The Justice Department’s inspector general has been focused for months on why Andrew McCabe, as the No. 2 official at the FBI, appeared not to act for about three weeks on a request to examine a batch of Hillary Clinton-related emails found in the latter stages of the 2016 election campaign, according to people familiar with the matter.
The inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, has been asking witnesses why FBI leadership seemed unwilling to move forward on the examination of emails found on the laptop of former congressman Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) until late October — about three weeks after first being alerted to the issue, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.
A key question of the internal investigation is whether McCabe or anyone else at the FBI wanted to avoid taking action on the laptop findings until after the Nov. 8 election, these people said. It is unclear whether the inspector general has reached any conclusions on that point.
A major line of inquiry for the inspector general has been trying to determine who at the FBI and the Justice Department knew about the Clinton emails on the Weiner laptop, and when they learned about them. McCabe is a central figure in those inquiries, these people said.
The FBI declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the inspector general. An attorney for McCabe did not respond to a request for comment.
On Monday, McCabe left the FBI, following a meeting with FBI Director Christopher A. Wray in which they discussed the inspector general’s investigation, according to people familiar with the matter. Horowitz announced in January 2017 that he was examining the Justice Department’s handling of the Clinton investigation. His report is expected in the spring.
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The matter of the Weiner laptop emails has been debated publicly for more than a year, in part because many Clinton supporters say the FBI tilted the 2016 race toward Donald Trump when it announced in late October that it was reopening its probe into Clinton’s use of a private email server when she served as secretary of state.
Key parts of what went into that decision have remained murky and are a major focus of the inspector general’s probe, according to people familiar with the matter.
In late September 2016, FBI agents in New York were investigating Weiner for possible Internet crimes involving a teenage girl. In the course of that probe, they discovered that his laptop contained thousands of work emails belonging to Weiner’s then-wife, Huma Abedin. Abedin was a longtime aide to Clinton, and agents wanted to know whether the emails in question might shed new light on the Clinton investigation, which had been closed in July without any charges.
The New York FBI office alerted FBI headquarters to the new email issue within days — accounts differ as to when precisely, but McCabe was aware of the matter by late September or early October at the latest, according to the people familiar with the matter. The agents on the Weiner case wanted to talk to the Clinton email investigators and see whether the messages were potentially important. Some people familiar with the matter said officials at FBI headquarters asked the New York agents to analyze the emails’ metadata — the sender, recipient and times of the messages — to see whether they seemed relevant to the closed probe.
McCabe was involved in those discussions, but there are differing accounts about how much then-FBI Director James B. Comey understood about the matter in the early days of October.
An attorney for Comey could not immediately be reached for comment.
Some people involved at the time said Comey learned of the issue around the same time as McCabe. Others contend Comey did not know about it until weeks later. Senior Justice Department officials, according to several people familiar with the issue, were not notified until mid-October.
But for a period of at least three weeks, according to people involved at the time, nothing much happened — a lag that has sparked the inspector general’s questions.
McCabe’s defenders in law enforcement say that there was nothing nefarious going on — officials were pursuing a careful process of determining whether the emails might be relevant, and that took time.
Other law enforcement officials, however, have said they are concerned that the issue seemed to die for a period of time at McCabe’s desk, without explanation.
On Oct. 24, 2016, the Wall Street Journal reported that McCabe’s wife had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from a close ally of Clinton, then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe. The donations were for McCabe’s wife’s unsuccessful run as a Democrat for the Virginia state legislature.
The dormant laptop issue then appeared to gain new attention inside the FBI and Justice Department. At a meeting of senior officials of both agencies, senior Justice Department official George Toscas asked about the status of the inquiry into the emails on Weiner’s laptop, according to people familiar with the matter.
At the same time, the FBI was facing a new set of questions, this time about McCabe’s role in a stalled probe into the Clinton Foundation. Some within the FBI felt McCabe had repeatedly moved to hamstring that probe and were suspicious of his motives for doing so, according to people familiar with the matter.
McCabe’s defenders inside federal law enforcement have repeatedly said he tried to navigate a sensitive political investigation between Justice Department officials who thought the probe was going nowhere and FBI agents who believed they were being blocked from issuing subpoenas and taking other steps that could uncover critical evidence.
In the midst of fielding questions on that subject, Comey decided on Oct. 28 to notify Congress by letter that he was reopening the Clinton email investigation to see whether the Weiner laptop provided new evidence. In that letter, Comey said he received a formal briefing on the laptop issue a day earlier. The following week, Comey sent a second letter saying that the emails in question did not change the FBI’s conclusions about the Clinton case.
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The Hawaii employee who sent out a false alarm earlier this month warning of an incoming missile attack had a troubled work history and said he misunderstood a drill and believed a ballistic missile was actually heading for the state, according to state and federal investigators.
The employee’s work history was detailed by a state investigation made public Tuesday that found he had “been a source of concern … for over 10 years” to his coworkers. On at least two other occasions, that probe found, this employee also “confused real life events and drills.”
A federal investigation released earlier Tuesday said the employee believed there “was a real emergency, not a drill” when he sent out the Jan. 13 alert that terrified Hawaiian residents. This contradicted the explanations previously offered by Hawaii officials, who have said the alert was sent because an employee hit the wrong button on a drop-down menu.
The cellphone alert sent to Hawaii residents set off waves of panic across the state, coming as heightened tensions with North Korea have fueled fears of nuclear attacks on the United States. To make matters worse, the alarming message blaring “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.” went uncorrected for an agonizing 38 minutes.
Authorities were apologetic after what Gov. David Ige (D) had called “a terrifying day when our worst nightmares appeared to become a reality.” Ige and other officials on Tuesday released the findings of an internal state investigation into the incident and pledged that they had made changes to the state’s emergency management agency.
