PRESS RELEASE
Trump Surveillance Crime Closes Around ‘Team Obama’
April 4, 2017 (EIRNS)—Caught in the act, former Obama National Security Director Susan "I never leaked nothing to nobody" Rice and her National Security Council deputy, Ben Rhodes, have spent today protesting that Rice did nothing illegal in requesting the unmasking of U.S. citizens associated with Donald Trump appearing in foreign surveillance reports. The NSC Director has the right to make such requests, but only if national security or criminal actions may be involved.
The sheer scope of the "unmasking" operation reported, reduces those protestations to ridicule. To review:
After Bloomberg’s Eli Lake named Rice (identified as a British agent years ago by EIR) as the unmasker yesterday, Fox News revealed that multiple sources had reported that the identities received by Rice were
"sent to all those at the National Security Council, some at the Defense Department, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and then-CIA Director John Brennan—essentially, the officials at the top, including former Rice deputy Ben Rhodes."
Not just a few identities, either. According to former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova, U.S. intelligence turned over to Rice "detailed spreadsheets" of intercepted calls which contained no criminal or national security information.
Exactly as House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes had reported after reading "dozens" of the reports made available to him by an intelligence community whistleblower two weeks ago.
In an explosive article posted late on Monday night, tweeted today by President Trump, the Daily Caller quoted diGenova:
"What was produced by the intelligence community at the request of Ms. Rice were detailed spreadsheets of intercepted phone calls with unmasked Trump associates in perfectly legal conversations with individuals.... The overheard conversations involved no illegal activity by anybody of the Trump associates, or anyone they were speaking with. In short, the only apparent illegal activity was the unmasking of the people in the calls."
Col. (Ret.) James Waurishuk, a former NSC staffer and former Deputy Director for Intelligence at the U.S. Central Command, called the Daily Caller’s attention to the implications of the sheer scope of the operation. To carry out such unmasking requests as Rice now admits she made,
"the lawyers and counsel at the NSA surely would be talking to the lawyers and members of counsel at CIA, or at the National Security Council or at the Director of National Intelligence or at the FBI."
This is, as Col. Waurishuk noted,
"really, really serious stuff.... We’re looking at a potential constitutional crisis from the standpoint that we used an extremely strong capability that’s supposed to be used to safeguard and protect the country. And we used it for political purposes by a sitting president. That takes on a new precedent."
At the White House press briefing today, spokesman Sean Spicer raised some pertinent questions:
"Why was somebody unmasked; if that was the case, what was the purpose of requesting it; and the extent of which it occurred. If there is no intelligence or criminal value in it, why was somebody requesting it? How far did they do it? Who did they share it with? But I believe that there are more questions than answers at this point."
EIR asks, also: Is it conceivable, given the scope of the operation, that Rice’s "boss," President Barack Obama, did not know?
