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The FOUR OLC Opinions Retroactively Justifying Telecom Data Collection

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Alright. I lied. I’m not going to post on why I think FBI went to the trouble of getting an OLC opinion that, apparently, opens a huge loophole in privacy protections from data collection until I first lay out all four OLC opinions that we know of that appear to be at least partly responses to Glenn Fine’s efforts to make FBI clean up this program. These are:

  • January 15, 2009: OLC says FBI only has to inform journalists that their data has been subpoenaed if the person approving the subpoena could be expected to know that the subpoena would collect reporters’ data, regardless of the intent of the person who prepared the subpoena
  • November 8, 2008: OLC says that ECPA normally bars the use of sneak-peek and hot number searches
  • January 16, 2009: OLC says that Acting DADs (and certain other acting officials) are authorized to sign NSLs
  • January 8, 2010: OLC says that ECPA allows the FBI to ask for and obtain certain call records on a voluntary basis from the providers, without legal process or a qualifying emergency

Note that of these, only the November 8, 2008 (which is, perhaps not incidentally, the one that restricted, rather than expanded, FBI conduct) has been released by OLC. And of course, two of the opinions appear to have been rushed through in the last days of the Bush Administration, possibly even by Steven Bradbury (though given the delays on approving Dawn Johnsen, fat lot of difference that made).

In this post, I want to show how these opinions appear to be responses to (at a minimum) Glenn Fine’s work, Though, as I said before, probably also to pressure about the warrantless wiretap program.

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Why Did FBI Need the Exigent Letters OLC Memo? (Background Post)

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Yesterday, I did a post on what the DOJ IG Report on “Exigent Letters” revealed about the January 8, 2010 OLC opinion exploiting some kind of huge loophole in the Stored Communications Act. Today, I’m going to look at why–three and a half years after the abuse of exigent letters supposedly ended–Obama’s DOJ felt the need to get what DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine appears to believe is a very dangerous opinion from OLC. After all, the FBI told Fine that “it does not intend to rely on” this opinion (or the interpretation of the law it gives). And, as I’ll explain at more length below, Fine seems reasonably satisfied with the FBI’s efforts to either legally justify or purge much of the data collected under the exigent letter program. So why go to the trouble of getting a new OLC opinion at this late date?

As background, the exigent letter program was a means by which the FBI got call data directly from AT&T, Verizon, and MCI without meeting legal guidelines for getting such information. The paperwork the FBI did give the telecoms was misleading because it claimed that the request was an emergency and it promised a grand jury subpoena to follow which usually never came. Eric Lichtblau reported that one aspect of this program–the community of interest analysis that AT&T provided, in which they would perform a six degrees of Osama bin Laden to find purported associates of terrorists–was a key aspect of Bush’s warrantless wiretap program. And since 2006 (perhaps because of the revelation of the warrantless wiretap program, but also, definitely, in response to Fine’s investigations of the practice), the telecoms and the FBI have tried to retroactively justify their practice. The OLC opinion appears to have been, at least partly, an attempt to invent a legal explanation that would finally do just that.

I made the following conclusions yesterday about what the OLC opinion did.

  • This OLC opinion may not relate exclusively to the use of exigent letters, not least because Inspector General Glenn Fine appears worried the FBI will use it prospectively, not just to retroactively rationalize abuses from the past.
  • Fine appears to suggest the FBI has misrepresented what it was doing with exigent letters in its request for an opinion to the OLC. This is at least the second time they have done so, Fine alleges, in their attempts to justify these practices. In this case, the dispute may pertain to whose phone records they were, what was included among them, and whether they pertained to an ongoing investigation.
  • My guess is that the OLC opinion addresses whether section 2701 of the Stored Communications Act allows electronic communication providers to voluntarily provide data to someone above and beyond the narrow statutory permission to do so in 2702 and 2709 of the Act. (Though see Julian Sanchez’ different take here.)
  • Whatever the loophole FBI is exploiting, it appears to be a use that would have no protections for First Amendment activity, no requirement that the data relate to authorized investigations, and no minimization or reporting requirements. That is, through its acquisition of this OLC opinion, the FBI appears to have opened up a giant, completely unlimited loophole to access phone data that it could use prospectively (though the FBI claims it doesn’t intend to). Much of Fine’s language here is an attempt to close this loophole.

