It’s Statistically Impossible For The FBI’s Spygate Errors To All Be Mistakes

Others have made a similar observation, but none have put a nice bow on it the way Jason Beale, a retired U.S. Army interrogator and strategic debriefer, has done in this excellent read:

"What put these bloodhounds on the trail of the alleged cheat wasn’t the phone in his lap, or the strange shape of the side of his cap. It was the numbers. The percentages. The law of averages. The wholly improbable, unprecedented, all but impossible string of perfect decisions and corresponding cash-outs that could not possibly be accomplished without, well, cheating.

To the veteran poker players, it was simple: The cards are meant to fall randomly, and the cards for this guy always seemed to fall the same way. The man was cheating.

If you’ve read the Department of Justice inspector general’s report on the Carter Page FISA application, be it the executive summary or the whole thing, you may have come away with the same feeling those poker bloggers had when they took their first look at Postle’s win record at the casino. This isn’t right. This can’t be.

There’s no way the cards can all fall one way, no way every “mistake” can redound in support of the government’s “case” against Page. There’s no statistical way every single oversight, clerical error, unchecked box, unread file, misplaced document, unread email, uncorroborated assumption, unverified assertion, omission of exculpatory evidence, and inclusion of false allegations can all fall against Page, and in favor of the FBI’s goal of providing probable cause to convince the court to believe he was an agent of a foreign power.

There’s no way 17 glaring omissions, mistakes, mischaracterizations, and straight-up lies can make their way, undetected, unquestioned, and uncorrected, through the now-legendary labyrinth of supervisory coordination, from line agents to Woods Procedures to FBI supervisors to DOJ reviewers to FBI counsel, FBI deputy director, FBI director, DOJ general counsel, deputy attorney general, and attorney general certification.

There’s no way none of those people caught one of those 17 mistakes. No way each link in the chain—every single one of them—simply assumed this one time that the previous link had carried out all of their supervisory and verification responsibilities and blindly affixed their certification mark on the package without review. No way it all falls one way.

Unless. Unless..."  

Follow Jason Beale on Twitter @jabeale.