Here's Matthew Vadum, at FrontPage Magazine, "Obama’s national security advisor is a liar -- and possibly a felon":
Former President Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice asked for the names of Trump transition officials to be unmasked and made public in raw intelligence files, according to media reports, a move apparently carried out to harm the incoming Trump administration.Keep reading.
As recently as March 22, Rice denied knowing anything about the intelligence reports. In an appearance on “PBS Newshour,” she said pretty definitely, “I know nothing about this.” The new news reports paint Rice as a liar.
The evidence we know about in the Trump-Russia saga so far seems to be pointing at Obama.
Adam Housley of Fox News reports:
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 spreading of the unmasked names was carried out for “political purposes that have nothing to do with national security” or foreign intelligence, Housley said. "It had everything to do with hurting and embarrassing Trump and his team," he said, citing his sources.
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.
What is incidental collection, by the way?
Incidental collection “happens when an individual is in contact with the target of surveillance,” or is communicating “about” the target, according to Robyn Greene. “So if Bob were being targeted for surveillance and Alice called or emailed Bob, Alice’s communications with him would be collected incidentally.”
In this example, “if Bob is targeted for surveillance and Alice contacts him during that surveillance, resulting in the incidental collection of her communications with him, her name should be redacted or ‘masked’ unless leaving it unredacted provides foreign intelligence value.” Masking is done to protect U.S. persons (i.e. U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, etc.) who get inadvertently caught up in the electronic dragnet from being falsely accused of crimes or otherwise improper behavior.
If a National Security Agency analyst “believes Alice’s communications may contain evidence of any crime, the NSA can share those communications with law enforcement or other relevant agencies … even if the crimes are completely unrelated to the purpose for surveilling Bob’s communications, or to foreign intelligence or national security investigations.”
According to former Obama State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, “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,”
Assuming these news reports about data that supposedly was incidentally collected are accurate, they raise a multitude of new questions about the ongoing scandal concerning alleged collaboration between the Trump team and Russia.
We still don’t know who asked then-National Security Advisor Susan Rice to unmask those names – or if she acted on her own initiative. But the most likely culprit has to be President Obama himself, along with those in his inner circle such as his Islamist CIA director John Brennan and his slimy national-security aide Ben Rhodes.
But whoever did the deed, it appears someone used America’s taxpayer-funded national security apparatus to engage in likely unlawful espionage against an opposition presidential campaign, an incoming administration, and that administration’s transition team. It’s the stuff of banana republics, which makes sense, because Obama spent eight long, lawless years trying to turn the United States into precisely that...
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