In this post, I’m going to look at some background information that reinforces my argument that the OLC opinion may not relate exclusively to the exigent letters report (or what we see of it). In a follow-up post, I’ll look at some of the reasons why FBI may have felt the need to get this opinion.

The full Exigent Letters Report includes Top Secret intelligence information

Note that there are three versions of the Exigent Letters IG Report:

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has redacted (blacked out) from the public version of this report information that the FBI and the Intelligence Community considered to be classified. We have provided full versions of our classified reports–a Secret version and a Top Secret/Secure Compartmented Information (SCI) version–to the Department of Justice, the Intelligence Community, and Congressional committees. (PDF 14)

At the very least, this note tells us that there are two more layers to the Exigent Letters Report, even beyond the extensive redactions that appear in the sections on Community of Interest requests and journalists calls. And some of this information–the TS/SCI material–is highly classified.

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Why Did the FBI Need the Exigent Letters OLC Memo

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Note: April 12, 2016: I accessed this today and because of some technical issues am not sure whether I published it back in 2010 or not. I’m republishing it dated to the day I wrote it in its apparently incomplete form.

I’ve been working on a series of posts on the January 8, 2010 OLC opinion referenced in the Exigent Letters IG Report. The report describes the FBI request and opinion this way:

[A]fter reviewing a draft of the OIG report the FBI asked the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) for a legal opinion on this issue. 280 When making the request for an OLC opinion, the FBI stated that [three lines redacted]

The FBI presented the issue to the OLC as follows: “Whether Chapter 121 of Title 18 of the United States Code applies to call detail records associated [2.5 lines redacted]

On January 8, 2010, the OLC issued its opinion, concluding that the ECPA “would not forbid electronic communications service providers [three lines redacted]281 In short, the OLC agreed with the FBI that under certain circumstances [~2 words redacted] allows the FBI to ask for and obtain these records on a voluntary basis from the providers, without legal process or a qualifying emergency.

In this post, I looked more closely at the context of the reference in the IG report and drew these conclusions:

  • This OLC opinion may not relate exclusively to the use of exigent letters, not least because Inspector General Glenn Fine appears worried the FBI will use it prospectively, not just to retroactively rationalize abuses from the past.
  • Fine appears to suggest the FBI has misrepresented what it was doing with exigent letters in its request for an opinion to the OLC. This is at least the second time they have done so, Fine alleges, in their attempts to justify these practices. In this case, the dispute may pertain to whose phone records they were, what was included among them, and whether they pertained to an ongoing investigation.
  • My guess is that the OLC opinion addresses whether section 2701 of the Stored Communications Act allows electronic communication providers to voluntarily provide data to someone above and beyond the narrow statutory permission to do so in 2702 and 2709 of the Act. (Though see Julian Sanchez’ different take here.)
  • Whatever the loophole FBI is exploiting, it appears to be a use that would have no protections for First Amendment activity, no requirement that the data relate to authorized investigations, and no minimization or reporting requirements. That is, through its acquisition of this OLC opinion, the FBI appears to have opened up a giant, completely unlimited loophole to access phone data that it could use prospectively (though the FBI claims it doesn’t intend to). Much of Fine’s language here is an attempt to close this loophole.

In this post, I showed how OLC wrote at least four opinions at least partly in response to Fine’s reports on exigent letters; that suggests the January 8, 2010 opinion is just one of several opinions written in an attempt to retroactively clean up after abuses using telecommunication records. In a follow-up post, I suggested that FBI may have requested the January 8, 2010 OLC memo not just because of preliminary findings from the Exigent Letters report, but also in response to developments with (including, potentially, Glenn Fine’s classified IG report on) warrantless wiretapping.

But all of those posts are simply attempts to answer the question, why? Why did DOJ go to the trouble of getting a fourth (at least) OLC opinion to clean up after abuses committed over four years ago? What is the ongoing danger that required another OLC opinion to establish legal cover?

