◆ SpookStack

I don't believe that they intended to go out and obtain information that they knew they could not obtain and said, "We're going to do it anvway.” I think what they did was complete carelessness, did not follow the rules, did not follow appropriate procedures, and obtained information that they could have obtained properly but by taking shortcuts. Now, we didn't do a review to ask everybody what was in their mind and what exactly they did. But we saw inslances where people just simply dida't follow the rules and didn't take appropriate action. CONYERS: But they were being warned. FINE: Yes. CONYERS: This didn’t just come up recently. This goes back to 2004. FINE: In 2004, it is correct that attorneys in the Office of General Counsel had concerns about the exigent letters and weren't saying, "Stop it," but were saying, "We need to take different measures to issue these letters.” CONYERS: Do you think that the law was so complicated that people in good faith just couldn't figure out what it was we were requiring? FINE: 1 think what they did was inappropriately take a model from another context and applied it to this context, which was wrong, it clearly was, and that they did not think carefully and they did not take appropriate actions. Now, I know that the FBI ts conducting a special inspection to look exactly at what everybody knew and when they knew it and why they took the actions that they did. We didn't do that kind of review. We didn't ask everybody up and down the line. And it is possible that people had motivations that were inappropriate. CONYERS: There's no way we can tell. There's no way I can tell, but there’s no way you can tell either. FINE: It is true that we did not do a performance review of every individual. So I think that's an appropriate point, Mr. Chairman, I really do.