This comment is so good I’ve promoted it from comments to the front page. Referring to the revelations about the “unmasking” of the names of Trump Administration officials by Susan Rice in classified reports:
This whole situation is extremely troubling for a number of reasons:
- You have an incoming/new administration with what appear to be at least uncomfortably close ties to one of America’s primary strategic adversaries. The extent and consequence of these ties isn’t yet known.
- You have the outgoing administration possibly using the quite powerful tools of the intelligence community in order to damage a domestic political opponent. We don’t know the extent and consequences of that either.
- In all this, we have factions in the government and especially the always anonymous government officials who will gladly compromise US intelligence collection of foreign adversaries through selective leaks of information, sources and methods for partisan purposes. The vast majority of these leaks clearly come from upper tier political appointees.
- We have the legions of myopic, blinkered partisans with their selective outrage based solely on partisan scorekeeping and not first principles.
- We have a completely ineffective Congress, a powerful Executive that is only held back by the courts which are under increasing political pressure.
- Finally, we have a public that is divided, is ignorant on the details of most of these issues and is kept ignorant by media outlets that selectively filter and spin information to serve various agendas. Amid all this are the various weekly “outrages” that are either manufactured or lack any importance, but serve as distractions or useful political tools for purposes like character assassination. These outrages are quickly forgotten as others rise to replace them in the great circle of life called social media and the 24/7 news cycle.
None of this, on it’s face, is good. It’s evidence we are either in a political crisis or on the cusp of one. We can monitor the building pressure but we cannot predict the spark. In the thread on Venezuela I thought about taking issue with [ed. another commenter’s] comment about how we aren’t in a position to sneer about other countries, but on second thought I think he’s right.
A crisis is often necessary to bring needed change in the face of sclerotic governance, but there’s no guarantee that we won’t auger in like Venezuela is doing.
Again, the Susan Rice story is bullshit. Rice cannot unmask anyone, only the leaders of the intel community can do that. No unmasking occurred. But it should have. Had we actually unmasked Flynn and Page and Manafort earlier we might not be in this mess now.
By repeating this phony news story you are participating in Russian/Trumpian efforts to obscure the facts, Dave, you are aiding Russian agitprop. It takes very little research to see that this is a phony distraction, and I’m frankly surprised and disappointed by you.
People who talk to Russian spies have to expect that their conversation will be taped. US persons were not being monitored, Russian agents were. It is the job of intel to monitor contacts of this nature. Or are Trumpies now demanding an end to all intelligence collection?
Carter Page admits openly now to having been in contact with FSB agents. Manafort has been caught laundering money through Cyprus. Flynn has lied repeatedly about his Russian and Turkish employers and may have conspired to commit a kidnapping of a US resident. Roger Stone admits to having helped Wikileaks serve the Russian subversion effort. DeVos’ creepy husband has now been outed reaching out to Russians. Every day there’s another new disclosure of Russian influence in the Trump camp.
Nunes’s story is laughable: he went to the WH to get secret information he had to run back and report to the White House? Um. . . what? There is obviously a cover-up under way. This whole matter could probably be put to rest if Trump released his tax returns, or instructed his people to co-operate. So why, if he’s not guilty, is he so frantically covering up and obscuring?
That’s reality, Dave, and you are completely missing the story. You are avoiding it, turning a blind eye and indulging in a degree of indifference to corruption and subversion I would not have expected from you. Good god, man, a foreign power interfered in our election, and helped elect a man who is clearly incompetent, corrupt, dishonest and a felon beside, and you can barely bring yourself to address it. You’re in the midst of some bastard child of Watergate and the Rosenbergs and you’re not even paying attention.
But there’s not much point in my debating this – time will tell the tale. The FBI is investigating, as is the Senate, as are the media. In the end this will be a story of money-laundering by Manafort and the Trump crime family, and of those same criminals being compromised by the FSB. Trump is panicking, throwing scat around his cage because as dim as he is, he still senses the noose tightening. For some reason, you don’t.
Dave,
We know Rice received raw intel regarding certain Trumo associates, which is supposed to happen (so far as I am aware) only if requested.
How did Rice know what persons on whom to request the intel, why did she want it and what did she do with it?
That’s a really good question. Does anyone have a really good answer? My only guess is other sources.
I think that there are so many competing versions of what happened, almost all based upon anonymous sources, that we don’t really know what happened. In the age of the internet and hyper-partisanship we have to reach conclusions right away, w/o really knowing who did what. I would much prefer that we wait to get some legitimate reports. Until then we can just have fun sniping at each other.
