[This commentary was submitted by Norm Sauer who is on the editorial board of The Union and often contributes his views to these pages. The same piece appeared in the 26apr17 edition of the newspaper's op-ed section. It appears below as received. gjr]
Norm Sauer
In my column last month (http://www.theunion.com/opinion/norm-sauer-the-progressive-swamp-of-washington-d-c/), I predicted the surveillance of Trump and his team by the Obama administration may be a story bigger than Watergate.
To date an enormous amount of media attention and investigations about direct Russian collusion with Trump have found no evidence. However, little attention has been given to improper unmasking of surveillance and leaking, and yet this has far more credibility based on contradictory statements by Susan Rice, the reported data on unmasking, and Obama’s expansion of access to intercepts.
On March 22, House Intelligence Committee chair Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) announced that he had learned that members of President Donald Trump’s transition team had been under surveillance by the Obama administration, that individual names had been “unmasked” by the intelligence community, and that those names had been leaked to the media. Nunes said that while there was no direct “wiretap” by President Barack Obama of Trump Tower, there was indeed surveillance — perhaps collected incidentally — of people close to Trump, possibly including Trump himself.
Rep. Nunes also reported something stunningly new: that the surveillance did not involve the ongoing FBI inquiry into Russia’s alleged involvement in the 2016 presidential election. He emphasized, none of the surveillance had intelligence value.
“I believe it was all done legally,” Nunes told a press conference. The question, he said, was why names of those swept up in the surveillance had been leaked. So, the collection of the intelligence appeared to have been legal, but the leaking may have been illegal.
In a PBS interview later on March 22, 2017, Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice denied any knowledge of the intelligence community’s incidental surveillance of Trump’s transition team or of any ‘unmasking.’ Her words, “I know nothing about this.”
On April 3 the Bloomberg View reported that White House lawyers learned that the former national security adviser Susan Rice requested the identities be unmasked of U.S. citizens in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign.
Contradicting her interview on PBS, on April 4 Susan Rice was interviewed by Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC. Rice admitted engaging in unmasking U. S. citizens in intelligence reports but claimed she didn’t leak “nothing to nobody.” Further, Rice implied President Obama ordered the compilation of intelligence reports on Trump officials when she said, “the president requested the compilation of the intelligence, which was ultimately provided in January (2017).”
It is important here to mention that on March 29, Evelyn Farkas, Obama’s former deputy assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, while on Morning Joe admitted: “I was urging my former colleagues, . . . get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can. . . Because I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior [Obama] people who left … that the Trump folks – if they found out how we knew what we knew about their … the Trump staff dealing with Russians – that they would try to compromise those sources and methods . . .”
The reference to “how we knew” is evidence that Trump and his team were the objects of Obama administration intelligence reports, and we know from other sources those reports regarding Trump personnel were unmasked and leaked by the intelligence community to the major media most likely with the knowledge and blessing of Susan Rice and President Obama.
The sole purpose of foreign intelligence collection is to understand the actions and intentions of foreign powers and their operatives. Proper surveillance of an American citizen requires that either a crime be involved or suspicion of being a foreign agent, either ground requiring a FISA warrant.
So, we have conduct, conflicting statements and admissions by the Obama administration officials of unmasking and leaking of intelligence concerning Trump aides and possibly Trump himself probably for a political purpose. In the past, Benghazi lies about a you-tube video and the IRS’s misuse against conservative non-profits by Obama’s administration suggest political considerations were his and his administration’s top concerns. Hence, it seems surveillance of Trump and his team probably was politically motivated.
This surveillance, unmasking, and leaking of intelligence on president-elect Trump and his team, if done for political purposes such as to delegitimize his presidency and leadership is an abuse of power and an offense against the public trust. Necessarily involved in this scandal are the entire intelligence community, Obama’s right-hand person Susan Rice, and probably Obama himself.
Stay tuned.
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