XPost: alt.politics.radical-left, alt.politics.trump, alt.education
XPost: can.politics
From: apes@splcenter.org

The Obama administration’s national security adviser played a
central role in “unmasking” several Trump campaign officials who
had been swept up in U.S. surveillance operations against
foreign targets during last year’s presidential election
campaign, according to current White House officials and sources
on Capitol Hill.

Susan E. Rice requested that names be provided for otherwise
unidentified U.S. people in dozens of raw intelligence reports
relating to the Trump campaign, the sources told The Washington
Times on Monday.

While Ms. Rice’s actions and alleged interest in the Trump
campaign appear to have been within her legal authority as
national security adviser, the potentially explosive revelation
has touched a nerve in Washington and stirred speculation that
she could be called to testify on Capitol Hill about Russian
election meddling.

“Smoking gun found! Obama pal and noted dissembler Susan Rice
said to have been spying on Trump campaign,” Sen. Rand Paul,
Kentucky Republican, wrote Monday on his Twitter feed.

As of Monday night, Ms. Rice had made no public comment on the
situation, first reported by Bloomberg View and confirmed by the
sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity with The Times.

According to regulations governing international and domestic
surveillance of foreign targets, the names of Americans
incidentally collected are required to be blacked out, or
“masked,” when the information is later compiled in a report for
privacy purposes.

Issues of national security or criminality can, however,
override the right to privacy.

Late last month on the PBS “NewsHour,” Ms. Rice was asked
whether any Trump transition officials were the targets of
incidental surveillance. She replied, “I know nothing about
this.”

The claims about Ms. Rice come nearly five years after she was
sharply criticized in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist
attack that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and
three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya.

Ms. Rice, who was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations at the
time, appeared on several Sunday news talk shows during the days
after the attack to spread the later-debunked claim that it had
been carried out not by hardened terrorists, but by a
spontaneous mob angry about an anti-Islam video on the internet.

The sources who spoke with The Times on Monday said a Trump
administration National Security Council staffer, Ezra Cohen-
Watnick, conducted a review in February and discovered multiple
requests by Ms. Rice to unmask American citizens in raw
intelligence reporting on Trump transition activities.

Mr. Cohen-Watnick brought his notice of Ms. Rice’s interest to
the White House general counsel’s office.

“Ezra’s goal was to provide a policy memo on the process by
which Obama administration officials had handled ‘unmasking’ in
general,” said one of the sources who spoke with The Times. “But
in the course of going through the information, he stumbled
across this Susan Rice stuff.”

The 30-year-old Mr. Cohen-Watnick once worked at the Defense
Intelligence Agency for former Trump National Security Adviser
Michael Flynn, who resigned in February after just four weeks on
the job following reports that he misled Vice President Mike
Pence and other officials about his dealings with Russia during
the transition.

Mr. Cohen-Watnick is also close to Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and
adviser, Jared Kushner, and chief presidential strategist
Stephen Bannon, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Obama eased intel sharing
In a separate and potentially related twist, which occurred
before Mr. Trump’s people took over the National Security
Council, the Obama administration moved to significantly relax
restrictions on the sharing of National Security Agency
surveillance intelligence to the nation’s 16 other spy agencies.
Debate in national security circles is so far inconclusive on
the extent to which the move during the final weeks of the Obama
presidency may have impacted the overall Russian probe and
allowed Obama loyalists to leak information for political
reasons.

Sources who spoke with The Times said the information Mr. Cohen-
Watnick unearthed about Ms. Rice is the same as that at the
center of a media and political firestorm surrounding Rep. Devin
Nunes, California Republican and chairman of the House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence. Mr. Nunes’ office would not
comment on the revelations about Ms. Rice.

Last month, Mr. Nunes visited the White House and then held a
press conference outside on the lawn to announce that he had
just viewed raw intelligence reports showing Mr. Trump and his
associates had been swept up in U.S. surveillance of foreign
targets and unmasked.

Mr. Nunes served on the Trump transition team, and his
announcement caused his Democratic counterparts and some leading
Republicans to cry foul and question his impartiality. Several,
including the committee’s ranking member, Rep. Adam B. Schiff,
California Democrat, called for Mr. Nunes to recuse himself from
the House panel’s investigation into Russian election meddling.

This weekend, Mr. Schiff tweeted that he had finally seen the
surveillance material in question and believes it “should have
been shared with the full committee in the first place as part
of our ordinary oversight responsibilities.”

The White House did not weigh in on the claims about Ms. Rice on
Monday, but Mr. Trump has for weeks been tweeting that House and
Senate investigations into Russian meddling in the November
election should be focused on potentially illegal leaks that he
claims the Obama administration made to the media about his
campaign and its contacts with Russian officials.

“The real story turns out to be SURVEILLANCE and LEAKING! Find
the leakers,” the president tweeted on Sunday.

A day earlier, Mr. Trump praised Fox News on Twitter for a
report that the network published online with the claim that
someone “very well known, very high up [and] very senior in the
intelligence world” was responsible for unmasking the names of
several private citizens affiliated with the Trump campaign who
had been swept up in U.S. surveillance of foreign officials.

With that as a backdrop, White House spokesman Sean Spicer told
reporters Monday: “I don’t want to start getting into the
motives. Because we still haven’t — again, me getting to the
motives, assumes certain things in fact that I don’t think we’re
ready to go to yet. Because that, again, would be getting in the
middle of an investigation.

Trump administration critics have accused the White House of
promoting the claims about leaking and unmasking to distract
from allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russian
officials to sway the election in Mr. Trump’s favor.

Flynn’s payments
Meanwhile on Monday, staffers from a different House committee
told The Washington Times that they were awaiting responses to
official requests for information on payments and contacts Mr.
Flynn had with foreign government representatives.

The bipartisan letter by leaders of the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee was sent on March 22 and formally
asked the White House, the FBI, the Defense Department, the
Director of National Intelligence, and the speakers’ bureau,
Leading Authorities Inc., which the Kremlin-backed media outlet
RT used to pay Mr. Flynn $45,000 to appear at an event in Russia
— to surrender all documents related to Mr. Flynn by late Monday.

Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, Utah Republican, vented his
frustration on MSNBC earlier Monday about the payments Mr. Flynn
had received. “You’re just not allowed to accept these types of
payments as a former military officer,” he said.

Mr. Chaffetz also dismissed Mr. Flynn’s desire to be granted
immunity in return for testifying on the Russian election issue.

“I don’t think he should get immunity,” Mr. Chaffetz said.
“Immunity for what?”

Last week, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence denied
Mr. Flynn’s immunity request.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/apr/3/susan-rice-key-in- unmasking-of-donald-trump-campai/
 

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