Steve
Thanks for promoting my comment Dave.
Readers may find this useful – it’s an excellent explanation of how masking works in practice. For context, the author is a SIGINT veteran and a die-hard nevertrumper.
Thanks for that link, Andy. I was unaware of how disliked Rice was by intelligence officials (though I was aware of her abusive personality so it isn’t a surprise.)
How likely is it the details of a masked report were sufficient for her to figure out who they were referring to?
Russia is not a “strategic adversary” of the American nation.
Why equate the nation with the NSA/Patriot Act Police State Empire, occupying Europe, using Nato to bully Russia, steal land which has been Russian oriented since the Kiev crystallizing, the Empire which expands Greater Israel through the Mideast, overthrowing governments there and in South America, as it attempts also to have full spectrum dominance worldwide ,even unto in the South China Sea?
You simply play into the hands of fake liberals at their core imperialists who favor the Police State and Empire over any purposeful or accidental actions by Trump which could bring America home again while tossing the aliens out.
Ben,
It’s hard to say because it really depends on the context of the report as well as the intercept. Sometimes it’s possible figure it out or at least have a good idea – other times there’s no clue.
If you want to look at the specific regulations and don’t mind jargony bureaucratic legalese, the ACLU has a declassified copy of relevant signals intelligence directive (PDF File).
Section 7 and annex A contain the relevant rules for when information about US persons can be disseminated.
Ken,
“Russia is not a “strategic adversary†of the American nation.”
Like it or not, it is a strategic adversary. I wish that weren’t the case, but I can’t turn back the last three decades.
That article backs up what everything else has said–Susan Rice couldn’t just get the identity of whomever was concealed. The agency involved had to approve it. So it’s hard to see where any of this is leading except that it was all above board.
Also,
Schindler is way off the deep end with Russia. He’s been predicting wars with Russia on a monthly basis the past couple of years. He also is happy to claim that Snowden is a Russian agent. I find it hard to believe that he ever went anywhere in his real job. I also remember that his dick ended up on the internet, which is always a sign of a quality spy.
I would add that the main reveal of the Panama Papers was that the wealthy in kleptocratic countries like Russia are eager to launder their money into the First World, where it can then be laundered more efficiently. Paul Manafort’s houses or a credit risk like Trump might .have been entry points. And the fact that Breitbart was paying its hack staffers 150K also makes me a bit suspicious that they were sitting on a pile of dirty money.
Modulo,
All that really means is it’s legal for Rice to have abused her position. And it is.
Rice has misled the public before with massively wrong statements about Benghazi and Beau Bergdahl, which she never cleaned up. Now she is caught in conflicting stories about her role in the unmasking of names and dissiminatng info that could be politically used against an incoming administration – one who was poised to reverse much of the outgoing administration’s agenda.
In conjunction with what this loyal NSA aid to Obama is said to have done, you have a Democrat president who earlier was caught saying he wantd more flexibility with Putin, coupled with his non-actions of never putting a strong hand up to restrain Russian aggression until the very end of his term in office. This same American president also indicated little interest n pursung Russian election interloping until after his nemesis, Trump, unexpectedly won an election HRC was primed to win. Lastly, the Intel Wall remained intact for the entirety of Obama’s term in office until an EO was suddenly exercised and signed within weeks of Trump taking his oath of office. This Last minute EO allowed a greater dissimination of raw data to other agencies, creating a greater ease to covertly receive and “leak” all kinds of information.
Coincidence? I don’t think so!
Ben,
I think that’s right. Also, this allegation will be very difficult to prove even if it’s true. No one can know what’s in Rice’s mind and so proving her intent was political would be close to impossible. At most, she might get in trouble for improperly sharing info, but even that is a stretch – despite clear violations, no one got even a slap on the wrist for all the classified info on Hillary Clinton’s server.
So, this will probably go nowhere. It’s interesting that Rice’s denial was very carefully worded – she didn’t claim that no unmasking occurred, she’s denied that no politically motivated unmasking occurred.
And contra what Michael said above, we know that unmasking occurred – otherwise we wouldn’t know, to give one example, that it was Michael Flynn that spoke with the Russian Ambassador on the phone.
Jan,
It’s true that President Obama signed a new EO right before leaving office that allows greater dissemination of raw intelligence (ie. intel that does not have US person information removed). However, that EO was in the works for a while and it doesn’t change the conditions or rules for masking/minimizing US persons. There’s some background on it here.
Now Trump says Rice may have committed a crime:
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/us/politics/trump-interview-susan-rice.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0&referer=https://t.co/ecLMpio7VU
Responses here and across the spectrum demonstrate how badly we need a non-partisan commission of some kind to resolve these issues.
