FBI Director nominee James Comey said Tuesday in a Senate hearing that the secret Foreign Service Intelligence Act (FISA) court has effective congressional oversight and is “anything but a rubber stamp.”
When pressed by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to answer how the FISA court isn’t just a rubber stamp if it had approved every government request, Comey noted that applications for wiretap warrants are also almost always approved because lawyers “work like crazy” to ensure such requests are in order.
“If we lose that credibility with the court, we worry that we’ve lost something that we’ll never get back,” Comey said.
Comey did not commit to declassifying FISA court opinions when asked about surveillance transparency, but did say it would be a “worthy exercise.”
