Interview: Trisha B.Anderson. last position with the FBI was Principal Deputy General Counsel within the Office of General Counsel, and was a lawyer at Covington & Burling at the time of the interview.
“Q Were you part of the FISA application review process for the FISA applications regarding Carter Page?
A I was involved at a supervisory level within the legal chain of command.
Q Did you observe any improper considerations, including political bias, affecting that process?
A No.
Q Did you observe any improprieties in that process that would have required subsequent disclosures to the FISA court about content that the FBI had omitted?
Ms. Anderson. I need to confer -Mr. May we confer?
Ms. Kim. Yes.
Mr. Thank you. Ms. Anderson. -- with FBI counsel about classification. [Discussion off the record.] Ms. Anderson. I've been advised by the FBI lawyers that I can't answer that question in an unclassified setting....
Q Thank you.
In the Carter Page FISA warrant process, are you aware of any attempts by the DOJ or the FBI to intentionally mislead the FISA court?
A No.
Q Are you aware of any efforts to omit evidence or manufacture evidence deliberately?
A No.
Q Are you aware of any instances regarding the Carter Page FISA application of the FBI failing to follow all of its proper procedures in obtaining a FISA warrant?
A No.
Q Are you aware of any effort by the FBI to seek a FISA warrant for Carter Page that was not based on credible and sufficient evidence?
A No.
Mr. Counsel, you may be done with this line ofquestioning.
I would just ask the witness, while you're discussing questions that pertain to FISA applications or the FISA process, just to give us a moment to think about the question just in case we do need to ask to confer.
Ms. Anderson. Sure.
Q Okay. What would be your role in any FISA as far as approval or looking at -- any FISA. No specific case, no specific facts.
A So I typically would not be involved in the minutia of the development of a FISA. Rather, I would expect to be informed about or be brought in to be consulted about FISAs that involve controversial legal issues or fact patterns that present difficult calls about probable cause.
So that's one aspect in which I would -- I was involved and how I viewed my responsibilities with respect to the FISA process.
Another area was with respect to all FISAs going through, before they went to the Director, there was an expectation that there would be an SES-level approver of the FISA. Sometimes that could be me, but oftentimes it was one of my two section chiefs. But if I was the only SES person in the office, that would mean I would be responsible for reviewing the FISA package before it went to the Director.
And then, third, within my branch, we had responsibility for the logistical processing of the FISAs for the entire Bureau. And so I had a support unit who handled the logistics of the process: getting the signatures by executives, walking them over to DOJ, handling the orders once they came back from the FISA court, uploading them into the system, that sort of work.
Q So a FISA package, is it presented to you and also simultaneously presented to others that are also approving or looking at aspects of it, or does it follow a linear path?
A It follows a linear path. There is a system called FISAMS within the Bureau that tracks in a linear fashion all the approvals on a FISA. I'm not part of that approval chain, but I or another SESer in my branch is the final approver on hard copy before a FISA goes to the Director or Deputy Director for signature.
Q And that is the next stop after it would leaveNational Security Law Branch; it would go to the Director or Deputy --
A Correct.
Q -- Director? The Director.
A The Director unless he was unavailable, in which case it would go to the Deputy Director.
Q So this FISA management system you reference, someone that gets it would not do whatever they do unless the person below them has done what they do. It follows this linear path.
A Correct.
Q Okay.
You mentioned earlier -- someone had a question about the FISA court, and I think you said something to the effect that it wouldn't be unusual for supplemental information to be provided to the court when a FISA warrant had been presented to the court if there was something learned by the FBI that needed clarification or a supplement. I thought you said there would be a mechanism --
A Correct.
Q -- to provide additional information.
A Correct.
Q Do you know if any additional information, either supplemental or for clarification, was provided to the court for any of the FISAs in the Russia case?
A This question raises the same classification issue that was raised by the question a few moments ago by the minority staff. And so, based on my consultation with the FBI lawyers, I'm not able to answer that question in this unclassified setting.
Q Okay. Going back to not to a particular case or particular facts, it would be part of the general practice or possibility in dealing with a FISA that you would go back to the FISA court with new information in the interest of being candid with the court?
A Yes, if it met a certain threshold. That's correct.
Q Okay.
What is a Woods file?
A A Woods file is a file of documents that's maintained to support the accuracy of every individual fact that's contained in a FISA application.
Q So this is a file. Any fact that is presented in the application, this file documents the source of that individual fact?
A That's correct.
Q And it would probably be more robust than the actual application. My understanding would be the application is asserting the fact but it might not have every detail about the fact or where the fact came from, where theWoods file would have all of that as a repository.
A That could be the case, yes.
Q And a Woods file is mandatory?
A Correct.
Q And a Woods file gets its name from -- why is it called a Woods file?
A in NSD. I'm sorry. Non-SES. There's --
Mr. Herrington. A former colleague.
Ms. Anderson. A former colleague at the Department of Justice drafted the form, and so the form derives from the individual's name.
BY MR. BAKER:
Q And did the form and the practice of a file result from an issue with FISAs?
A Yes, that's my understanding. It precedes my time at the FBI, but I understood there was a pattern of some incidents of omissions that were of concern to the FISA court that resulted in former Director Mueller actually appearing before the FISA court. And the practices were the result of reforms that were made jointly between the FBI and DOJ in order to ensure that we were meeting the standard of accuracy with greater precision.
Q So it goes towards making more sure that the presentations to the court are accurate?
A Absolutely. It's designed to discipline agents when they are drafting and reviewing affidavits to ensure that each of the facts contained in that affidavit are, in fact, accurate, because they must maintain that file of documents supporting that accuracy.”
If you know, Is the Woods file an item that has been declared but not released or does this file even exist? Has anyone every asked? Does Trump have it? Interesting!
wow, Trisha B. Anderson’s testimony -
WE WANT TO SEE THE WOODS FILE!!!!!!