[‘BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII,’ the alert screamed. It was a false alarm.]
The employee, who was fired last week, has not been identified, and state officials said his name will only be officially released once he finishes appealing the disciplinary action.
Authorities did identify one state employee who lost their job over what happened: Vern T. Miyagi, administrator of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, resigned Tuesday morning and “has taken full responsibility” for the incident, said Maj. Gen. Joe Logan, the state adjutant general, who oversees the agency.
The state report released Tuesday described the employee who sent out the alert as having a poor history dating back more than a decade. Other members of his staff have said they did not feel comfortable with his work, the report said. The employee had been counseled and corrected on the spot, state officials said, but remained in his position.
The Federal Communications Commission, in its own preliminary report, said the state employee had argued that he did believe there was really an attack when he blasted out the alert.
The incident began when a night-shift supervisor decided to test incoming day-shift workers with a spontaneous drill, the FCC report stated. The supervisor managing the day-shift workers appeared to be aware of the upcoming test but believed it was aimed at the outgoing night-shift workers. As a result, the day-shift manager was not prepared to supervise the morning test, the FCC said.
Following standard procedures, the night-shift supervisor posing as U.S. Pacific Command played a recorded message to the emergency workers warning them of the fake threat. The message included the phrase “Exercise, exercise, exercise,” the FCC report said, but it also included “This is not a drill” — language used for real missile alerts.
The worker who then sent the emergency alert said they did not hear the “exercise” part of the message. This person declined to be interviewed by investigators, but the worker did provide a written statement, the FCC said.
According to the FCC report released Tuesday, this worker is the only one who apparently did not understand it was a drill.
An electronic sign let residents in Oahu know that an emergency alert Jan. 13 that said a ballistic missile was headed for Hawaii was false. (Instagram/@sighpoutshrug/via Reuters)
Wireless emergency alerts warning of danger are typically sent out by state and local officials through a partnership between the FCC, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the wireless industry.
Practices vary from state to state over how they handle such alerts. In Washington state, for instance, any message about a possible missile alert would “undergo layers of scrutiny before it was sent,” Karina Shagren, spokeswoman for the Washington Military Department, wrote in an email.
Shagren said her state only has two pre-written alert messages — one related to tsunamis, another to volcanic activity — and each warning requires at least two people to approve before they are sent.
To address what happened in Hawaii, the state’s emergency management officials have said they will require additional approvals before alerts and tests are transmitted. The state suspended emergency alert drills and also plans to provide more warning before drills. Officials in Hawaii also say a second person will be needed to confirm sending out alerts.
The false alert on Jan. 13 was not checked by the Hawaii emergency management agency’s computer systems because there is little difference between the user interface for submitting test alerts and the one for sending actual alerts.
“Hawaii’s alert software allows users to send live alerts and test alerts using the same interface,” said James Wiley, an attorney adviser at the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau. To send an alert, emergency management employees select a pre-written message from a drop-down menu on a computer. They then must click “yes” when the system asks “Are you sure that you want to send this Alert?”
When the alert hit cellphones across Hawaii, people began frantically trying to determine how long they might have to reach safety. Some sought shelter in their homes, while others described “mass hysteria” on the roads.
The alert came at an uneasy moment for many in the western United States. The mounting tensions with North Korea, exacerbated by the pointed war of words between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, have stirred unease about a potential attack on U.S. soil.
Hawaii, given its location in the Pacific, stands as a possible target of a North Korean attack. In a remarkable sign of concern, Hawaii last year brought back its statewide Cold War-style siren to warn of a potential nuclear assault.
Navy Cmdr. David Benham, a Pacific Command spokesman, said in an email Tuesday that his headquarters is using the incident as an “opportunity to improve our internal processes as well as coordinate with state authorities.” He declined to comment on the specifics of those procedures, citing security concerns. “PACOM forces throughout the region are prepared to respond to any contingency,” Benham said.
Officials in Hawaii have also drawn criticism for how long it took them to correct the alert and reassure the public. Ige has said it took him as long as it did to weigh in because he had forgotten his Twitter password.
Three minutes after the message was sent, the day-shift supervisor received the false cellphone alert, and the process of responding to the mistake began. The state emergency management agency notified Ige of the problem. Seven minutes after the alert was sent, officials stopped broadcasting the alert. But because there was no plan for how to handle a false alert, the agency could not issue an official correction.
It was not until 26 minutes into the crisis that officials settled on a proper way to inform the public about the all-clear, and workers began drafting a correction. It took another 14 minutes after that for the correction to be distributed.
The lack of a contingency plan reflected a critical failure on the part of Hawaii’s emergency management agency, said Ajit Pai, chairman of the FCC.
“Every state and local government that originates alerts needs to learn from these mistakes,” Pai said Tuesday. “Each should make sure they have adequate safeguards in place … The public needs to be able to trust that when the government issues an alert it is indeed a credible alert.”
In a separate action Tuesday, the FCC voted to approve new requirements designed to enhance the geo-targeting of cellphone alerts. This move is aimed at making the distribution of alerts more accurate so that those outside of an emergency area will not receive warnings that do not affect them. The FCC will also require cellphone carriers to allow consumers to review any alert for up to 24 hours after they receive them. Carriers will have until November 2019 to implement the changes.
Dan Lamothe contributed to this story, which has been updated multiple times.
Further reading:
‘Is this the end of my life?’: False alert of missile attack sends Hawaii scrambling
Hawaii brings back Cold War-era nuclear warning sirens amid fears of North Korea strike
Hawaii governor didn’t correct false missile alert sooner because he didn’t know his Twitter password
To counter North Korea, admiral says the U.S. should consider adding ballistic missile interceptors in Hawaii
