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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."
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Well, Obama did promise more transparency in government. He never specified what kind of transparency.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
This is the story you should follow, Americans. Not any of that other fake news.
Unmasking private citizens who have not been accused of a crime should be a crime.
Unmasking a public or political official who is trying to sell out the country should earn you a $3 fine and a gift certificate to Chili's.
By the way, did the members of the Trump administration and his campaign team speak to anyone who wasn't Russian? And why do they seem to have such awful memories when it comes to these meetings when they're filling out (or amending) their security clearance forms? I mean, the Russians I know tend to be pretty memorable people.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This unmasking was for political purposes which makes it far worse. The sitting administration was running an intelligence op against the candidate of the opposition party. All the The Russians! bullshit is just a continuation of that op against the electorate.
Who gives a shit about the messenger, if the message is true?
Looking at some recent tweet storms regarding leaks, it seems Trump does.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
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
"Every major news org" is owned by a handful of people. And every US intelligence org didn't conclude squat. The ODNI report claimed "17 agencies" but in reality it said that maybe hacking was something Russia would like to do, it certainly didn't tell us that anyone actually did anything. And it was signed off on by a couple of political appointees. Oh, you also have that opposition report in which nothing of substance could be verified, which contained a /pol piss fanfic, and which allegedly came from MI5... (collusion with foreign spies!). Oh, it also put people in the wrong country because it confused them with people of the same name, displaying exactly the level of "raw intelligence" gathered (i.e. every random rumor from the internet). Even /r/conspiracy can do better than that.
Half of the articles come from the WaPo, owned by Bezos, who can be found in Wikileaks running a clandestine fund-raiser with the DNC that the DNC's own lawyers had forbidden. Then there's the Daily Beast, so you're effectively listening to Chelsea Clinton there. Or CNN? Yeah, the ones who leaked the debate questions and lied to us about it being illegal to read Wikileaks? Oh, and then people told us the emails were "altered" never mind that we have DKIM validation via a key on Hillary Clinton's own DNS server.
You can try to sweep all that under the "conspiracy" rug, but you realize that we have hard proof here, right? If you want to talk conspiracy, why not go after the hundreds of stories that cite each other and anonymous sources? Top officials have confirmed to me that most of these stories are completely fabricated. And who are you to doubt them?
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.
Oh, and don't forget about Trump's National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn. He effectively made promises to Russians re: sanctions prior to Trump being elected. He also took money from Russian interests, and he resigned in disgrace.
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
Yeah. Possible collusion like speaking to a lawyer that just happens to be a Russian national. Not every Russian is a KGB agent.
The Russian in question seemed to have more ties to the DNC than to the Kremlin.
It was an interesting sequence of events. That lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskya, was denied a visa to the US twice, as she wanted to lobby to have the Maginsky act overturned. Some time in 2016, the Obama administration (Lynch) granted her a special "probation" visa. It was an "extraordinary circumstances" waiver. It was to be a short stay, but she illegally remained in the country for months.
At the same time, the Obama administration (Rice) had been denied twice by the FISA court permission to implement surveillance of Trump's campaign members and Trump tower. Shortly after this lawyer met with Manafort and others, viola, the FISA court granted the request.
The meeting was arranged by the smear experts Fusion GPS, who were also responsible for the discredited "Pee pee dossier" on Trump. Looks like a set-up.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/...
Nunes is a bigger lying piece of shit than even "mi" is, and that's saying an lot.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
ACA is remaining because the majority in Washington are left of center, Republican and Democrat.
Only if you consider the Church of Ayn Rand to be the center. In the rest of the (real) world, the Democratic party is to slightly to somewhat right of center, and the Republican party is moderately to far right.
What we're seeing is a slow, world-wide collapse of leftist ideology in progress.
What we're seeing is a slow, world-wide collapse of democratic ideology.. regardless of what side of the isle you happen to like. Even in "democratic" states like the US, we're seeing all sorts of legislation being proposed to knock of voter "fraud" which, completely coincidentally of course, also happens to disproportionately affect democratic voters. Its was bad day when your choices for president were Trump lying to your face and Clinton lying behind your back. Its going to be a worse day when your choices are Trump Jr vs Paul Ryan -- that is, no democratic nominee at all. Even if you don't like the left, its pretty hard to argue that having an opposing view around is helpful to temper the worst ideas.
But as an inherently unsustainable ideology
You do realize that pure capitalism is equally unsustainable right? As with pretty much everything in the world, a balance is generally best. Well unless you're one of the guys at the top, then too far either direction is great as both ways give you nearly supreme power. But unless you're in the 1% (or maybe even 0.1%,) you're going to want to be in the middle where you can make your mark if you're lucky (not too far left) but not be entirely screwed when you're not (not too far right.)
The masses have rejected leftism.
No, the elite have rejected leftism, unsurprisingly. The masses have no idea wtf you're talking about and just vote for the guy who hates on Mexicans and Muslims the most (or whatever the baddie of the decade is if we're discussing other elections) when they see him on TV.
Those promoting leftist ideologies know this is happening.
Well this much is true.
The problem isn't that we're moving away from "leftism." The problem is that the right has sunk to slinging mud and the left hasn't got there yet.
Left: "Climate change is happening, here's shitloads of evidence."
Trump: "Nope fake news!"
Left: "Ok so where's you're evidence to the contrary?" Trump: "Fake news! Its all Hillary's fault!"
Left: "That doesn't even make sense."
Trump: "I know all the things. FAKE NEWS!"
Its hard to argue like that when one side just refuses to even generate a point, never mind a conclusion. And unfortunately the proles are dumb enough to like the reality TV stupidity without realizing that they're losing things like their health care (Yay they can now "choose" to have no healthcare, or a plan that costs 4x as much as it does under the ACA. Too bad they can't choose to just not get sick..) Or their right to choose if they have an abortion or not (because the political right is overrun by Christian fundamentalists who throw their will around even though the US is supposed to have separation of church and state,) and many many other rights and freedoms that all get thrown under the bus in the name of making the already-rich a little bit richer.
You are correct in that the world is moving away from socialist policies.. but I don't think your reasoning about the causes is correct, and unless there's some reversal, the long goal of the current political climate is toward oppression of the masses, rather than freedom for them, as more and more of the currently-middle class get pushed closer to the poverty line.
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
BS. ACA was discussed for many months with tons of hearings. The final text was known and scored by the CBO. Pelosi's comment was a joke answer to a request to read the bill aloud - a delaying tactic by Reps.