WSJ: Susan Rice Was Not Alone In “Unmasking” Team Trump

Wednesday, April 5, 2017
By Paul Martin

by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Apr 5, 2017

As part of its daily wrap of the Susan Rice newsflow, which focused on her first media appearance since she was “outed” as the persona responsible for “unmasking” members of team Trump, the WSJ provides two new pieces of incremental information: i) in addition to Michael Flynn, at least one more member of the Trump transition team was “unmasked” in intelligence reports due to multiple foreign conversations that weren’t related to Russia; and ii) Rice wasn’t the administration official who instigated Mr. Flynn’s unmasking, confirming there is at least one more high-level official giving “unmasking” orders.

But first, a brief detour.

“Unmasking” is a term used when the identity of a U.S. citizen or lawful resident is revealed in classified intelligence reports. Normally, when government officials receive intelligence reports, the names of American citizens are redacted to protect their privacy. But officials can request that names, listed as “U.S. Person 1,” for example, be unmasked internally in order to give context about the potential value of the intelligence. Unmasking is justified for national security reasons but is governed by strict rules across the U.S. intelligence apparatus that make it illegal to pursue for political reasons or to leak classified information generated by the process.

It is the accusation that Rice unmasked members for purely political reasons – ostensibly in coordination with president Obama – that has gotten Republican smelling blood in the water. Republicans have for weeks signaled that they saw unmasking as the key to investigating the source of media leaks damaging to the Trump administration — such as the exposure of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was forced to resign in February after media reports revealed that he misled Vice President Pence about the contents of his discussions with the Russian ambassador.

To that end, earlier this month, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) pressed FBI Director James Comey in a public Intelligence Committee hearing: “It would be nice to know the universe of people who have the power to unmask a U.S. citizen’s name… because that might provide something of a roadmap to investigate who might’ve actually disseminated a masked U.S. citizen’s name.”

He went on to press Comey on whether specific Obama officials, including Rice, would have had the authority to request that a name be unmasked. “Yes, in general, and any other national security adviser would, I think, as a matter of their ordinary course of their business,” Comey answered.

Shortly thereafter, The Hill notes Nunes made his shocking announcement that he — and he alone — had viewed documents that showed inappropriate unmasking by Obama-era officials.

The Rest…HERE

Leave a Reply

Join the revolution in 2018. Revolution Radio is 100% volunteer ran. Any contributions are greatly appreciated. God bless!

Follow us on Twitter