Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Breaking news today links former National Security Adviser Susan Rice as the person that requested the unmasking of President Trump’s campaign and transition team members.
Bloomberg View reports:
White House lawyers last month learned that the former national security adviser Susan Rice requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
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.”
Since leaving the Obama administration, Rice criticized Trump in a Washington Post opinion piece and during a PBS interview.
During the PBS interview, Rice said she was not aware that Trump team members were monitored by intelligence surveillance through contacts with foreigners.
In the past, Rice served as a public defender of President Obama’s agenda including spinning the tale that the attack in Benghazi was a spontaneous event from an anti-Muslum video and not a coordinated terrorist attack.
Given her past advocacy, it’s possible Rice ordered the unmasking of Trump team members in order to harm the incoming administration. Nothing is proven yet but Rice’s role brings focus to the Obama White House.