My three wildarsed guesses are:

  • To eliminate problems with poison fruit used in investigations and prosecutions
  • To help avoid legal suits

Eliminating poison fruit

The Exigent Letter OLC Opinion

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Update: Bob Schacht asked for more context, so here goes. This IG Report was the third DOJ’s Inspector General, Glenn Fine, has done on the FBI’s use of National Security Letters and “exigent letters,” though this is the first to focus almost exclusively on exigent letters. In 2003, the FBI installed representatives of AT&T and (later) Verizon and MCI onsite, with computers hooked up to their respective companies’ databases. Rather than using a subpoena or a National Security Letter to get phone records from them (both of which would have required a higher level of review), the FBI basically gave them a boilerplate letters saying it was an emergency (thus the “exigent”) and could they please give the FBI the phone data; the FBI promised grand jury subpoenas to follow. Only, in many cases, these weren’t emergencies, they never sent the grand jury subpoenas, and many weren’t even associated with investigations into international terrorism. In other words, FBI massively abused this system to get phone data without necessary oversight. Fine has been pressing FBI to either establish some legal basis for getting this data or purging it from FBI databases for three years, and they have done that with some, but not all, of the data collected. But the FBI has tried about three different ways to bring this practice into conformity with legal guidelines, all unpersuasive to Fine. The OLC opinion is the most recent of these efforts.

I’ve been very slowly trudging through the DOJ IG Report on Exigent letters. My notes on it are here and a timeline of key dates is here. In this post, I’m going to look more closely at the content of passages in the IG Report referring to a January 8, 2010 OLC opinion relating in some way to telephone records. The OLC opinion was first reported by Ryan Singel in this post. Discussion of it starts on PDF page 276 of the report. In a follow-up post, I will contextualize this close reading with other material from the report.

What follows is the entire text of sections relating to the OLC opinion (in blockquote) interspersed with my comments. Because the footnotes provide the only context for many of the redacted paragraphs, I put them immediately after the paragraphs invoking them.

My preliminary conclusions on this are:

  • As I will explain at length later, this OLC opinion may not relate exclusively to the use of exigent letters, not least because Inspector General Glenn Fine appears worried the FBI will use it prospectively, not just to retroactively rationalize abuses from the past.
  • Fine appears to disagree whether the FBI has represented what it was doing with exigent letters honestly in its request for an opinion to the OLC. This is at least the second time they have done so, Fine alleges, in their attempts to justify these practices. In this case, the dispute may pertain to whose phone records they were, what was included among them, and whether they pertained to an ongoing investigation.
  • My guess is that the OLC opinion addresses whether section 2701 of the Stored Communications Act allows electronic communication providers to voluntarily provide data to someone above and beyond the narrow statutory permission to do so in 2702 and 2709 of the Act.
  • Whatever the loophole FBI is exploiting, it appears to be a use that would have no protections for First Amendment activity, no requirement that the data relate to open investigations, and no minimization or reporting requirements. That is, through its acquisition of this OLC opinion, the FBI appears to have opened up a giant, completely unlimited loophole to access phone data that it could use prospectively (though the FBI claims it doesn’t intend to). Much of Fine’s language here is an attempt to close this loophole.

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Feingold, Durbin, and Wyden Demand the OLC Opinion on Exigent Letters

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As I reported yesterday, the Dawn Johnsen-less OLC wrote an opinion on January 8 retroactively authorizing the FBI’s inappropriate use of the exigent letters to snoop on Americans’ telecomm records.

Now, Senators Feingold, Durbin, and Wyden, have demanded that opinion from Eric Holder. Of note, they tie their demand into DOJ IG Glenn Fine’s comment that DOJ should notify Congress of the opinion and this use of exigent letters so it can consider legislation on that count.

We write specifically because we believe the Department should immediately provide to Congress a copy of the January 8, 2010, Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion that is referenced in the OIG report and that apparently interprets the FBI’s authority to obtain phone records. Although much of the information about the OLC opinion is redacted in the public version of the OIG report, the opinion appears to have important implications for the rights of Americans. The report states that “the OLC agreed with the FBI that under certain circumstances [REDACTED] allows the FBI to ask for and obtain these [phone] records on a voluntary basis from the providers, without legal process or a qualifying emergency.” (p. 264) It further states that “we believe the FBI’s potential use of [REDACTED] to obtain records has significant policy implications that need to be considered by the FBI, the Department, and the Congress.” (p. 265) And finally, it states that the OIG recommends “that the Department notify Congress of this issue and of the OLC opinion interpreting the scope of the FBI’s authority under it, so that Congress can consider [REDACTED] and the implications of its potential use.” (p. 268)

In light of the OIG’s recommendation, please provide Congress with the January 8 OLC opinion immediately.

