How Obama Officials Cried ‘Terrorism’ to Cover Up a Paperwork Error

[struggle4progress]

17. There seem to have been at least two efforts to correct a database under the prior administration,

but the data appears to have been automatically exported to other databases, and apparently none were constructed so the origin of the flagging could be determined. So folk repeatedly went to their various databases, found her flagged, and followed standard procedure. It's not evident that any one person would have understood the problem, or had the authority to correct all the databases if the person did understand the problem. The pre-trial government wrangling seems to have been, in part, an effort to reduce or eliminate the need for classified information to support the judge's decision

Does it look ridiculous and unfair? Sure does. Is there evidence of any deliberate cover-up? I don't think so: it looks like a bunch of different folk did their jobs, the way they're supposed to do them, based on the information they had, and the system didn't work very well. Government lawyers typically defend the actions of whatever agency employs them, so if a mistake somehow ultimately involves multiple agencies, it's hard to fix. The intelligence and counter-intelligence folk, by culture and practice, don't want to discuss their methods of obtaining "information" and "analyzing" that information, because they naturally don't want everyone to know what they may know or may not know: so, in particular, they won't want people to have a clear idea what might put them on some watchlist, lest some a-hole who belongs on the list figure out how to stay off the list

In this case, the government clearly stated a mistake had been made, and the judge ordered multiple databases appropriately corrected