi-Fi connection that Mr. Farook had used. Doing so might have recovered information saved to the phone since October, when it was last connected to iCloud.
...
“With all due respect to the F.B.I., they didn’t do what Apple had suggested they do in order to retrieve the data, correct?” Mr. Gowdy asked the director. “I mean, when they went to change the password, that kind of screwed things up, did it not?”
The article reads as if they DID call Apple and then ignored Apple's advice and went ahead with their own wrong headed ideas. From the arcticle:
"Mr. Sewell, the Apple lawyer, explained to the committee that before F.B.I. officials ordered the password reset, Apple first wanted them to try to connect the phone to a “known” Wi-Fi connection that Mr. Farook had used. Doing so might have recovered information saved to the phone since October, when it was last connected to iCloud."
There perhaps may be a "would have" missing from that testimony, but it reads as if Apple had been consulted before the FBI instructed the County IT department to reset the iCloud password.
Apple’s Chief Counsel’s testimony to Co gross made the point they have a whole team dedicated to assisting law enforcement. The chances of the FBI not knowing that? Zero.