Fox News, The Daily Mail and Bloomberg News are all reporting the unmaking requests of collected surveillance activity was made by President Obama’s former National Security Adviser Susan Rice.

However, it remains unclear if Rice just made the unmasking requests, or if she herself did the unmasking.  Additionally, reporting by all three media outlets claims the surveillance of the Trump campaign encompassed more than a year.

(Via Fox News) 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. (read more)

From her position as chief of the National Security Council, according to a Bloomberg columnist (Eli Lake), Rice asked government agencies to identify names that had been withheld from raw intelligence reports linked with Trump campaign and transition figures.

There is not necessarily anything illegal or unusual about a national security adviser seeking to unmask names in raw reports, in order to fully understand the meaning of intercepted conversations.

But in this case those identities – including the name of then-National Security Advisor Mike Flynn – were subsequently leaked and made public.  That is a federal felony.

Rice had access to intelligence reports that also 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,’ according to Bloomberg.  (more)

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