He's screwed. I don't see how he gets out of this. Too many good guys in the NSA now. Trump came out snow white. Obama, black as shit.
Trump was right after all about the Obama administration wiretaps By Jonathan Turley, thehill.com March 24th, 2017 On the 40th anniversary of the publication of The Shining, Stephen King must be wondering if Washington is working on its own sequel. For the last couple months, Washington has been on edge, like we are all trapped in Overlook Hotel with every day bringing a new “jump scare,” often preceded by a telltale tweet. Indeed, a Twitter whistle has replaced suspenseful music to put the entire city on the edge of their seats. In this Shining sequel, however, people are sharply divided on who is the deranged ax-wielding villain in this lodge, the president or the press. Ironically, with the recent disclosure that some of the Trump campaign may indeed have been subject to surveillance, the president is looking more like Danny Torrence, a character dismissed for constantly muttering “redrum, redrum” until someone finally looked in a mirror at the reverse image to see the true message. The curious thing about President Trump is that his method and language in communications often mask legitimate issues or concerns. This may be such a case with the disclosure that indeed some Trump officials may have been subject to surveillance under the Obama administration. Trump triggered this particular jump scare with the tweet on March 4 that he “just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” He followed with such tirades as “How low has President Obama gone to tap my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!” The media pounced and rightfully demanded proof to support such a charge. When it was clear that no evidence would be produced, the media (again rightfully) pummeled the White House for failing to support one of the most alarming claims ever made by a president against a former president. However, that is when the media seemed to switch roles and fell into a loop of repeating the same accusation over and over again like Jack Torrence endlessly typing "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” The media seemed so delighted by the quagmire created by Trump’s tweet that it refused to acknowledge reasonable interpretations of the tweet or the possibility that there might have been surveillance. One of the most telling examples of media mania was the insistence that Trump was referring only to wiretapping and no other form of surveillance. From the earliest days of the scandal, I balked at that narrow reading. As someone who has written and litigated in the surveillance field for over three decades, the narrow reading is absurd. “Wiretap” has often been used as a generality for surveillance, particularly among those of Trump’s generation. It is the same colloquial meaning as when the Supreme Court commonly used “eavesdropping” to refer to surveillance.It was not limiting decisions like Katz v. United States to circumstances where people hid in the eaves of homes and listened to conversations within. There is no reason to assume that Trump meant solely the act of an actual wiretap when he put wiretap in quotations as opposed to surveillance. Yet, when this obvious point was made by White House spokesman Sean Spicer, the media lit up over the White House was changing its allegation. Likewise, referring to President Obama as tapping phones can reasonably be understood as the Obama administration, not specifically President Obama, venturing to Trump Tower in some disguise as a repairman to tap a phone. Yet, the media has continued to express alarm that the “facts are changing” when the White House made that obvious point about these tweets. Now, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee (who previously said he knew of no evidence to support the allegation) has disclosed that he has seen evidence that Trump presidential transition officials had their communications monitored during the Obama administration (though Nunes later suggested that he might not have actually seen the evidence of the surveillance). He also said that the inadvertent interceptions were then subject to “unmasking” where intelligence officials actively and knowingly attached the names of the parties to transcripts and then circulated the information widely within the intelligence community. If true, that would clearly support a part of the president’s allegations and raise very serious questions about the improper use of surveillance. It would be Trump’s ultimate “redrum” moment. Yet, when this disclosure was made by the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, CNN and other news outlets immediately proclaimed that it did not prove anything about the Trump allegations — again emphasizing that he said Obama “wiretapped” Trump’s phone. That is like saying that an alleged victim is not to be believed because he said that some “second story man broke into my home” when the evidence showed that there was no second story on the house and the burglar entered through an open window. The point is whether Trump campaign staff were subject to surveillance under the Obama administration. Of course, the original tweets were poorly worded and inappropriate as a way for a president to raise this issue. Moreover, the inadvertent surveillance is rightfully distinguished from the original suggestion of a targeting of Trump. However, this would still be a very serious matter if intelligence officials acted to unmask the names and distribute them. The masking of names is meant to protect innocent people from such inadvertent interception as part of the minimization procedures in the surveillance area. The White House appears unwilling to address the exaggeration and unfairness of the original allegation, while most of the media seems entirely unwilling to admit that there might indeed be an alarming abuse of surveillance rules. In the end, I suppose our Shining sequel is even more scary than the original because you cannot entirely trust anyone in the Beltway Hotel. It is nothing but jump scares and creepy moments. Citizens are left running in the maze with Danny yelling that in this game “the Loser has to keep America clean.” Redrum. Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University Law School. http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-bl...-was-right-after-all-on-the-obama-wiretapping
