We Should Care About What Happened to Carter Page

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
To start, this disclosure politicized the ongoing investigation into Russian influence of the 2016 election. In a hearing on the Trump campaign's contacts with the Kremlin, nine days after the Post's story appeared, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee made Page's trip to Moscow and other alleged contacts with Russian officials a key part of his opening remarks.

Second, the disclosure of the warrant placed a cloud of suspicion over a U.S. citizen without due process. The standard for obtaining a FISA surveillance warrant is much lower than, for instance, charging an American citizen as a foreign agent. There is good reason for this. Counter-intelligence investigations are usually aimed at secretly monitoring the activities of foreign spies, not building public cases against U.S. citizens. When the details of such probes are selectively disclosed, the reputational damage is immense. Unlike someone facing charges, the subject can't even really mount a defense.

In an interview Thursday, Page told me, "It’s been the most challenging things that I’ve ever dealt with in my life." And one can see why. Since Yahoo's first big story on his meetings in Moscow, Page has publicly proclaimed his innocence. No charges have been brought against him. And yet the fact that the FBI has taken an interest in him has made it nearly impossible for him to clear his name.

Now it should be said here that there is a lot of smoke surrounding Page. In May, Buzzfeed first reported that the FBI became interested in Page in 2013, after a Russian spy posing as a U.N. diplomat approached him in New York at an energy conference. That nugget was included in public court filings that shared monitored conversations between two Russian agents discussing an American whose name was redacted. Buzzfeed was able to report out that the U.S. citizen was Page. Nonetheless, the court documents never say that Page was successfully recruited.



We Should Care About What Happened to Carter Page
The former Trump aide's reputation has been ruined -- not by a conviction, not by any charges, but by a warrant that was supposed to be secret.
 

This_person

Well-Known Member
The standard for obtaining a FISA surveillance warrant is much lower than, for instance, charging an American citizen as a foreign agent. There is good reason for this.

NO!! There is NOT "good reason" for reducing the liberties of Americans!!!
 
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