Posted on 02/26/2020 5:39:40 PM PST by bitt
Retired agent says bureaus Obama-era leaders ignored privacy, cost warnings, may have retained program for political espionage
The FBI agent who ran the bureaus warrantless spying program said Wednesday he warned ex-Director James Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe that the program was a useless waste of taxpayer money that needlessly infringed Americans civil liberties but his bosses refused to take action.
Retired Special Agent Bassem Youssef ran the FBIs Communications Analysis Unit from late 2004 until his retirement in late 2014. He told Just the News he fears the deeply flawed program, which was started in response to the Sept. 11 attacks, was allowed to keep going to give Americans a false sense of security in the war on terror and possibly to enable inappropriate spying, such as that which targeted President Trumps 2016 campaign.
I have no doubt, or very little doubt, that it was used for political spying or political espionage, Youssef said during a lengthy interview for the John Solomon Reports podcast.
Youssef confirmed that the FBI performed an audit of the highly classified program (also known as the NSA program because it searched call records captured by the National Security Agency) after Edward Snowden leaked its existence.
The audit showed that while the program had generated two moderate leads for counterterrorism cases, it had not helped thwart dozens of terrorism attacks as officials had claimed, despite costing tens of millions of dollars per year.
In fact, the program was generating large numbers of false negatives and positives, Youssef said.
The audit, he added, also showed there was collateral damage in terms of civil liberties of Americans whose phone records were unnecessarily searched or who were falsely identified as connected to terrorism.
(Excerpt) Read more at justthenews.com ...
BTTT
Another day, more out of control Deep State news.
Will there ever be consequences for the federal overlords?
Yep. My first thought too. The dude is in severe amounts of danger, of committing Arkancide, or the Illinois equivalent. 😁
2004-2014? Shoulda spoke up then.
A real hero now that he sees the wind blowing in the other direction.
Better late than wearing an orange jumpsuit.
Arkancide in 5, 4, 3,...
Special Agent Bassem Youssef did not kill himself!
Lying sack of Shiite deep state tool bag
Seth Rich, Epstein, Phil Haney, McDougal, Brown, Goorda, Foster, etc... didn’t assist in his Arkancide either.
Don’t worry though, Barr has even more experience than Comey at document and evidence burning/vaporization, or “docucide”.
I don't know the answer to that question, but that is the first thing that crossed my mind. We have way too many traitors buried up in the bureaucracy, and it should be sifted like a bag of flour, multiple times. We have our nation at risk.
Give it up folks. If Jesus came down and said Comey and associates were guilty Bill Barr would still need to investigate further. He will still be investigating when Trump leaves office.
BTTT!........................
Here is a link to the 2018 The Hill article:
MSNBC:
Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and the committees top Democrat, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., asked the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate whether the FBI’s treatment of agent Bassem Youssef is “another instance in a pattern of retaliatory actions against whistleblowers,” according to a letter released Thursday by Sens. Specter, Leahy and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
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