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Wiretap applications in Fast and Furious

Eric Holder testifies that, while the applications were approved by the Ass't AG and the Deputy AAG, , they didn't really read them before approving.

An extraordinary claim. There's a reason why those have to be approved up to the Ass't AG level. There's probably a provision in the Departmental Manual that states what an approval certifies. (The Interior Dept manual had a provision specifying what a staff attorney's approval signified). I don't think Justice was as strict as Interior was on the details -- I once had an important memo bounced back to me by my boss' boss because on page two there was one space between the period of one sentence and the first letter of the next, and the gov't style manual required two -- but it's likely that everyone who approved that application in fact read every word in it.

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