White House lawyers last month learned that the former national security adviser Susan Rice requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
The pattern of Rice's requests was discovered in a National Security Council review of the government's policy on "unmasking" the identities of individuals in the U.S. who are not targets of electronic eavesdropping, but whose communications are collected incidentally. Normally those names are redacted from summaries of monitored conversations and appear in reports as something like "U.S. Person One."
The National Security Council's senior director for intelligence, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, was conducting the review, according to two U.S. officials who spoke with Bloomberg View on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. In February Cohen-Watnick discovered Rice's multiple requests to unmask U.S. persons in intelligence reports that related to Trump transition activities. He brought this to the attention of the White House General Counsel's office, who reviewed more of Rice's requests and instructed him to end his own research into the unmasking policy.
The intelligence reports were summaries of monitored conversations -- primarily between foreign officials discussing the Trump transition, but also in some cases direct contact between members of the Trump team and monitored foreign officials. One U.S. official familiar with the reports said they contained valuable political information on the Trump transition such as whom the Trump team was meeting, the views of Trump associates on foreign policy matters and plans for the incoming administration.
The U.S. intelligence official who “unmasked,” or exposed, the names of multiple private citizens affiliated with the Trump team is someone “very well known, very high up, very senior in the intelligence world,” a source told Fox News on Friday.
Trump : "They [the medias] should be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody's name".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89hxdCiLdqQ
Probably. But It seemed important to me to note that even Fox News doesn't comply with Trump's will, even them use methods he blames the "fake medias" for using.
when Trump tweeted that Obama was "sick" in his wiretapping claim did that seem odd to you? There's something specific that had to have been behind using that word.
Nunes looked unsettled in front of reporters.
Have you ever noticed that the board libs aren't upset at all at the possibility of Obama surveillance?
They are only upset that he may be exposed for doing it.
If anyone was wronged it was Flynn.
He should have never been unmasked.
I'm starting to like the direction of this whole thing.
.It's hard to believe that President Trump (yes, he's your president, just like that ball of fire in the sky is also your sun, you f'n snowflakes in this country {unless you're an illegal alien of course, then Generalismo Shithead is likely "your presidente"} -but I digress *within a digress*) would make those charges solely as a diversionary ploy knowing full well he'd be called on it. For all his shortcomings, he's confounded the more intelligent among us.
and continues here: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/arti...ser-sought-names-of-trump-associates-in-intel
edit: BC beat me to it. Oh well.
Isn't Obama on a non-extradition island nation in the South Pacific right now? He can f'n stay there.
Unmasking is routine and it's not leaking
Indeed, much about this is highly unusual: if not how the surveillance was collected, then certainly how and why it was disseminated.