Unmasking, then and now (and Joe Biden then and now)
I bet you won’t be surprised to learn that the Democrats, including Joe Biden, were very concerned and upset in 2005 when John Bolton had requested unmasking 10 times within the four years he’d been Bush’s Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs. This is a number of requests which pales compared to the unmaskings of a single person, General Flynn, during the last few weeks of the Obama administration. And yet the latter is something that the Democrats are now trying to treat as completely normal and not even worthy of notice, curiosity, or possible investigation.
The following clip from 2005 shows none other than Joe Biden, then in the Senate, asking to know the reasons these people had been unmasked, something the present day Democrats (including Biden, of course) are pretending is an outrage to even ask, now that Republicans are asking it of them in a situation involving far more extreme use of the tactic. The hypocrisy of the Democrats would be stunning if we didn’t expect it at this point. But what is more stunning is the contrast between Biden’s demeanor, alertness, and speech patterns then and now.
This clip also contains commentary by Francey Hakes, who happens to answer some of the questions I asked about unmasking in this post from yesterday, queries about how unmasking is usually done and whether requests from political figures (such as Biden) rather than intelligence officers during the waning days of an administration, seeking to unmask conversations that happen to involve the incoming administration, are standard. No, they are most certainly not:
It appears to me that someone in the waning days of the Obama administration decided they could destroy the Trump administration, even after he had taken office. So they set out to snipe his appointments, possibly starting with Gen Flynn. When that did not accomplish what they hoped for, then moved on to the Russia Collusion story, which was something that could be driven by Schiff and Nadler and not by the White House.
As successive efforts failed, they have tried different tacks, but the goal is always the same: get rid of Trump. Now that we are approaching the election, the goal has expanded to include preventing Trump from being re-elected.
But almost no one (other than readers and commenters at this blog) is surprised, shocked, or even outraged. That is perhaps the most disconcerting part of this whole mess: Democrats are willing to accept the most outrageous actions on the part of their people without questioning where it is all leading. Using the FBI and intelligence agencies against political opponents is all just taken for granted any longer. That’s pretty frightening.
Having gone this far, is it possible to back away from the abyss in front of us? We need something that resets the nation’s moral compass, if such a move is possible. I suppose I’m being delusional, though. . .
What needs to be done for the future is simple: repeal the FISA – the law – completely and in the same bill forbid the NSA or any other agency from collecting emails, internet traffic, phone calls, etc that the NSA presently does. You see, most of the time we forget the most important detail about all of this: the NSA listens in on every conversation everywhere, copies all the emails, all the radio traffic, all the internet traffic … in short, already has conducted the search and seizure of all the information they are able to intercept. It’s stored on their computers and that is the problem. The temptation for politicians and bureaucrats to use that information cannot be stopped other than by erasing that or those databases and forbidding any future collection of that material. The events of the last three years clearly proves that neither politicians, law enforcement officials, bureaucrats, nor indeed any living human being can be trusted to not use that information in advancement of their personal political and financial interests. None. Not Democrats, the left, progressives, democratic socialists, communists, Republicans, the right, conservatives, neocons, RINO’s …. in short no one. Repeal the laws that give a fig leaf’s worth of cover for such violations of the Fourth Amendment, forbid the collection of what NSA now collects, and provide sentences beginning at a mandatory ten years and ending with life imprisonment as well as barring a person convicted of ever holding any office under the United States or running for Federal political office. For those who have already violated our trust in them, present the evidence of their guilt to grand juries, indict them, try them in Federal courts of the legally appropriate jurisdiction and sentence them to the maximum punishment the laws allow. Otherwise? The same things will continue to happen and what little remains of our Republic will be flushed away with the fecal matter called ambition and the will to power. Future generations will curse our names and memories for failing to stop this evil here and now.
“forbid the NSA or any other agency from collecting emails, internet traffic, phone calls, etc” Ike
That would hamstring the internal threat America faces.
It would also hamstring America’s ability to counter external threats.
Once the concept of objective truth is rejected and subjective ‘truth’ asserted to be the ‘whole’ truth… then might makes right and the concept of hypocrisy no longer has relevance.
Geoffrey Britain
Yes it would leave the US completely ignorant and vulnerable to foreign threats; the proposed dismantling or neutering the NSA. And of course there is all the data collection performed by Google et. al. for profit, they of course are trustworthy and unbiased platforms and purveyors information (not).
Dems who want the truth should welcome transparency – lists of those who did ANY unmaskings, and when, and how many. With the US citizens who were unmasked getting a report, by the gov’t, of who asked to unmask them, when.
Getting rid of gov’t collection of info is as unrealistic as denuclearization — far too risky for any one Power to stop doing it, when other powers keep doing it. So it ain’t gonna happen.
What are the regulations about using that info? How to end the abuse, or, realistically, reduce the abuse. Jail time would be a good start, but it’s not clear who did the illegal leaking, tho it’s quite likely many took negligent care; probably criminally negligent.
Of course, Dems never have the intent of being discovered actually breaking any law.
“Dems who want the truth”
In mathematics that is called the “null set”.
Geoffrey – Biden, then and now.
The senility may have already been on display.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/truth-over-facts-biden-fumbles-during-iowa-speech
The Left has always chosen fiction over science.
Aesop, I wonder if you have figured out what all those “secret combination” stuff meant in the bom.
ymar – I never claim to have figured out everything about anything, but I’m picking up on the clues.
“Everybody knows who Donald Trump is. Even his supporters know who he is. We got to let him know who we are. We choose unity over division. We choose science over fiction. We choose truth over facts.”
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
It isn’t the collection of intelligence info on foreign activity that creates the problems. It is the collection of all available information on everyone and the long-term storage of it, available to any person with the authority to see it that is the source of the problems. When, as, and if there is a need to collect communications on Americans, warrants need to be sought in the pre-FISA way (or not as the case may be; they weren’t always sought before FISA for intelligence on foreigners). The storage of and very easy access to NSA’s databases is what enables the bad elements in the U.S. government to corrupt the use of intelligence info. Remember what the FISA Court’s report/order outlined: contractors – not government officials, but contract employees of who?, were given access to the NSA databases, IIRC 85% of the searches via that access were not properly justified or requested. No databases, no temptation no possibility of a repeat of the last three years. The choice is not between having a blinded intel community and having another Mueller/Comey/Brennan/et al seditious conspiracy. The choice is between having a government where officers and agents of that government can be restrained from the kind of evil behavior we have seen evidence of over the last three years. And why, pray tell, is it permissible for the CIA to conduct its operations in the US targeted against US citizens, when the legislation that created it specifically prohibited that activity?? That is enabled too by the NSA’s collection and storage. No more.