After the Russia report was submitted last
December, Horowitz announced a broader
audit of the FBI’s spy powers and the accuracy
of its applications before the secretive Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court.
The watchdog office selected for review a subset
of applications in both counterterrorism and
counterintelligence investigations covering the
period from October 2014 to September 2019.
It found problems in each of the more than
two dozen applications it reviewed, including
“apparent errors or inadequately supported facts.”
The audit examined how well the FBI was
complying with internal rules that require
agents to maintain a file of supporting
documentation for every factual assertion they
make in an application. Those rules, or “Woods
Procedures,” were developed in 2001 with a
goal of minimizing errors in the surveillance
applications, known by the acronym FISA.
Horowitz said in a letter to FBI Director Chris
Wray that in four of the 29 FISA applications
his office selected for review, the FBI could not
locate any of the supporting documentation
that was supposed to have been produced at
the time the application was submitted.
Each of the 25 other applications it reviewed
contained “apparent errors or inadequately
supported facts,” the inspector general said.
In those instances, the facts stated in the
applications were either not backed up any
documentation or were inconsistent with
the documentation.
The watchdog office said it found an average of
about 20 issues per application, including one
application with about 65 issues.