Remember, as members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Feingold and Durbin (and probably Senate Intelligence Committee member Wyden) have seen the unredacted report, including a description of the OLC’s agreement of the FBI’s use of the letters. And now they’re demanding the opinion itself.

Though, you’d think that, given Fine’s recommendation that DOJ “notify Congress … of the OLC opinion,” the Senate wouldn’t have had to ask.

The FBI's Non-Emergency Exigent Letters

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The WaPo has a story out describing how the FBI, from 2002 until 2006, used exigent letters to collect phone records without the proper underlying terrorist justification.

The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records, according to internal bureau memos and interviews. FBI officials issued approvals after the fact to justify their actions.

[snip]

FBI officials told The Post that their own review has found that about half of the 4,400 toll records collected in emergency situations or with after-the-fact approvals were done in technical violation of the law. The searches involved only records of calls and not the content of the calls. In some cases, agents broadened their searches to gather numbers two and three degrees of separation from the original request, documents show.

MadDog has helpfully linked to a collection of all the emails included individually in the WaPo story.

There are a couple of details I find particularly interesting in this story. First,the exchange showing top FBI officials trying to collect phone records “related to a terrorist organization with ties to the US,” based on an underlying cable that FBI refused to share internally.

Separately, Kopistansky in the FBI general counsel’s office learned in mid-December 2004 that toll records were being requested without national security letters. She handled a request that originated from then-Executive Assistant Director Gary Bald, who had “passed information regarding numbers related to a terrorist organization with ties to the US” and obtained toll records, the memos show.

The communications analysis unit asked Kopistansky to “draw up an NSL” to cover the search, but she was unable to get superiors to tell her which open terrorism case it involved.

Call me crazy, but since we know the FBI and NSA were illegally wiretapping organizations like al-Haramain in 2004, you have to wonder whether this was an attempt to clean up poison fruit from earlier, even more illegal surveillance.

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EFF FOIA Working Thread, Two

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This will be another working thread on the EFF FOIA Documents. Here was the first working thread.

The two sets of documents are:

And here’s the Vaughn Indices DOJ earlier submitted on these documents to help you figure out what they said they had.

For more on what’s in the EFF docs, MadDog and Jim White have a bunch of comments on the documents in this thread.

More efforts to prevent Glenn Fine from doing the IG review

In yesterday’s thread, I noted that Rockefeller’s office was making efforts to ensure that an intelligence IG led the IG audit. On page 7 of this OIP document, there’s more detail as to why they were trying to do so, from another of Rockefeller’s staffers.

On Wednesday, you indicated that the Oversight sectlon (section o) would be problemat¡c lf the DOJ lG was empowered to review NSA’s compliance with acquis¡tion and minimization procedures. Does the language in Wednesday’s draft solve this. problem? The draft indicates that the various lGs (includlng the DOI lG) are authorlzed to revlew “the compliance of their agency or element,” The addltlon seems to prevent the DOJ lG from reviewing  NSA complíance, but we wanted to get a sense of whether you thought the revlsed language would work.

The question is, why did they want to do that? Because Fine would have found something illegal?

More on foreign power employees

Also yesterday I pointed to some concerns about how to wiretap employees of foreign powers overseas. Here’s more (page 8) on that from a Rockefeller staffer.

An authorization under subsection (a) shall not be used to direct surveíllance at a person reasonably believed to be located outside the Uníted States who is known to be a United States person, unless the Attorney General determines that there is probable cause to believe that the person is a foreígn power, agent of a foreign power, or an officer or employee of a foreign power.

Again, the distinction between agent and employee is critical to them for some reason.

More discussion of other ways to conduct surveillance

In an earlier thread, we had some discussion (page 11) about what the other ways to conduct surveillance would be–including a physical search of stored communication. Does that cover all of this reference?

Does that put us in a place whre we have to use electronic methods when perhaps there is a better non-electronic way to do it? (And could be more precise to do it that way).

Bush’s super-human means

I’m struck by this passage (page 40) on SJC’s attempt to strengthen the exclusive means language.