Oh My: Former Obama NSA Susan Rice Reportedly Directed Dubious 'Unmasking' of Trump Allies 4/3/2017 2:20:00 PM - Guy Benson Yes, that would be the same Susan Rice who made herself famous for delivering outright lies on national television about the Benghazi terrorist attack, the nature of which the Obama administration was eager to deliberately distort for political reasons in the thick of a campaign. It would also be the same Susan Rice described by Newsweek as President Obama's "right-hand woman" in 2014. As I said on air yesterday, this whole Russia meddling/wiretap saga has become so convoluted and bereft of verifiable facts that it's quite difficult to keep following the plot. Here's my stab at a succinct summation: Our intelligence agencies and members of relevant committees on both sides of the aisle all agree that Moscow tried to meddle in the 2016 election. Their clear preference was to help Donald Trump and damage Hillary Clinton, whom they assumed would win anyway. The Kremlin has also deployed their propaganda and subterfuge to undermine Republicans, too. Their overarching goal is to undercut faith in the American system. And while there is no factual basis for President Trump's counter-claim that his predecessor ordered his phones to be tapped, there are real indications that some people within Trump's orbit were monitored in some way -- and the series of one-sided leaks on that front does look to many like a deliberate push within elements of the government to damage Trump's presidency. There is also no evidence that the Trump campaign coordinated or colluded with the Russians. One of the latest twists in all of this was the claim by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, a Republican, that Trump-tied officials whose communications had been incidentally intercepted (they themselves had not been targeted) as a part of foreign surveillance operations had their redacted identities "unmasked" last year. Who did this, and why -- especially since the intercepted communications in question allegedly had nothing to do with Russia? Late last week, Fox News' Adam Housley added some meat onto those suspicious bones, citing unnamed sources: Follow Adam Housley ✔@adamhousley Our sources: This surveillance that led to the unmasking of private names of American citizens started before Trump was the GOP nominee. 10:08 AM - 31 Mar 2017 3,5893,589 Retweets 3,5933,593 likes Follow Adam Housley ✔@adamhousley Our sources:The person who did the unmasking is "very well known, very high up, very senior, in the intelligence world & is not in the FBI 10:09 AM - 31 Mar 2017 4,5614,561 Retweets 5,6675,667 likes Follow Adam Housley ✔@adamhousley Our sources: Unmasking the names and then spreading the names was for political purposes that have nothing to do with national security 10:12 AM - 31 Mar 2017 3,2003,200 Retweets 3,4133,413 likes And now Eli Lake's reporting at Bloomberg appears to confirm what the rumor mill has been buzzing about for days -- Rice was at the center of this: White House lawyers last month discovered 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. Lake writes that given what is known about what happened, both the incidental collection and the unmasking were likely conducted within the confines of the law, but the episode raises new questions about (a) why a senior Obama official was so keen to identify the US citizens mentioned or involved in these conversations, (b) whether those conversations had any genuine investigative value beyond political curiosity (Housley's sources say no), and (c) how the existence of some of these conversations ended up getting more widely disseminated, eventually leaking into the press. The piece also reminds readers that Ms. Rice claimed ignorance on the entire subject when she was asked about it a few weeks ago: Rice herself has not spoken directly on the issue of unmasking. Last month when she was asked on the "PBS NewsHour" about reports that Trump transition officials, including Trump himself, were swept up in incidental intelligence collection, Rice said: "I know nothing about this," adding, "I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that account today." Perhaps there's an innocent explanation for all of this, and perhaps Rice believed she was answering that question accurately. But for previously-alluded-to reasons, it's hardly a stretch to imagine Rice flat-out lying on television. One of the indications that Chairman Nunes really had exposed something significant came last week came when the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff -- who has been loudly attacking his GOP counterpart and spreading unfounded claims and conspiracies related to the Russia probe -- got a look at the same documents Nunes saw (which led to Nunes' subsequent briefing of both President Trump and the news media). As Red State points out, Schiff emerged from that session fixated on process, while remaining notably mum on anything pertaining to content. It's not unreasonable to hypothesize that he read the documents and realized that something damaging lies within. Maybe that something was Barack Obama's lightning-rod NSA repeatedly requesting the unmasking of Trump officials' communications for dubious reasons. For months, Democrats have insisted that the Russian meddling side of this story is the only thing that matters. While I agree that probes into those disquieting issues are justified and important, I've also taken the national security leak element of the controversy quite seriously. These new developments demand further inquiry and real answers. And today's introduction of an untrustworthy partisan actor within the previous president's inner-most circle into the mix all but guarantees that this story is about to become more politically explosive. I'll leave you with this column by the Wall Street Journal's Kim Strassel: Follow Kimberley Strassel ✔@KimStrassel As we said Friday.. (Susan Rice!) Team Obama was spying on the incoming administration https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-devin-nunes-knows-1490914396 … 9:25 AM - 3 Apr 2017 What Devin Nunes Knows Team Obama was spying broadly on the incoming administration. wsj.com https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2017/04/03/report-susan-rice-directed-unmasking-n2307858
