WHATEVER HAPPENED TO OBAMA'S 'UNMASKING' PROBE? Officials
processed 'hundreds' of demands during last months in office, 7/30/18.
In the last months of the Obama
administration, officials issued a flurry of requests to
“unmask” the
identities of American citizens caught up in the surveillance of
foreigners, prompting an investigation.
So, asks investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson, an Emmy Award-winning journalist,
author of the New York Times bestsellers “The Smear” and “Stonewalled,” and
host of Sinclair’s Sunday TV program “Full Measure,” what happened?
It was then-U.N. Ambassador Samantha
Power who told congressional investigators “hundreds” of such requests
were made in her name alone in 2016, and many of the American citizens were
Trump campaign operatives.
At the time she was revealing their
identities, she kept up a steady flow of emails lashing out at
then-President-elect Donald Trump, strategizing how to undermine his agenda and
coordinating opposition to him.
The American Center for Law and Justice
said in a report: “Let
that sink in: the same top-level Obama administration official reported to have
made some 260 unmasking requests seeking surveillance information about the incoming
president and his campaign team was simultaneously engaged in communications in
which she consoled others over the election results, blatantly insulted the
president-elect, colluded with the mainstream media, and actively sought out
ways to undermine the new administration before it had even begun.”
But now Attkisson is wondering what
happened with that investigation. “Every day brings new stories about Russian
interference in the 2016 election, whether Donald Trump played a role, and
alleged abuses by our intelligence agencies,” she wrote. “One of the deepest,
darkest, most important issues in the whole mess has to do with the massive
number of ‘unmaskings’ of U.S. citizens. It potentially opens a can of worms
squirmier than many other issues.”
She said Robert Mueller was FBI chief,
James Clapper was director of national intelligence and John Brennan
was near the top of the CIA management when the administration sought
more authority to spy on Americans.
“Wiretaps can include everything on the
web — emails, bank accounts, photos, messaging, Facebook posts. And ‘incidental collection’ can include anything picked
up when a target is watched directly, through a bug, or by secretly activating
his computer’s microphone and camera,” she pointed out.
While U.S. citizens not accused of
crimes are entitled to privacy protections, the federal agencies at that time
decided the keep the information that was caught up in their dragnets.
“Then, they argued that they needed to
store the information on U.S. citizens a little longer, and might occasionally
need to ‘unmask’ or reveal their names. Still, ‘unmasking’ was supposed to be
extraordinarily rare, requiring a high-ranking official’s approval accompanied
by a strong legal argument that the citizen’s name is crucial to addressing
some national-security threat,” she wrote.
But Attkisson said her inside sources
explain what became of the system: “An official who is a bad actor may want to
monitor a U.S. citizen — say, a political enemy or a journalist — but knows he
could never get wiretap approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court (FISC). So he develops a pretext to wiretap a foreigner or a target in
contact with that citizen. He then ‘incidentally’ captures the citizen’s
information, too. Later, he builds a case for ‘unmasking’ the U.S. citizen’s
name, supposedly for national security or other crucial reasons.”
She pointed out that besides Power,
acting Attorney General Sally Yates and national security adviser Susan Rice, along with Clapper,
were active in such cases.
“What if my sources are correct and at
least some of these actions are not on the up and up? After all, our intel
agencies have gotten caught in significant abuses, despite FBI Director
Christopher Wray incorrectly testifying to the contrary,” she wrote.
She noted the inspector general in 2016
found widespread abuse of the possibilities. “Could it help explain my own case
in which government spy software was found on my work and personal
devices?” Attkisson wondered. “Hypothetically, if bad actors abused their
authority, might they be so anti-Trump partly because a wildcard Trump
administration could be expected to unearth what they’d been doing all these
years?”
She has reported her own computers have
been monitored and hacked, alleging in a lawsuit several years ago her drive
was swapped out by the government.
Comments
There is a long list
of events that involved serious mistakes and unlawful government abuse in the
Obama administration a sanitized DOJ should investigate, resolve, prosecute and
report. This includes “Fast and
Furious”, Benghazi, the Clinton crimes and Obama abuses carried out in the
agencies. .Congress needs to publish its mistakes over the past 150 years and
so does the Supreme Court.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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