Slashdot Mirror
Intelligence Chairman Accuses Obama Aids of Hundreds of Unmasking Requests (thehill.com)
mi writes: When American spies capture our communications with foreigners, the identities of Americans on the other side of the conversation are generally protected -- if not by bona-fide laws, then certainly by rules and regulations. A transcript of the conversation should have their name replaced with labels like "U.S. person 1". The citizen involved can only be "unmasked" with a good reason. In 2011, Obama relaxed these rules, making it much simpler even for officials without any intelligence role to obtain the identities. Predictably, certain top officials of the Obama Administration abused their access to get this information: "The [House Intelligence] committee has learned that one official, whose position had no apparent intelligence related function, made hundreds of unmasking requests during the final year of the Obama administration," [Intelligence Chairman Devin] Nunes wrote. "Of those requests, only one offered a justification that was not boilerplate."
It's also worth noting that the "Intelligence Chairman" in question is Devin Nunes. He was part of the Trump campaign, and had to recuse himself from the Russia probe because he was providing more information to the White House about the investigation than he was providing to the investigation.
I'm not saying that these accusations couldn't possibly be true. I'm saying the accuser isn't remotely credible. This is clearly yet another attempted smoke screen to help Trump cover his crimes.
I think it's fair to disregard the accusation until someone credible steps forward with real information.
I would like to know a little more. If the administration was investigating possible collusion between (some) members of the incoming administration and Russia, it seems to me that they have to unmask the Americans, to find out who it is.
The Obama administration is simultaneously being accused of not doing enough to act on intelligence that Russia was interfering with the elections, and also here of doing too much.
This is the same Devin Nunes that was accused of bias in the Congressional investigation into the Russian hacking around the Presidential election. As a matter of fact, he is not acting as chairman of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence at the moment (although he is still the named chairman) as he is currently under investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics for disclosing classified information to the public.
Also, lets look at what happened with unmasking towards the end of the Obama administration: Certain individuals around Donald Trump, especially Michael Flynn and a few others with exceptionally close connections to him, were unmasked after the routine capture of communications between Russian officials and US citizens was discovered, communications which helped oust Flynn as National Security Advisor, as well as being central to the current expansion of official investigations into possible illegal collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government to influence the 2016 Presidential election.
Putting the above two facts together... until I have some outside, non-partisan source that is backing Nunes, then this looks like a blatantly transparent effort to probably paint the unmasking likely discredit whoever found and revealed the above mentioned conversations, in an effort to paint the entire Russia investigation as illegitimate. And, as a matter of fact, reading a number of sources, it becomes clear that is the EXACT intent of this move. They cover it up by claiming there was 'no justification' because the forms were mostly 'boilerplate'... Yeah, well, at LOT of forms are boilerplate, that's why boilerplate exists in the first place. Just because something is boilerplate doesn't mean that there was no justification. It just means that the justification is used enough that drawing up a standard filler for it is worthwhile. So until there's actual evidence of wrongdoing, Nunes is not exactly an unbiased person in this case, and he has proven before that he is willing to use his biases and act unethically against his political opponents in an effort to retain as much power as possible. If some non-partisan source can confirm what he claims, that's when I'll give these allegations any chance of actually being true, and the actions discussed as being illicit.
It's telling that the issue is trying to be framed as one about the intelligence agencies revealing U.S. citizens whose conversations were intercepted as part of legitimate intelligence gathering rather than the fact of collusion between a presidential campaign and a foreign government.
We know for an absolute fact Russia was trying to, and successfully did, influence our election. The Senate committee, the House committee and the intelligence services all agree on that unassailable fact.
Yet instead of being concerned or even upset at this interference, Nunes is trying to deflect from this fact to one of, "But people's names were revealed!", as if trying to figure out who was colluding with Russia is a bad thing.
Another thing which is even more disturbing is the continued insistence, and outright denial, by the con artist that Russia either did anything during the campaign, or if they did, that they did anything wrong. This raises the very real question of why the con artist is trying to protect Russia? Why has he abjectly refused to say a single bad word about that country despite it deliberately bombing hospitals in Syria and coordinating the chemical weapon attack in Syria, not to mention its seizure of the Crimea from Ukraine, its invasion of Ukraine and its support for terrorist groups inside Ukraine? If this were Iran doing this the con artist would be bombing away, but because it's Russia, he lets them literally get away with murder.
Further, had Hillary Clinton won and these exact same facts come out, you can be absolutely sure Republicans would be laser focused on who did what and trying to pin the collusion on her. But when it comes to the con artist, they are doing what they can to deflect from the crimes and protect him. Hypocrisy at its best.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
You seemed to have missed the point. The Obama Administration officials are not the investigative branch of the Executive Branch of the USA Federal Government. The Department of Justice with its FBI, etc., bureaus are the professional and appropriate investigative groups. The Obama Administration referred nothing to the DOJ/FBI/etc. and that, according to those raising the issue, blundered. The blunder may be inappropriate. unethical/political, or illegal--that's the purpose of this investigation into these actions. Administrators administer; investigators investigate. For example, the Ambassador to the UN is not the appropriate person to investigate into the integrity of policies and actions of the opposition political party (or even her own political party). The Ambassador can refer questions to the appropriate groups and the appropriate groups, if deemed appropriate, will investigate. The question of whether the Ambassador accessing personal and private information is disturbing to many people.
That means that this is an attempt to generate a fake Benghazi type scandal.
Let us know when a responsible person comes to the same conclusion.
I hate to break this to you, but Russia and China are not "left." They are capitalists working on building empires, run by dictators.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
There is no "Russian collaboration," there never was.
How can you categorically state there was no "Russian collaboration" when Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort all attended a meeting specifically to collaborate with Russian nationals on Trump's campaign? This isn't some smear campaign by the "liberal media", these are things Trump Jr. admitted to.
Enigma