National Security Wiretap System Was Long Plagued by Risk of Errors and Omissions
But the damage to the career of Mr. Resnick, who died in 2011, may have been more effective than any policy response, said James A. Baker, who oversaw the FISA process for the Justice Department in that era and was general counsel at the F.B.I. at the time of the Page wiretap.
“The thing that Lamberth did to Resnick put the fear of god in all these people,” Mr. Baker said. “They didn’t want this to happen to them.”
The Hanssen report called for Justice Department lawyers to more closely oversee F.B.I. agents preparing wiretap applications. Mr. Baker used that recommendation to push through a then-secret further tightening of the rules for preparing FISA applications in 2006, including requiring closer scrutiny of the credibility of confidential sources.
