| Submit your comments on this article |
| Government |
| Harf Barfs on Rice |
| 2017-04-05 |
| Less than two weeks before sources said it was Susan Rice who requested to unmask the names of Trump associates caught up in sensitive intelligence reports, former President Barack Obama’s national security adviser said she knew “nothing about” surveillance allegations. Rice told PBS on March 22 that she “was not aware of any orders given to disseminate that information.” She did skirt the issues of whether she herself unmasked or disseminated information outright. Rice also limited her remarks to Trump’s debunked early March tweet claiming a wiretap of Trump Tower and vague remarks made by House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes. “I know nothing about this,” Rice said at the time. “I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that count today … So today, I really don’t know to what Chairman Nunes was referring. But he said that whatever he was referring to was a legal, lawful surveillance and that it was potentially incidental collection on American citizens.” Fox News reported that the names, once unmasked, were widely disseminated through the intelligence community – and to some in the Obama White House. Rice’s remarks on March 22 focus on the strict legality of the issue -- instead of whether the unmasking was appropriate or of intelligence value. Since Monday's reporting, her defenders have downplayed the significance of her apparent requests. “What I know is this ... If the intelligence community professionals decide that there’s some value, national security, foreign policy or otherwise in unmasking someone, they will grant those requests,” former Obama State Department spokeswoman and Fox News contributor Marie Harf said on "The First 100 Days.” “And we have seen no evidence ... that there was partisan political notice behind this and we can’t say that unless there’s actual evidence to back that up.” Harf stressed that just because Rice requested names doesn't mean she leaked them either. The identities of U.S. citizens collected during surveillance on foreign targets are supposed to be shielded unless they are unmasked by a top official, ostensibly for national security reasons. When I worked in the intel community they wouldn't have been able to. They were noted as [US Citizen] upon creation of the report. Ditto: Collection on US Persons (USP) by the intelligence community was verboten. Anything dealing with USP was the domain of the FBI. |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #7 Rice: "wudn't me!" |
| Posted by: Rex Mundi 2017-04-05 20:05 |
| #6 Rice was surprised to see Nunes' reports and didn't know what he was referring to because she wasn't sure which of the 47 hard drives and over 600 million pages he had viewed. |
| Posted by: Whavish Thusoling5684 2017-04-05 17:26 |
| #5 There seems to be a lot of parsing going on here. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2017-04-05 14:06 |
| #4 So Rice did not leak the names, but did she order them to be leaked just like she ordered the spreadsheets to be prepared? |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2017-04-05 14:05 |
| #3 Skip, 1. rules on this change all the time 2. POTUS obviously may require unmasking 3. POTUS may authorize others to require unmasking |
| Posted by: lord garth 2017-04-05 13:15 |
| #2 Trump’s debunked early March tweet claiming a wiretap of Trump Tower Debunked? Not the way I understand it. Possibly a little imprecise because all the technical details are not stated but the fact that communications from and within the Trump campaign were monitored and then distributed seems pretty definite. That this was not exactly physical wire tapping is a semantic dodge. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2017-04-05 08:30 |
| #1 Well, Trump-supporters are not Real Americans, skid. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2017-04-05 05:14 |