Posted on 05/14/2020 10:36:50 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
Former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper said Thursday it is “routine” to “unmask” American citizens who have been caught up in surveillance of foreign individuals as Republicans spark an uproar over allegations that officials spied on former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
“Over the six and a half almost seven years when I served as DNI I would say perhaps once or twice a week perhaps,” Clapper said on CNN when asked how frequently he would request an American’s identity to be revealed.
“It’s a routine thing. It’s appropriate and legitimate when you have a valid foreign intelligence target engaging with a U.S. person. Is it, for example, an insider, someone in the government engaging with a foreign adversary? So it’s important from the standpoint of potential jeopardy to national security that you understand what’s going on.”
Clapper was one of several Obama-era officials named on Wednesday by the Trump administration and Republican senators who they say asked for documents that led to Flynn being “unmasked” from intelligence reports between the 2016 election and President Trump’s inauguration.
SNIP
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
The multiple unmaskings of the same person is odd. It seems redundant. It makes me think the purpose was to make it legal for them to discuss Flynn amongst themselves.
That is, for one conspirator to speak with another about Flynn in the classified context, they *both* would have needed to have unmasked him. Thus all members of the circle would have needed to have unmasked him in order to legally be in on the discussion.
So then no need to unmask.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
They each needed to unmask him in order to legally discuss him in the classified context. They didn’t unmask him for the sake of gaining knowledge, but to make their discussions of him legal, aka “by the book”. Or at least that’s my thought at the moment.
These bastards unmasked Flynn 56 times in less than a month and THAT is not common practice!!
These bastards unmasked Flynn 56 times in less than a month and THAT is not common practice!!
56 times for ONE guy in a SHORT period of time.
You can bet your a$$ this is just the tip of the iceberg for 8 years.
May be, but don't you think the American talking to Kislyak about sanctions would have been unmasked no matter who it was?
Obama weaponized the ENTIRE government the one that PISSED me off the most was the IRS going after the Tea Party organization and there was NOTHING done about it not one damn thing!! Once the bastard got away with that he just felt free to corrupt the FBI, CIA, NSA, DEA, STATE, why not the are NEVER a damn drop of consequences NEVER!!
lmao
Interesting observation.
They unmasked him BEFORE that phone call ever happened, BUT when they found that call at later unmasking they thought they had hit gold!!…NO it was not unusual for the damn national security advisor to be speaking the ambassador to Russia about the sanctions WHY do you feel that should raise any kind of suspicion??? These bastards were looking for something to get him away from the administration he definitely would have discovered the campaign spying that had been going on having been in intel himself for years they HAD TO get rid of Flynn!!
Clapper, like all RATs, is a pathological liar.
You don't know before you unmask, who it will be ... they were incredibly lucky (/sarcasm)
He wasn't the NSA.
I don't think there's anything illegal about him having the conversation but it's crazy to think our national security and diplomatic people wouldn't want to know who's talking to Kislyak.
It was clearly a problem politically for the incoming administration to be actively undermining the current administration's position with an adversary. That's why Pence rushed out to say it didn't happen and why Flynn lied about it.
It's all political on both sides, not illegal.
Exactly.
Let's compare all requests for all unmaskings and by the number of people asking for unmaskings and see how they compare.
Let's see how "common" this has been in the past.
Clapper, Feinstein Ask For Leniency For Senate Staffer Implicated In Leaking Probe
dailycaller.com
1 min read
Joshua Roberts/Reuters
Former Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wrote a letter asking for leniency for the Senate Intelligence Committee’s former security director who pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about his contact with a reporter.
James Wolfe “lied to FBI agents in a December 2017 interview in connection with the FBI’s probe of leaks of information regarding the activities of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to various reporters,” his lawyer wrote. “It is a decision, along with his breaking his marital vows and violating his former employer’s rules regarding contacts with the media, that he deeply regrets.”
Clapper submitted a handwritten letter to the judge supporting Wolfe, saying “knowing Jim as I do, I know this whole experience — and its exposure in the media — has been very traumatic for him already. I would hope the court would consider his long and faithful service, as well as what he has endured so far — in sentencing and would recommend minimal confinement.”
Republican intelligence committee chairman Richard Burr and with Democratic ranking member Dianne Feinstein also wrote to “seek leniency in the sentencing of Mr. James Wolfe … we do not seek to diminish the seriousness of the allegations against Jim, nor diminish the significance of misleading federal agents … but we ask that the totality of his service and career be taken into consideration.”
The sentencing documents were first reported by BuzzFeed News, which once employed Ali Watkins, a reporter with whom Wolfe had a relationship.
Separately, Feinstein’s driver was outed as a Chinese spy, something she quietly swept under the rug.
bttt
Meanwhile, Obama was inviting terrorists to the White House, Hillary was removing the roadblocks so Tariq Aziz could enter the country, Obama was letting Cuban intelligence officials four SOCOM, and so on.
Jim Clapper?
Is that you?
What was interesting was that he almost never spoke with the head of IRS... but he was in almost daily contact with the IRS employee union head.
Yes, I believe that is the reason. Notice that the unmaskings that we are informed about started a month and a half before the "phone call". And the people doing the unmasking are pretty far afield.
I would expect Intel people to do so, in fact an professional intel guy like Flynn would assume he was wiretapped while talking to the Russian ambassador... by both sides. And would guard his words accordingly.
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