The Susan Rice unmasking timeline and motives
Yesterday “The Other Chuck” had several questions, and this was one of them:
There are several things about the unmasking by Rice other than the political angle that bother me. If it was motivated purely by politics, surely she would snoop in on communications of other Republican candidates. And if not, why Trump who was a long shot at best in 2015 when this started?
I believe that this is the wrong timeline of the Susan Rice involvement. There are varying reports from different sources and I’m not sure which is correct, but the ones that seems to be from the most trustworthy sources I can find indicate that when the surveillance began Rice does not appear to have been involved, and that people connected with the Trump campaign were initially eavesdropped on as part of an ongoing investigation of other people, but not as targets themselves.
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.”
It appears to have only been later—after Trump had already been elected, but while Obama was still president—that Rice got involved (again, there are somewhat varied reports on this timeline, but from my reading of it this is the best summary we have of the scenario). After Trump’s election, her actions were to request that the identities of people connected with Trump who had been incidentally surveilled be revealed although they were not the targets.
This request by Rice was later spotlighted by a different investigation:
In February [2017] Cohen-Watnick [the person at the National Security Council conducting the review] 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.
The intelligence reports were summaries of monitored conversations — primarily between foreign officials discussing the Trump transition, but also in some cases direct contact between members of the Trump team and monitored foreign officials. One U.S. official familiar with the reports said they contained valuable political information on the Trump transition such as whom the Trump team was meeting, the views of Trump associates on foreign policy matters and plans for the incoming administration.
So that indicates that Rice’s activities in connection to this unmasking incident occurred between Trump’s election and his inauguration—the so-called transition time.
“The Other Chuck” has another question:
It seems obvious that they wanted this stuff to leak out, as McCarthy suggests. But was the reason solely political or did they actually believe there was collusion between the Russians and certain Trump operatives?
These contacts were initially uncovered through surveillance of the Russians, so at the beginning it seems that nothing was suspected about Trump or his operatives and their possible connection to the Russians. Certainly that was not the reason for the eavesdropping. However, once the contacts with Trump’s people were uncovered, I suppose the government (I believe it would have had to have been the Department of Justice rather than Susan Rice) could have taken a look at the situation and sought further investigation of the Trump people as targets, on that basis. But they would have had to have met a certain burden of proof to do that, and follow certain procedures (more on that topic later in this post). However, that doesn’t appear to have happened.
At any rate, none of that has anything to do with Rice and the unmasking. Rice is not tasked with investigating such things (see this Andrew McCarthy article). The unmasking was done at Rice’s request, however. Since she was not investigating, the motive for her unmasking request could only have been one of two things, or both: (1) to learn the names of the contacts for further action of some sort or other (2) to let the names filter down to other people so that they could be leaked to the press. That latter part—which is what actually happened—is the real scandal.
Andrew C. McCarthy is my go-to guy on this story. Here he further explains:
The sole purpose of foreign intelligence collection is to understand the actions and intentions of foreign powers and their operatives. If the government’s purpose is to understand the actions and intentions of American citizens, there are two proper ways to go about that: (a) conduct a criminal investigation in which the American citizens can be targeted for court-authorized surveillance based on probable cause of a crime, or (b) conduct a FISA investigation in which the American citizens can be targeted for court-authorized surveillance based on probable cause that they are acting as agents of a foreign power.
If neither of those two alternatives is chosen, then the American citizens are not supposed to be the subject of the intelligence collection effort ”” they are supposed to be protected. The snooping to which they are subjected is an incidental byproduct (i.e., an unintentional albeit inevitable consequence) of snooping on foreign powers. The incidental snooping deprives them of privacy protections rooted in law ”” the requirement that the government obtain a judicial warrant before seizing and eavesdropping on their communications. The law allows this to happen, but only if post hoc safeguards are applied. That is why, as Director James Comey testified before Congress, the FBI is “obsessive” about concealing the identities of Americans. That is why unmasking is a big deal.
Please read the whole thing.
[NOTE: See also this.]
Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy’s AmeriKa is a land in which women have killed 50+ million children, blacks will never be satisfied, police can only use deadly force upon white criminals, schoolchildren are indoctrinated into demonstrably insane ideas, indecent writers and artists are celebrated, and the Federal courts regularly violate the Constitution…
Thank God they stopped Bork’s America…
This strikes me as wrong. In considering which comes first, the chicken or the egg. it’s important to remember that a FISA warrant to spy on Trump was rejected in June 2016. There have only ever been about a dozen ever turned down which tells you how little merit it had. The linking of Trump with Russia it seems to me was a backdoor way to get the warrant since they would never say no to a request that was put forth as a “national security” issue. No one ever suspect collusion between Trump and Russia. That’s rubbish. That’s the Wizard of Oz to distract people from the man behind the curtain.
neo: Thanks for doing the work on this.
