It turns out the Trump campaign was under surveillance. This was reportedly in connection with the surveillance of Russians that our intelligence agencies wanted to keep an eye on. In the course of that operation, so it is said, various individuals connected to Donald Trump were also recorded. The protocol, when that happens, is for the names of the individuals recorded but not under investigation to be blacked out from the intelligence reports, their names changed to “Person A,” “Person B,” etc. If there is a need for the investigating authorities to know who these people are, there is a process for “unmasking” them. (Read what “unmasking” entails.)
It turns out that the Obama administration initiated the unmasking of those names, then widely circulating those reports, thus implicating Trump staffers in a Russian connection that might have been innocent. (This may explain how the information came out–that is, was leaked–about Michael Flynn’s meeting with the Russian ambassador, something even Democrats routinely have done.) We now know that Obama advisor Susan Rice initiated the unmasking. As Andrew McCarthy points out, “the thing to bear in mind is that the White House does not do investigations. Not criminal investigations, not intelligence investigations.” Only three agencies do those: the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA.
Understand: There would have been no intelligence need for Susan Rice to ask for identities to be unmasked. If there had been a real need to reveal the identities — an intelligence need based on American interests — the unmasking would have been done by the investigating agencies. The national-security adviser is not an investigator. She is a White House staffer. The president’s staff is a consumer of intelligence, not a generator or collector of it. If Susan Rice was unmasking Americans, it was not to fulfill an intelligence need based on American interests; it was to fulfill a political desire based on Democratic-party interests.
So all of this amounts to using White House power against a political opponent.
From Susan Rice requested to unmask names of Trump transition officials, sources say | Fox News:
Multiple sources tell Fox News that Susan Rice, former national security adviser under then-President Barack Obama, requested to unmask the names of Trump transition officials caught up in surveillance.
The unmasked names, of people associated with Donald Trump, were then sent to all those at the National Security Council, some at the Defense Department, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and then-CIA Director John Brennan – essentially, the officials at the top, including former Rice deputy Ben Rhodes.
The names were part of incidental electronic surveillance of candidate and President-elect Trump and people close to him, including family members, for up to a year before he took office.
It was not clear how Rice knew to ask for the names to be unmasked, but the question was being posed by the sources late Monday.
“What I know is this … If the intelligence community professionals decide that there’s some value, national security, foreign policy or otherwise in unmasking someone, they will grant those requests,” former Obama State Department spokeswoman and Fox News contributor Marie Harf told Fox News’ Martha MacCallum on “The First 100 Days. “And we have seen no evidence … that there was partisan political notice behind this and we can’t say that unless there’s actual evidence to back that up.”
[Keep reading. . .]
Photo of Susan Rice by U.S. State Dept. – http://usun.state.gov/leadership/c31461.htm, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7729725
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