When I think about lt, maybe the title ls helplng us because lt talks about “exclusive statutory “authorities” which ls not the authorlty relled upon by the President (constitutional authorities). Maybe they are unwittingly maklng an argument that will help us, My recollection ls that the debatè over exclusive means was over whether to use exclusive means or exclusive statutory means, Exclusive means won. Thís might inject even more doubt Into the process, although it has the unpleasant effect of providing less flexibility in this area,

First, this is just one of many examples where the DOJ folks treat Congress as the opponent.

But it also reiterates that there’s stuff going on that Bush wasn’t authorizing by statute, but through his own AUMF bullshit power.

Recall, too, that Feingold has repeatedly tried to get Holder to fulfill his promise to withdraw the White Paper and related opinions from 2006 basing authority on AUMF. I wonder if this is why. Which means Obama–then in the Senate–had no clue that there was this extra-legal shit when he pushed for FISA.

Exclusive means for some kinds of electronic surveillance

This passage (page 52) seems to get at why they had to rewrite exclusivity–and how Bush claimed to have not violated the exclusivity provision already under FISA.

Louis’s point is that the Administration and the Vice Chairman had agreed to the 1978 statement on exclusivity,

OK, Strike thc title VII rcfercnce, but make clear that thc reference to eleclronic surveillance is as defined in 1978, i.e., not as limited by thc PAA or this bill.

For exampte, “electronic surveillance (as dcãncd by section 101, without the limitation in section 701),” (or as defined in section 101, as originally enacted in the FISA of t978).

The net would be this: exclusívity would be no lcss than it was in 1978. If there are acquisition activities that never fell under FISA, FISA would not be oxclusive for them, But if they would be elechonic surveillance but for the PAA and this bill, FISA would continue to be exclusive for them.

It’s from Mike Davidson, a Rockfeller staffer. He seems to be working against a background in which McConnell and the Bush Administration had to be convinced to even keep exclusivity in the bill. But that they’re carving out space–with apparent Democratic acquiescence–such that FISA is only exclusive for some sorts of activities. Perhaps, for example, it’s exclusive for wiretapping, but not for collection of signals themselves?

And here’s an email (page 54) from the same general chain, in which DiFi’s staffer tries to nail down precisely what is going on.

Chapters 119 and 121 of title 18, United States Code, and this Act shall be the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance (as defined in Section 101(f), regardless of the limitation of section 701) and the interception of domestic wire, oral, or electronic communications may be conducted.

I am interested in following-up, when the information is available, on any type of collection for which this authority would not be exclusive (as we started to discuss last night).

So at this point DiFi’s staffer didn’t even know what they were trying to carve out.

More Proposed Oversight from John Conyers

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John Conyers has been busy. In addition to drafting bills to improve FISA and PATRIOT (more on that later), he has introduced three more bills that would improve Congressional Oversight of the Executive.

The Department of Justice Inspector General Authority Improvement Act of 2009

This Act will authorize the Department of Justice Inspector General to investigate attorney misconduct within the Department of Justice. Under current law, all allegations of wrongdoing by the Department of Justice attorneys are required to be investigated by the by the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, rather than the Inspector General. In contrast with the statutorily independent Inspector General, the Office of Professional Responsibility is supervised by the Attorney General.

This limitation on authority does not exist for any other agency Inspector General. The Department of Justice Inspector General Authority Improvement Act of 2009 will make the authority of the Department of Justice Inspector General consistent with that of all other agencies and will prevent future abuses and politicization within the Department.

DOJ’s Inspector General, Glenn Fine, has been pushing for this authority for some time (and not just because it would give him more authority). It fixes two problems that exist right now–one, that lawyers in DOJ are not held legally responsible in the same way as others might be, because they escape IG oversight (and often benefit from quiet settlements on complaints handled by OPR). And, more importantly, the current situation (in which OPR–which reports to the Attorney General–conducts investigations of lawyers) makes it almost impossible to investigate the actions of the Attorney General or his close allies. Alberto Gonzales was able to put off investigations into the US Attorney scandal for some time this way.

The Inspector General Authority Improvement Act of 2009

This Act will provide the Inspectors General of the various agencies the authority to issue subpoenas for the testimony of former employees or contractors as part of certain investigations. Under current law, a critical witness can avoid being interviewed by an Inspector General, and thus seriously impede an investigation, by simply resigning from the agency.

