During his show, CNN Tonight, Don Lemon told his audience, “We will not insult your intelligence by pretending the (Susan Rice) stories are legitimate. Nor will we aid and abet the people trying to misinform you, the American people, by creating a diversion.” Unfortunately for Don Lemon and his audience, they seem to be the only ones who believe there is nothing to the Susan Rice/ Trump surveillance story. The story has been discussed by CBS, Bloomburg, Fox News, and PBS among others, and Susan Rice has had to attempt to justify her “unmasking” of names of Trump team members that were gathered from incidental surveillance.
Now what exactly happened? The U.S. intelligence agencies routinely monitors phone conversations, emails, and other conversations of foreign nationals from every country imaginable. Remember that a few years ago, Angela Merkel of Germany was outraged when it was revealed that the U.S. was intercepting and listening in on her phone calls. At the same time, France’s newspaper, Le Monde, reported that within a 30-day period, the NSA had listened in on over 70 million calls in France (CNN 2013). So this listening in on calls is business as usual for our intelligence service. Also in 2013, it was revealed that the Justice Department had been spying on Fox News reporter, James Rosen, the CIA hacked a network used by Senate Intel committee members, and the Justice Department secretly obtained months of phone records belonging to AP journalists while investigating a failed terror attack. Despite the claims that Americans are not spied upon, U.S. News and World Report pointed out that “the documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed . . . that the NSA was in fact collecting in bulk domestic call records, along with various internet communications.”
So among all of this surveillance, the names of members of Trump’s election team, and later his transition team, appeared, sometimes in conversations with foreign nationals (mostly from countries other than Russia), sometimes in conversations between foreign nationals and others who simply mentioned their names. It is the practice that such individuals are called simply “U.S. citizen One” or “U.S. citizen Two” to protect their privacy, and their names are only revealed (unmasked) if it is apparent they have committed a crime or somehow threaten national security.
According to Fox News, multiple individuals went to Fox News reporters Malia Zimmerman and Adam Housely, as well as to Bloomburg to report first that the names of members of Trump’s team had been collected in the incidental surveillance mentioned above, but that their names had been “unmasked” contrary to policy. Sources later confirmed that Susan Rice, national security advisor to former president Obama had requested the unmasking of the names. Unmasked names are normally kept secure by the individual who requests the unmasking, but Rice, it is reported “sent (them) to every member of the National Security Council, former Rice deputy Ben Rhodes, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, then-CIA Director John Brennan and some officials at the Defense Department” (WND.com).
When asked by PBS in March about the unmasking, Rice stated “I know nothing about this” (foxnews.com). More recently, however, she has admitted that she sometimes had names unmasked so she could better understand the situation, emphasizing (although she had not been asked) that she never leaked anything. But the reason for the unmasking in the first place, beginning in July when then candidate Trump won the nomination and escalating after he won the election in November, seems clouded in subterfuge. CBS News’ Margaret Brennan reports that “It is why these intelligence intercepts were considered so important that they would need to be shared with the president’s national security adviser.” LawNewz states “To be clear, we don’t know why Susan Rice unmasked these identities, but given the political nature of this case, it is reasonable to question her motives.” From Bloomburg’s Eli Lake and others we hear that the reports which were compiled in spreadsheets for Ms. Rice, 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” as well as all kinds of personal information about the Trump team members’ everyday lives.
And did this information prove that the Trump team had colluded with the Russian hacking of the DNC server? According to Obama’s own former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper as well as former acting CIA Director Michael Morel it did not. Although they have seen these reports, they report that they have found no proof of collusion between the Trump team and Russia. In fact, Circa News reports “that ‘most if not all’ of the surveillance information collected on the Trump team had nothing to do with any of the alleged election interference by Russia” (WND.com).
Was this a determined attempt by the Democrats in the White House and on Clinton’s election team to locate damaging information to turn the voters against then candidate Trump and then, after the election, to damage his presidency? It seems it may have been. On March 2, Evelyn Farkas, a former top Obama administration official and member of the Clinton team, told MSNBC “I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill, it was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people, get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the administration” (as reported by Aaron Klein 8 April 2017). She had been, she said, getting “winks and hints” from inside the Obama White House about possible collusion between Trump and Russia, and she was dismayed that “not enough was coming out into the open. . . . That’s why you have the leaking, because people were worried,” she confided
As for that supposed collusion between the Trump camp and Russia in the hacking of the DNC server, there still remains some lack of definitive evidence despite what the press would have you believe. Aaron Klein of Breitbart reports that “Last month, FBI Director James Comey confirmed that his agency never had direct access to the DNC’s servers to confirm the hacking. ‘Well, we never got direct access to the machines themselves,’ he stated. ‘The DNC in the spring of 2016 hired a firm that ultimately shared with us their forensics from their review of the system.’ National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers also stated the NSA never asked for access to the DNC hardware: ‘The NSA didn’t ask for access. That’s not in our job.’
So was there collusion between Trump and the Russians to hack the DNC server to so disgust voters that they wouldn’t vote for Clinton? No one, including those from Obama’s own White House, who has seen the purported “evidence” has found any proof. On the other hand, did Obama’s national security advisor order the “unmasking” of countless Trump team members for questionable, perhaps illegal motives? That proof exists and damaging details continue to emerge.