# Horowitz FISA Report > [!abstract] 🏛️ Official government report > **Issued by:** Office of the Inspector General, [[Department of Justice]] — Inspector General [[Michael Horowitz]] · **Legal basis:** the Inspector General Act of 1978 · **Released:** December 9, 2019 *Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane Investigation.* The Justice Department's own watchdog on two questions: was the FBI right to open [[Crossfire Hurricane]], and were the four applications to surveil [[Carter Page]] under the [[Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act]] accurate? ## What it found **On the opening: yes.** The investigation had an "authorized purpose" and "adequate factual predication," and the review found no documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decision to open it or to investigate four Trump campaign associates. **On the FISA applications: no.** It identified **17 significant errors and omissions** across the four applications, including: - leaving out that Page had previously been a source for the CIA; - overstating the reliability of [[Christopher Steele]] and the [[Steele Dossier]], and omitting information that undercut it; - an FBI lawyer's alteration of a CIA email — the act to which [[Kevin Clinesmith]] later pleaded guilty. Horowitz attributed the failures to gross incompetence and negligence rather than proven intent, and said the findings "don't vindicate anybody who touched this." The report led the FBI to tighten its FISA accuracy procedures. ## The split verdict Attorney General [[William Barr]] rejected the report's conclusion on predication, and [[John Durham]], then running his own review, publicly disagreed with it the same day. Durham's [[Durham Report]] three and a half years later repeated many of Horowitz's criticisms of the applications but produced no evidence overturning his finding on the opening. ## How it is cited The report is cited by both sides, each for half of it. The "[[Deep State]]" narrative uses the 17 errors; defenders of the investigation use the predication finding. Read whole, its message is narrower than either: the investigation was legitimately opened, and the FISA process that supported part of it failed badly — the same failure the [[FISA Court]] page treats as the first serious external test of the warrant system. ## See Also - [[Michael Horowitz]] · [[Crossfire Hurricane]] · [[Carter Page]] · [[Durham Report]] · [[FISA Court]] · [[Inspector General]] · [[Reports Hub]]