The bill contains important limitations on an Inspector General’s subpoena power in order to prevent abuse or damage to ongoing investigations.  Most prominently, an Inspector General cannot issue a subpoena if the Department of Justice concludes in a particular case that the taking of a deposition would interfere with civil or criminal litigation.

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On PATRIOTS and JUSTICE: What We Don’t Know

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The first thing Russ Feingold said in last week’s hearing on the PATRIOT Act renewal is that there’s something about the way the PATRIOT Act works that has not been made public.

Mr. Kris, let me start by reiterating something you and I have talked about previously. And that’s my concern that a critical information about the implementation of the PATRIOT Act has not been made public, information that I believe would have a significant impact on the debate. I urge you to move expeditiously on the request that I and others on this Committee have made before the legislative process is over.

In his statement, Feingold reiterates that concern, comparing the current debate with the earlier debates on FISA and PATRIOT reauthorization.

I welcome the administration’s openness to potential reforms of the Patriot Act and look forward to working together as the reauthorization process moves forward this fall.

But I remain concerned that critical information about the implementation of the Patriot Act has not been made public – information that I believe would have a significant impact on the debate.

[snip]

This time around, we must find a way to have an open and honest debate about the nature of these government powers, while protecting national security secrets.

As a first step, the Justice Department’s letter made public for the first time that the so-called "lone wolf" authority – one of the three expiring provisions – has never been used. That was a good start, since this is a key fact as we consider whether to extend that power. But there also is information about the use of Section 215 orders that I believe Congress and the American people deserve to know. I do not underestimate the importance of protecting our national security secrets. But before we decide whether and in what form to extend these authorities, Congress and the American people deserve to know at least basic information about how they have been used. So I hope that the administration will consider seriously making public some additional basic information, particularly with respect to the use of Section 215 orders.

You get the feeling that Feingold wants to draw attention to this aspect of the Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act that hasn’t been made public, huh?

Before we look at what that might be, let me attend to the earlier references Feingold makes. Read more →

Did Holder Know About the “Significant Misconduct” When DOJ Claimed Sovereign Immunity?

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On April 3, DOJ submitted a filing that argued that no citizen had the ability to sue if she had been wrongly wiretapped under Bush’s illegal wiretap program. The government, DOJ claimed, had sovereign immunity that protected it from such suits.

As set forth below, in the Wiretap Act and ECPA, Congress expressly preserved sovereign immunity against claims for damages and equitable relief, permitting such claims against only a “person or entity, other than the United States.” See 18 U.S.C. § 2520; 18 U.S.C. § 2707. Plaintiffs attempt to locate a waiver of sovereign immunity in other statutory provisions, primarily through a cause of action authorized by the Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2712, but this attempt fails. Section 2712 does not erase the express reservations of sovereign immunity noted above, because it applies solely to a narrow set of allegations not presented here: where the Government obtains information about a person through intelligence-gathering, and Government agents unlawfully disclose that information. Likewise, the Government preserves its position that Congress also has not waived sovereign immunity under in FISA to permit a damages claim against the United States.

Today, just 11 days later, we learn that,

As part of [presumably Glenn Fine’s  Inspector General] investigation [into the warrantless wiretap program], a senior F.B.I. agent recently came forward with what the inspector general’s office described as allegations of “significant misconduct” in the surveillance program, people with knowledge of the investigation said. Those allegations are said to involve the question of whether the N.S.A. targeted Americans in eavesdropping operations based on insufficient evidence tying them to terrorism.

So when Eric Holder’s DOJ made expansive claims arguing that no one could sue federal employees for being wrongly wiretapped under Bush’s illegal program, did he know this revelation from Glenn Fine’s investigation into the wiretapping program? When DOJ claimed sovreign immunity, were they thinking not so much of the Jewel plaintiffs, whose claim was focused on the dragnet collection of US person data, but of the Americans targeted in what Glenn Fine’s office considers "significant misconduct"?

Because if Holder did know (and the timing suggests it is quite likely he did), it makes those cynical claims of sovereign immunity all the more disturbing.

Fine’s investigation will contribute to the larger FAA-mandated Inspector General’s for which there is a presumption of openness. In other words, even if this hadn’t been leaked now, in April, it is supposed to be published in unclassified form in July. Read more →