Evelyn Farkas said this about the Obama administration delving into a possible Trump/Russia connection:
“If they found out how we knew what we knew about their, the staff, the Trump staff’s dealing with Russians, that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence,” Farkas told MSNBC. “So I became very worried, because not enough was coming out into the open, and I knew that there was more.”
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/30/politics/donald-trump-elaine-farkas-intelligence-obama/
Since she left the Defense Department in 2015 when Trump was a long shot candidate, the implication is that they, possibly or probably including Rice, were focused on Trump early on. This is the reason I assumed Rice was doing it from 2015. What other intelligence gathering were they doing besides unmasking Trump and his associates? And was it only Trump? Surely other Republican candidates or their advisors had conversations with the Russian ambassador.
Neo says:
These contacts were initially uncovered through surveillance of the Russians, so at the beginning it seems that nothing was suspected about Trump or his operatives and their possible connection to the Russians. Certainly that was not the reason for the eavesdropping.
That is contradicted by Evelyn Farkas statement quoted above. She indicates they were interested very early on.
The Other Chuck:
I didn’t say that the Obama administration didn’t suspect anything about Trump. Indications are, however, that the surveillance of the Russians was separate from that suspicion and relatively standard.
In other words, when have we ever NOT eavesdropped on the Russians? This was business as usual. But the Trump people were caught up in that, and then that fact was used by the Obama people for political reasons.
“(2) to let the names filter down to other people so that they could be leaked to the press”
“But the Trump people were caught up in that, and then that fact was used by the Obama people for political reasons.“
Maybe, maybe not. A very fine line to draw that conclusion.
It is easy enough to imagine and then perhaps assume so, given our political world view.
BUT, do we have proof for these assertions?
What is the “normal” standard for “unmasking” an American citizen who was incidentally observed in a regular operation?
What are “normal” “further action of some sort”?
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I’m definitely not a rice fan, and do think it very possible she behaved as assumed.
On the other hand, trump’s and team’s behavior around all things “Russia” have been rather strange themselves. Might be nothing, or might be something about one or more individuals.
Of course we could assume the worst of both sides, and declare them “guilty” of whatever we want before we have sufficient facts.
In any case, worthy of investigating all this to its unsatisfactory end, as there will be a taint over the whole with these assumptions / narratives persisting, seeking validation from scraps of facts and factoids.
Big Maq does it again, biting into a slur and passing it on without a scintilla of evidence except for Flynn and Sessions meeting with a Russkie ambassador, which he calls “all”, as in his ” trump’s and team’s behavior around all things “Russia” have been rather strange themselves.”
Too much time with the NYT perhaps.
Of course we could assume the worst of both sides, and declare them “guilty” of whatever we want before we have sufficient facts.
That is precisely what Neo is NOT doing here, and why she went to the trouble of answering a couple of questions I raised. It is also NOT what the MSM is about these days. Here is Jonathan Turley pointing out how they are running cover for Rice:
https://jonathanturley.org/2017/04/04/i-know-nothing-about-this-rice-accused-of-ordering-unmasking-of-trump-aides-and-then-lying-about-her-knowledge/comment-page-3/
It’s early days yet for this spying scandal, but the reporting is clearly under way. It sounds like the Obama administration routinely abused its intelligence gathering for political purposes. They spied on Congress during the Iran so-called deal, remember? Here’s a good piece that connects the dots (includes both facts and speculation): http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/229062/did-the-obama-administrations-abuse-of-foreign-intelligence-collection-start-before-trump
@Other Chuck – as I said, it is a very fine line to draw the (her) conclusion.
I don’t know how much is obama’s people taking political advantage of the scenario, or how much is a “reasonable” suspicion and action.
Bottom line is that there is a whole lot of speculation going on to fill the gaps between the few things that we do know (which is not much).
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Neo lamented in a few of her posts about the difficulty in finding the “truth”, particularly in these times where media coverage is often very tinged with their own team’s spin / narrative.
We are enablers of this to the extent we buy into what they are telling us, when the facts don’t conclusively support it.
Since 2008, 2012, and, especially, 2016, IMHO, we’ve as much reason to be skeptical of “conservative” media almost as much as the msm (though I do like McCarthy’s column).