Who is the Traitor

WHO AT NSA UNMASKED NAMES?

White House logs indicate Susan Rice (Obama’s National Security Advisor) consumed unmasked intel on Trump associates.  Rice accessed numerous intelligence reports during Obama’s last 7 months in office….it began in July 2016 around time Trump secured the GOP nomination.  The unmasking accelerated after Trump election in November 2016 launched a transition that continued through January 2017. 

These intelligence reports included some intercepts of Americans talking to foreigners and many more involving foreign leaders talking about the future president, his campaign associates or his transition.  Most, if not all had nothing to do with the Russian election interference scandal, the source said.

Among Obama team cleared to request and consume unmasked NSA based intelligence reports about U.S. citizens were:  NSA Adviser, Susan Rice;  CIA Director, John Brennan; and Attorney General, Loretta Lynch.

Normally, such references to Americans would be redacted or minimized by the NSA before being shared with outside intelligence sources, but in these cases, names were unmasked at request of Rice.  The exact national security justification for Rice accessing reports isn’t clear and may require additional documentation that House and Senate Intelligence Committees have requested from the NSA that is America’s lead Agency in spying on foreign parties.

How this information was disseminated beyond Rice will also be a potential focus of Congressional Oversight (House Oversight Committee Chair, Jason Chaffetz is leaving Congress and Trey Gowdy will take over as Chair.  Republican, Trey Gowdy is brutal in his interrogations…they are now the stuff of political legend)….since lawmakers may want to know if it was briefed to Obama or shared with members of Rice’s larger circle of advisors like Deputy Ben Rhodes.  (Ben Rhodes’ brother is David Rhodes, CBS News President).

Do you remember in a previous interview on PBS, Susan Rice said, “she had no idea what House Intelligence Committee Chair, Devin Nunes, was talking about when he said Obama officials were monitoring Trump associates after election”.

One intelligence professional with detailed knowledge of how NSA and other intelligence agencies share information with the White House during transitions told reporters, Sara Carter and John Solomon, that U.S. intelligence reporting on foreign leaders’ perception of Trump spiked after his unexpected election win in November 2016 creating a trove of information that could be accessed by the outgoing White House.  Those directly familiar with the process acknowledged the breadth of access today could be abused for political espionage or pure prurient interests instead of just compelling national security interests.

A week before the end of Obama’s administration, the intelligence sharing rules were relaxed and opened up to more agencies.  Just the NSA alone opened up to 20 different officials inside the NSA.  The FBI also can unmask names to other intelligence professionals and policy makers.  No wonder the leaks have proliferated!

Whether and how it was used by the Obama team will have to be evaluated separate of the fact that the reporting this time around was more robust because of the circumstances of the election.  Both the Republican Chair and Democrat Vice Chair of House Intelligence Committee have been shown the documents discovered by the National Security Council over the last 10 days. 

The media has given little attention to these red flags being raised by Civil Liberties experts.  The ACLU, an ally of Obama on many issues, is alarmed at what’s happening and has issued a statement during Obama’s term, warning the president’s loosened procedures governing who could request to see unmasked American intercepts by NSA were “grossly inadequate” and lacked “appropriate safeguards”. 

NSA can legally intercept foreigners’ conversations without court permission under Sect. 702 under Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but it cannot target Americans’ conversations overseas.  If an American is accidentally intercepted or 2 foreigners are caught talking about an American, that name is supposed to be redacted in intelligence reports and replaced by a description like “U.S. citizen 1”.

Obama opened the door for his political aides like Rice to more easily gain access to unmasked Americans’ names in NSA intercepts through a series of rule changes beginning in 2011.