Name: The scale to which Obama’s team spied on his successor should be focus of ‘unmasking’
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The scale to which Obama’s team spied on his successor should be focus of ‘unmasking’

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The presumptive Democratic candidate for president, Joe Biden, heads a list of who spied on Donald Trump’s ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn.Others senior officials include chief of staff Denis McDonough, CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and UN Ambassador Samantha Power.A list declassified Tuesday by Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grennel shows that Biden and others asked to have Flynn’s name “unmasked” in transcripts of US intelligence intercepts of foreign officials. The names of US persons or entities incidentally collected by such intercepts are minimized to protect the privacy rights of Americans. Unmasking identities is not in itself illegal, nor even necessarily improper. Occasionally US policymakers will ask to unmask a US person to better understand the nature of the intelligence before them. Obama officials, however, gorged themselves like children at a candy store.In an almost two-month period starting election day, Nov. 8, 2016, senior US officials made 49 requests to unmask the retired three-star general.Flynn’s Dec. 29, 2016, call to a Russian diplomat in which they were alleged to have discussed sanctions on Russia was leaked by a senior US official to the Washington Post’s David Ignatius. His subsequent column ignited the Russia collusion scandal, which in time became the special counsel investigation. Flynn pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI regarding the call, and finally last week the Department of Justice withdrew its deeply compromised case.And yet for all the political and personal damage ensuing from the leak of Flynn’s call, it is worth noting that the bulk of unmasking requests precede it. Obama officials were less interested in that particular call than in the broad sweep of Flynn’s conversations.The sheer number of requests to unmask his identity is evidence of a widespread surveillance campaign targeting the man who was, outside of Trump’s family, his most trusted adviser. Knowing what Flynn was telling foreign officials would give them insight into Trump’s thinking — which is to say, President Barack Obama’s team was spying on his successor in order to preserve his foreign policy initiatives.Interviews of former Obama officials released last week show that the previous White House promoted a culture of espionage. Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy told Power that she is the “largest unmasker of US persons in our history.” Pressed to explain why she unmasked more than 300 US citizens in less than a year, she could not muster an answer.Nearly three years ago, then-chair of the House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes held a brief press conference to announce that he’d found evidence of , some of which is what the DNI apparently declassified Tuesday. Nunes explained that “none of this surveillance was related to Russia, or the investigation of Russian activities.”His statement now comes into clearer focus — this was about Obama’s massive surveillance of his political opponents. The list published Tuesday is evidence that the heir to that legacy is Joe Biden.Lee Smith is author of the bestselling book “The Plot Against the President.”

The presumptive Democratic candidate for president, Joe Biden, heads a list of who spied on Donald Trump’s ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn.Others senior officials include chief of staff Denis McDonough, CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and UN Ambassador Samantha Power.A list declassified Tuesday by Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grennel shows that Biden and others asked to have Flynn’s name “unmasked” in transcripts of US intelligence intercepts of foreign...

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Lee Smith

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The scale to which Obama’s team spied on his successor should be focus of ‘unmasking’

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