Too many people with too little information and knowledge are stoking these controversies.
ON Susan Rice, she was also part of the coterie pushing and hiding the Benghazi machine running guns to Syria to overthrow Assad, which is even bigger the scandal than for which she and Hillary are generally blamed.(See Hersh on the subject.)
Seems like Trump is edging closer to purposely or accidentally being lured into attempting the same, with he and Haley’s accusations and continuing denunciations of Syria, Russia, Iran, and even China.
Jan, what Russian aggression?
Well Susan Rice has made her second denial. The key phrase is “Absolutely not for any political purposes, to spy, expose, anything.”
Note: What follows is speculation based on reading between the lines of various articles.
Where is this all headed? Start by looking at this looking at this article. Key parts of it were Susan Rice asked to unmask two officials, one of which is Michael Flynn, the other is a Trump transition official. From this, we know it was a Trump family member. We factor in the person was important enough to be discussed by foreign governments, and to be unmasked by Ms Rice, you end up with 1 person. Hint, the person’s name isn’t Trump.
Now, why would Susan Rice do what she did? From this, it involved discussions between foreign officials and foreign officials with the Trump transition with valuable political information. From Nunes, it didn’t involve Russia in any way. Add in this fact, Trump was an unknown to almost all foreign governments prior to the inauguration. The typical government was the Chinese, who was looking for any information about Trump or his intentions. So it seems unlikely the typical foreign government intelligence would have “valuable political information”. There is one government that did know Trump prior to this election – as luck would have it, the Obama administration got involved in a muted scandal involving intelligence with that country. One extra hint — Obama made two notable announcements with regard to other countries after the election. One involved Russia – the other was mentioned at the time on this blog.
With hindsight, looking at articles about that previous muted scandal, you have what seems to be Ms Rice or her deputy acknowledging how serious incidental collection and unmasking is — there was an “oh sh–” moment. In that case, they decided to minimize any scandal by letting the NSA decide what to share (or withhold). Now why Ms Rice decided to do differently in this case is sure to come up.
To conclude, we do spying for two purposes, foreign policy and criminal/terrorism. This unmasking isn’t about criminiality – but potentially foreign policy. The problem here is as Dave has mentioned, if Obama makes most of his foreign policy decisions around political considerations, then spying for foreign policy purposes and spying for political purposes become very blurred indeed.
Curious, the links aren’t working.
Here are the links
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/susan-rice-speaks-out-unmasking-accusations-i-leaked-nothing-nobody-n742486
https://www.wsj.com/articles/susan-rice-says-obama-administration-didnt-use-intel-against-trump-associates-for-political-reasons-1491331871
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/04/03/susan-rice-requested-to-unmask-names-trump-transition-officials-sources-say.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-03/top-obama-adviser-sought-names-of-trump-associates-in-intel
http://www.ajc.com/news/national/read-transcripts-rep-devin-nunes-news-conferences-about-trump-surveillance/NdZ4qQv7uBnjcH9E3HSRPJ/
https://sinocism.com/the-sinocism-china-newsletter-02-14-17-the-political-benefits-to-xi-from-the-call-with-trump/
Serves me right for writing that on notepad.
“How did Rice know what persons on whom to request the intel, why did she want it and what did she do with it?”
No one has a clue, except for this one thing known with complete certitude: it wasn’t for political purposes. No sir. No way. No how. Personally, I’m more worried about the poor woman’s health. She had no recollection; Nunez’ comments took her entirely by surprise. Straight out of left field. Until she suddenly remembered – ‘oh, you mean THAT unmasking!’ Could be early dementia. Better get that checked out. Or maybe it was a YouTube video that sparked her memory………or a lawyer.
What a wry sense of humor you have, Drew!
IMO if Susan Rice was the NSA to Trump the press and Dems would be combing thru RIce’s personal trash can to glean any bit of dirt on her. The urgency to expose RIce’s criminality would simply be breathless to watch.
However, being Obama’s NSA, Rice is literally vaccinated from even a sideways glance of scrutiny or curiosity from the MSM. Instead, the herd will continue in it’s attempts to scrape up something on the briefly employed Flynn. And, even if nothing substantial materializes they will keep alive the possibility of a Russian collusion with the Trump administration for as long as possible, by demanding an independent investigation.
So, Bannon and Nunes, the two promoters of the Susan Rice bullshit are out, and the Trump attempt to tar Ms. Rice is exploded. The story was transparently false, obviously agitprop.
Exactly like I said.
And the noose is tightening.