BYRON YORK: As Barr mulls declassification, a familiar tune from critics.
In February 2018, the House Intelligence Committee released the so-called Nunes memo. In four pages, the document, from the committee’s then-chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, revealed much of what the public knows today about the FBI’s reliance on the Steele dossier in pursuing since-discredited allegations that the Trump campaign and Russia conspired to fix the 2016 election. Specifically, it revealed that the FBI included unverified material from the dossier in applications to a secret spy court to win a warrant to wiretap Trump foreign policy volunteer adviser Carter Page.
All that was classified. To release it, the committee appealed to President Trump, who made a declassification order. That is the only way Americans know about the Page warrant. From that knowledge came later revelations about the FBI’s use of confidential informants and undercover agents to get information on Trump campaign figures.
It is good that the public knows such things, just as it is good that the public knows what is in the Mueller report. But in the days before the Nunes memo was declassified, many of the nation’s top current and former intelligence officials, members of Congress, and analysts in the press warned that declassification would do grave damage to American national security.
It didn’t happen.
Now, some of the same people are issuing somber warnings of the damage that will be done if Attorney General William Barr declassifies documents showing what else the nation’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies did in the 2016 Trump investigation.
It’s not national security they’re worried about. It’s their own.
Related: Lindsey Graham says intel officials concerned about exposure of 2016 misbehavior.
Also Related: Overwhelming Majority Want Investigation into Obama DOJ Spying of Trump.
Flashback, March 2017: “Hypothesis: The spying-on-Trump thing is worse than we even imagine, and once it was clear Hillary had lost and it would inevitably come out, the Trump/Russia collusion talking point was created as a distraction.”