Posted on 03/27/2017 10:00:40 AM PDT by Lorianne
Democrats are so eager to take down President Trump that they are joining forces with the Surveillance State to trample the privacy rights of people close to Trump, ex-FBI agent Coleen Rowley tells Dennis J Bernstein. ___
Since Donald Trumps election, former Special FBI Agent Coleen Rowley has been alarmed over how Democratic hawks, neocons and other associates in the deep state have obsessed over resurrecting the ghost of Joseph McCarthy and have built political support for a permanent war policy around hatred of Russia.
Rowley, whose 2002 memo to the FBI Director exposed some of the FBIs pre-9/11failures, compared the current anti-Russia hysteria to the
Red Scare fear of Communism famously associated with legendary FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover who collaborated with Sen. Joe McCarthys hunt for disloyal Americans in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
In an interview, Rowley told me that while Trump was wrong about his claim that President Obama ordered a surveillance tapp of Trump Tower, the broader point may have been correct as explained by House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, R-California, who described how U.S. intelligence apparently picked up conversations by Trump associates while monitoring other targets.
Dennis Bernstein: A former high-level FBI whistleblower says Trump is vindicated on his claims of being surveilled by the previous administration. Joining us to take a close look at whats been going on, whats been unfolding in Washington, D.C. is Coleen Rowley. Shes a former FBI special agent and division council. She wrote a May 2002 memo to the FBI director that exposed some of the FBIs pre-9/11 failures, major failures. She was Time magazines person of the year in 2002. Help us explain what chairman Nunes reported in terms of the collecting process and Trumps innocence or guilt?
Coleen Rowley: I think the Chairman Nunes said [Wednesday] that Trump was monitored instead of wiretapped. And these are terms of art that for three weeks or so, no one has fully understood and so theres been all this confusion. Trump, himself, did not understand, and was clumsy in saying my campaign was wiretapped. Wiretapping itself is almost obsolete. It means tapping into a wire, thats the old way, when the way communications used to go over wires and now theyre digital and they Snowden, if you remember, all of the disclosures from Edward Snowden, and other NSA whistleblowers, theres something going on now called collect it all, massive surveillance. And that is done, there are some targets, but then lots and lots of Americans are incidentally monitored they arent monitored but their conversations, and their phone numbers that theyre dialing and their e-mails that theyre e-mailing are collected.
SNIP
I don't think President Trump was especially clumsy. He used "quotes". His tweet indicated "my campaign was "wiretapped" by Obama". That's a paraphrase, but he put quotes around "wiretapped".
The media seems to have interpreted this as President Obama himself, up on a telephone pole, splicing some old copper wires, and listening to Trump's phone calls. And, based on that mental image, the media declared "it never happened".
Okay.
But was candidate Trump monitored? Was he surveilled? Did Obama gather information? And give it to Robby Mook of Hillary's campaign (Mook says that's what happened.)
President Trump plagiarized the new york times when he used the obsolete, yet newly infamous “wiretapped” term. Where is the outrage over that miserly issue?
Obama always respected privacy rights. Just ask Jack and Jeri Lynn Ryan.
Uh....no! That's a rhetorical trick Trump uses to imply he is slightly ignorant of the facts and needs to be corrected. The idiots then go ballistic obfuscating and correcting, denying, etc. while Trump commands the playing/battle field and controls the memes.
True. And the failure to interpret Trump’s figurative use of the word wiretapping vs literal use suggests these critics themselves have merely a beginner’s level understanding of the difference.
Talk to a federal agent about what term they use in referring to electronic surveillance and almost every one will say “wiretap”. The methods and technology involved in listening/eavesdropping/monitoring someone else’s communications is no longer literally tapping into someone’s phone line and it hasn’t been for a long time, but the term is still very much in use. Say it to a prosecutor and he’ll know what you’re talking about.
“...Trump, himself, did not understand, and was clumsy in saying my campaign was wiretapped.”
Wow, thanks for clearing that us for us Colleen Rowley. Moron, nobody, anywhere, thinks Trump believes someone with alligator clips “tapped” into his phone line. Wiretapped was a way to stay under 140 characters on twitter while explaining that he was under massive illegal surveillance. And yes, it came straight from Obama.
Only a blithering idiot believes otherwise.
And the morons are looking for a signed order or something from Obama saying “ok, go spy on Trump”.
Great point...ambitious "community organizer" Obama wanted the US Senate seat badly.
So he and Axelrod connived to publicize sordid details of the Ryans' sealed divorce records.
If he keeps this up, "THEY" -- and most thinking Americans KNOW who "THEY" ARE -- will JFK him.
Pray for the President and America. HARD!
“Incidental”
The word makes it allllll better.
Such terms are appropriately described as “colloquial”. There is no need for precise phrasing because the President was messaging the public in colloquial terms that everyone could understand.
“That’s a paraphrase, but he put quotes around “wiretapped”.”
That is correct.
It is all a game to the left to confuse and obfuscate issues for dumb-downed sheeple. There are countless words and phraseology in use today such as "wiretap" that are outdated yet understood in the modern sense.
I am convinced that when (and if) we ever see the papers authorizing this investigation of the Trump campaign, we will see Hillary Clinton’s fingerprints all over them. The investigation was started for surreptitious partisan reasons, and you can be certain that they skirted the law, and then fed the info directly to the Clinton campaign.
I don’t see how it could be “incidental” when Comey admits that he’s been investigating the Trump campaign since July of last year. And they obviously did not think the Trump wires were incidental, or they would have masked the names of the Trump campaign reps.
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