Susan Rice Story Just another Trump Distraction

Susan Rice 

“Alt-Right” Activist Mike Cernovich First Claimed Rice Requested “Unmasking” Of Trump Officials. Mike Cernovich wrote in an April 2 post on Medium that he can “exclusively report” that the “White House Counsel’s office identified Rice as the person responsible for the unmasking after examining Rice’s document log requests. The reports Rice requested to see are kept under tightly-controlled conditions. Each person must log her name before being granted access to them." [Medium, 4/2/17]

Bloomberg: “Susan Rice Requested The Identities Of U.S. Persons In Raw Intelligence ...That Connect To The Donald Trump Transition And Campaign.” Bloomberg’s Eli Lake published a piece reporting 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” only later clarifying that the former national security adviser’s requests do not vindicate Trump’s wiretap claim. Lake explained “The standard for senior officials to learn the names of U.S. persons incidentally collected is that it must have some foreign intelligence value, a standard that can apply to almost anything. This suggests Rice's unmasking requests were likely within the law.” From Bloomberg (emphasis added):

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."

[...]

Rice's requests to unmask the names of Trump transition officials do not vindicate Trump's own tweets from March 4 in which he accused Obama of illegally tapping Trump Tower. There remains no evidence to support that claim.

But Rice's multiple requests to learn the identities of Trump officials discussed in intelligence reports during the transition period does highlight a longstanding concern for civil liberties advocates about U.S. surveillance programs. The standard for senior officials to learn the names of U.S. persons incidentally collected is that it must have some foreign intelligence value, a standard that can apply to almost anything. This suggests Rice's unmasking requests were likely within the law. [Bloomberg, 4/3/17]

Source Mediamatters.org

http://footprintsstrategies.com