WIKILEAKS BREAKING NEWS: SUSAN RICE UNMASKED TRUMP TEAM. Obama Spied On Trump, Allies, Journalists
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Mike Cernovich, a journalist who has promoted conspiracy theories and was deemed fake news by 60 Minutes, was the first to break the news that Obamas former national security advisor Susan Rice made requests to unmask the identities of Trump associates.
Cernovich said in his reportSunday that New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman knew about the rice requests, and has chosen to sit on it in an effort to protect the reputation of former President Barack Obama. A New York Times spokeswoman told The Daily Caller, Cernovichs claim regarding Maggie Haberman is 100 percent false.
Bloombergs Eli Lake confirmed Cernovichs report Monday, but did not include any details about Haberman sitting on the story. Cernovich told TheDC in an interview that Lake also sat on the story over the weekend. Lake did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Bloomberg story didnt give Cernovich any credit for his scoop and he said he wasnt upset as he has more influence than Bloomberg.
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway also tweeted out a transcript Monday of Cernovichs recent interview on 60 minutes, in which he battled Scott Pelley.
Pelley confronted Cernovich about a story that said Hillary Clinton had Parkinsons disease. Cernovich stood by the report and Pelley said, It isnt true. Cernovich asked, How do you know?
Pelley replied, Well, the campaign told us that.
Cernovich told TheDC that a lot of things other people consider fake, perhaps they need to reexamine what they think about the world. He said that Maggie Haberman works for the Democratic National Committee, and that people want to see a check on media excesses, right now few people are keeping the fake news media like The New York Times accountable.
Spicer Comments on Susan Rice Unmasking Controversy
Multiple sources tell Fox News that Susan Rice, former national security adviser under then-President Barack Obama, requested to unmask the names of Trump transition officials caught up in surveillance.
The unmasked names, of people associated with Donald Trump, were then 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.
The names were part of incidental electronic surveillance of candidate and President-elect Trump and people close to him, including family members, for up to a year before he took office.
It was not clear how Rice knew to ask for the names to be unmasked, but the question was being posed by the sources late Monday.
"What I know is this ... If the intelligence community professionals decide that theres some value, national security, foreign policy or otherwise in unmasking someone, they will grant those requests," former Obama State Department spokeswoman and Fox News contributor Marie Harf told Fox News" Martha MacCallum on "The First 100 Days. "And we have seen no evidence ... that there was partisan political notice behind this and we cant say that unless theres actual evidence to back that up."
Im not going to comment on this any further until [congressional] committees have come to a conclusion, he said, while contrasting the medias alleged lack of interest in these revelations with the intense coverage of suspected Trump-Russia links.
When names of Americans are incidentally collected, they are supposed to be masked, meaning the name or names are redacted from reports whether it is international or domestic collection, unless it is an issue of national security, crime or if their security is threatened in any way. There are loopholes and ways to unmask through backchannels, but Americans are supposed to be protected from incidental collection. Sources told Fox News that in this case, they were not.
This comes in the wake of Evelyn Farkas television interview last month in which the former Obama deputy secretary of defense said in part: I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill it was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people, get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the administration.
Meanwhile, Fox News also is told that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes knew about unmasking and leaking back in January, well before President Trumps tweet in March alleging wiretapping.
Nunes has faced criticism from Democrats for viewing pertinent documents on White House grounds and announcing their contents to the press. But sources said the intelligence agencies slow-rolled Nunes. He could have seen the logs at other places besides the White House SCIF [secure facility], but it had already been a few weeks. So he went to the White House because he could protect his sources and he could get to the logs.
As the Obama administration left office, it also approved new rules that gave the NSA much broader powers by relaxing the rules about sharing intercepted personal communications and the ability to share those with 16 other intelligence agencies.
Rice is no stranger to controversy. As the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, she appeared on several Sunday news shows to defend the adminstration"s later debunked claim that the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks on a U.S. consulate in Libya was triggered by an Internet video.
Rice also told ABC News in 2014 that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl "served the United States with honor and distinction" and that he "wasn"t simply a hostage; he was an American prisoner of war captured on the battlefield."
Bergdahl is currently facing court-martialon charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy for allegedly walking off his post in Afghanistan.
Adam Housley joined Fox News Channel (FNC) in 2001 and currently serves as a Los Angeles-based senior correspondent.
Susan Rice Unmasked Trump Transition Team, NY Times Sat On Story | Mike Cernovich Periscope
BY: Alex GriswoldFollow@HashtagGriswoldApril 3, 2017 2:29 pm
Susan Rice, former President Barack Obama"s national security adviser, reportedly requested on several occasions the identities of "masked" U.S. persons in intelligence reports linked to President Trump"s transition and campaign.
White House lawyers discovered Rice"s dozens of requests last month during 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," Bloomberg"s Eli Lake reported Monday, citing U.S. officials.
But Rice, who Newsweek once called Obama"s "right-hand woman," denied having any knowledge of the intelligence community"s reported incidental surveillance of Trump"s transition team during a PBS interview last month.
Rep. Devin Nunes (R., Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee,charged in Marchhe had seen evidence that some of the Trump transition team"s communications with foreign actors weresurveilled by the Obama administration.
"What I"ve read seems to be some level of surveillance activity, perhaps legal, but I don"t know that it"s right and I don"t know if the American people would be comfortable with what I"ve read," Nunes said.
Judy Woodruff asked Rice about Nunes" claims on "PBS NewsHour" on March 22.
"So, today, I really don"t know to what Chairman Nunes was referring, but he said that whatever he was referring to was a legal, lawful surveillance, and that it was potentially incidental collection on American citizens," added Rice, who went on to criticize Trump for his accusation that Obama wiretapped him during the presidential campaign.
Lake"s reportingon Monday appears to contradict Rice"s answer last month.
Lake"s sources told him that Rice wanted to"unmask" the names of the Trump team members in the intelligence reports, who otherwise would show up with generic titles like "U.S. Person One." "Unmasking" is not illegal when tied to a legitimate investigation, but civil liberty advocates worry the practice allows for backdoor surveillance of U.S. citizens.
"One U.S. official familiar with the reports said they contained valuable political information on the Trump transition such as whom the Trump team was meeting, the views of Trump associates on foreign policy matters, and plans for the incoming administration," Lake reports.
The House Intelligence Committee is expected to soon receive top-secret documents that investigators believewill show whether private communications of Trumpand his transition team were improperly gathered.
