I'm basically agreeing with you, but one of the most amazing things from the court's decision (that didn't make it into the Wired article--bad reporting) is that the FBI agent didn't know that he had filled out the form incorrectly until he was deposed in September 2013.
So I would say that there is more than one bureaucratic mistake that happened here. Nobody went back to Agent Kelley for years and asked, "Hey, man. Why did you fill out this form this way?"
He would have looked at the form, blinked twice, and said "Oh, shit!"--which is what I'm sure happened at the closed court proceedings when he was deposed.
I find it very naive to believe that the FBI agent filled out the form incorrectly.
Looks like a bad excuse to me to get over that issue finally.
It rather looks like that she was put on the list just because of an overzealous agent who didn't want to risc anything or maybe mixed up her name. And he didn't care to put that back, esp. after she complained. So they played the national security game for a while.
Probably the reason for that was the level of secrecy the government tried to maintain over the whole thing. It's likely the agent didn't even know the case was happening until he was told to show up in court. He didn't need to know the woman was contesting so no one bothered to tell him nor ask him about it.
So I would say that there is more than one bureaucratic mistake that happened here. Nobody went back to Agent Kelley for years and asked, "Hey, man. Why did you fill out this form this way?"
He would have looked at the form, blinked twice, and said "Oh, shit!"--which is what I'm sure happened at the closed court proceedings when he was deposed.