Republican Senator: 'Susan Rice Is The Typhoid Mary of the Obama Administration' 4/4/2017 2:30:00 PM - Matt Vespa UPDATE: Read Katie’s post about (fried) Rice saying that she didn’t leak anything. Oh, and she engaged in some unmasking because it was part of her job. That’s uh, quite the change from her PBS interview, where she said she knew nothing about any unmasking. *** Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was on the Hugh Hewitt Show this morning to discuss the latest bombshell development that former National Security Adviser Susan Rice requested the unmasking of at least one person involved in Trump's transition team. Sen. Cotton said that unmasking is usually done within the parameters of a law enforcement or intelligence investigation. Another instance would be what’s going on in the halls of Congress trying to figure out who is behind the leaking of classified information, among other things—like the possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia that has yet to yield any solid evidence. Now, Rice appeared on the PBS NewsHour in March, where she denied having any knowledge about Trump officials being under surveillance—something that Hugh brought up on his show. The radio host asked Cotton if he felt she was lying at that point. “Hugh, Susan Rice is the Typhoid Mary of the Obama administration foreign policy. Every time something went wrong, she seemed to turn up in the middle of it, “ said Cotton. “Whether it was these allegations of improper unmasking and potential improper surveillance—whether it was Benghazi, or many of the other fiascos over the eight years of the Obama administration.” Cotton added that it would be unusual in the ordinary course of business for anyone to request an unmasking of an American who was caught through incidental collection on a FISA warrant; Hewitt asked him if he or anyone on the Senate Intelligence Committee had pulled the stunt that Susan Rice reportedly did with these transcripts. Cotton said no. He also said that they wouldn’t see the transcript of intercepts since that’s raw intelligence that’s curated by analysts into a finished product that’s reviewed by him and his colleagues on the committee. He said that the only time that they get into the weeds of this is when there’s an investigation, like this one relating to possible Trump-Russia ties. The Arkansas senator also noted that to request an unmasking would still be a “momentous” decision, given the minimization protocols that are set in place to protect the privacy of Americans. The Wall Street Journal op-ed, which was cited on the show, also poses questions that Cotton felt are fair within the context of this investigation [emphasis mine]: A U.S. intelligence official confirms to us the bombshell news, first reported Monday by Bloomberg, that Ms. Rice requested the name of at least one Trump transition official listed in an intelligence report in the months between Election Day and Donald Trump’s inauguration. Ms. Rice received summaries of U.S. eavesdropping either when foreign officials were discussing the Trump team, or when foreign officials were conversing with a Trump transition member. The surveillance was legally authorized, but the identities of U.S. citizens are typically masked so they cannot be known outside intelligence circles. Ms. Rice asked for and learned the identity of the Trump official, whose name hasn’t been publicly disclosed and our source declined to share. Our source did confirm that Ms. Rice also examined dozens of other intelligence summaries that technically masked Trump official identities but were written in such a way as to make obvious who those officials were. This means that the masking was essentially meaningless. All this is highly unusual—and troubling. Unmasking does occur, but it is typically done by intelligence or law-enforcement officials engaged in antiterror or espionage investigations. Ms. Rice would have had no obvious need to unmask Trump campaign officials other than political curiosity. […] The news about Ms. Rice’s unmasking role raises a host of questions for the Senate and House intelligence committees to pursue. What specific surveillance information did Ms. Rice seek and why? Was this information related to President Obama’s decision in January to make it possible for raw intelligence to be widely disbursed throughout the government? Was this surveillance of Trump officials “incidental” collection gathered while listening to a foreigner, or were some Trump officials directly targeted, or “reverse targeted”? Also, if Rice had lied on PBS, it wouldn’t be the first time. She’s no arbiter of the truth. She lied to the entire country when she went onto the Sunday morning talk shows in 2012 and said that the Benghazi attack was a spontaneous reaction to an inflammatory YouTube video, which turned out to be total bunk. It was a terrorist attack. It was pre-planned. And it was executed by affiliates of al-Qaeda, who were supposedly on the run. The Obama White House, which had said on the campaign trail that al-Qaeda was being routed, was in a rather precarious situation of looking ridiculous. To make things more ironic, Rice penned an op-ed where she said that twisting the truth endanger our national security. Yeah, we sure know that from you, Ms. Rice. For more on (fried) Rice, please read Guy’s post, which can be found here. https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattv...oid-mary-of-the-obama-administration-n2308557
Obama, Trump and Surveillance How many members of the opposition party did the previous administration surveil? https://www.wsj.com/articles/obama-trump-and-surveillance-1494624812
As many as the Republican Congress authorized him to. You think Obama alone runs the NSA? Senate Intelligence Committee run by Republicans have complete overview of NSA but let's not get facts in here, keep the circlejerk going.