Spare_change
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- Jun 27, 2011
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“From my direct experience dealing at this level, that is never done,” retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer told Fox News. Shaffer has experience in intelligence operations focused on foreign actors in which U.S. citizens’ involvement could surface. “The national security adviser person is a manager position, not an analyst position,” he said. “You have analysts in the intelligence community whose job is to sort through who is doing what with what. Susan Rice is a senior manager looking over the entire intelligence community. She should not have time to be unmasking individuals having conversations. It’s insane. It’s never done.” Ex-CIA analyst Fred Fleitz agreed in a Fox News op-ed. “Rice’s denials don’t add up,” Fleitz wrote. “It is hard to fathom how the demasking of multiple Trump campaign and transition officials was not politically motivated.”
Former Ambassador to the United Nations and Fox News contributor John Bolton told “America’s Newsroom” that Rice’s requests may have been improper depending on what reason she gave for wanting the information. “Now I’m not naïve, a national security adviser’s gonna get her request approved. But she still has to give some reason,” said Bolton, who served under former President George W. Bush. “If she doesn’t even have to give a reason than NSA is really quite negligent. Susan Rice is obviously not gonna say, ‘I want these names unmasked so I can surveil my political opponents.’ And if she said she wanted the names unmasked for national security reasons, that’s a fraud on the intelligence system.” Shaffer said a U.S. citizen’s interaction with a foreign target is not typically reason enough to unmask an American.
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From former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, who knows a thing a two about how national security investigations are conducted. His entire column is worth your time, but one key point he makes is that the National Security Adviser is a consumer or intelligence, not a gatherer of it. Rice's "job" was to advise the president on policy, not to conduct investigations:
The thing to bear in mind is that the White House does not do investigations. Not criminal investigations, not intelligence investigations. Remember that...There would have been no intelligence need for Susan Rice to ask for identities to be unmasked. If there had been a real need to reveal the identities — an intelligence need based on American interests — the unmasking would have been done by the investigating agencies. The national-security adviser is not an investigator. She is a White House staffer. The president’s staff is a consumer of intelligence, not a generator or collector of it. If Susan Rice was unmasking Americans, it was not to fulfill an intelligence need based on American interests; it was to fulfill a political desire based on Democratic-party interests...
At a high level, officials like Susan Rice had names unmasked that would not ordinarily be unmasked. That information was then being pushed widely throughout the intelligence community in unmasked form . . . particularly after Obama, toward the end of his presidency, suddenly — and seemingly apropos of nothing — changed the rules so that all of the intelligence agencies (not just the collecting agencies) could have access to raw intelligence information. As we know, the community of intelligence agencies leaks like a sieve, and the more access there is to juicy information, the more leaks there are. Meanwhile, former Obama officials and Clinton-campaign advisers, like [Evelyn] Farkas, were pushing to get the information transferred from the intelligence community to members of Congress, geometrically increasing the likelihood of intelligence leaks.
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The wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round .... right over Ms Rice.
Former Ambassador to the United Nations and Fox News contributor John Bolton told “America’s Newsroom” that Rice’s requests may have been improper depending on what reason she gave for wanting the information. “Now I’m not naïve, a national security adviser’s gonna get her request approved. But she still has to give some reason,” said Bolton, who served under former President George W. Bush. “If she doesn’t even have to give a reason than NSA is really quite negligent. Susan Rice is obviously not gonna say, ‘I want these names unmasked so I can surveil my political opponents.’ And if she said she wanted the names unmasked for national security reasons, that’s a fraud on the intelligence system.” Shaffer said a U.S. citizen’s interaction with a foreign target is not typically reason enough to unmask an American.
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From former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, who knows a thing a two about how national security investigations are conducted. His entire column is worth your time, but one key point he makes is that the National Security Adviser is a consumer or intelligence, not a gatherer of it. Rice's "job" was to advise the president on policy, not to conduct investigations:
The thing to bear in mind is that the White House does not do investigations. Not criminal investigations, not intelligence investigations. Remember that...There would have been no intelligence need for Susan Rice to ask for identities to be unmasked. If there had been a real need to reveal the identities — an intelligence need based on American interests — the unmasking would have been done by the investigating agencies. The national-security adviser is not an investigator. She is a White House staffer. The president’s staff is a consumer of intelligence, not a generator or collector of it. If Susan Rice was unmasking Americans, it was not to fulfill an intelligence need based on American interests; it was to fulfill a political desire based on Democratic-party interests...
At a high level, officials like Susan Rice had names unmasked that would not ordinarily be unmasked. That information was then being pushed widely throughout the intelligence community in unmasked form . . . particularly after Obama, toward the end of his presidency, suddenly — and seemingly apropos of nothing — changed the rules so that all of the intelligence agencies (not just the collecting agencies) could have access to raw intelligence information. As we know, the community of intelligence agencies leaks like a sieve, and the more access there is to juicy information, the more leaks there are. Meanwhile, former Obama officials and Clinton-campaign advisers, like [Evelyn] Farkas, were pushing to get the information transferred from the intelligence community to members of Congress, geometrically increasing the likelihood of intelligence leaks.
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The wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round .... right over Ms Rice.
