Dirty Rotten Politics

By Stephen Lendman  

Trump was right tweeting: “Wow, @FoxNews just reporting big news. Source: ‘Official behind unmasking is high up.’”

“‘Known Intel official is responsible. Some unmasked…not associated with Russia. Trump team spied on before he was nominated.’”

“If this is true, does not get much bigger. Would be sad for US.”

Fox News said

“(o)ur sources, who have direct knowledge of what took place, were upset because those two individuals, they say, had nothing to do with the outing of this information.”

“We’ve learned that the surveillance that led to the unmasking of what started way before President Trump was even the GOP nominee.”

“The person who did the unmasking, I’m told, is very well known, very high up, very senior in the intelligence world and is not in the FBI.”

“This led to other surveillance which led to multiple names being unmasked. Again these are private citizens in the United States. This had nothing to do with Russia, I’m told, or foreign intelligence of any kind.”

Information is “coming from folks that are in these agencies and frustrated with the politics that is taking place in these agencies.”

“We’re told that the main issue here is not only the unmasking of the names, but the spreading of names for political purposes that have nothing to do with national security and everything to do with hurting and embarrassing Trump and his team.”

Circa.com reported top Obama officials directly involved in intercepting conversations between Americans and foreign sources.

Some targeted figures included Trump transition team members.

“Intercepts involving congressional figures (were) unmasked occasionally for some time,” said Circa writers.

Civil liberties and privacy rights were ignored on the phony pretext of protecting national security.

Journalist Mike Cernovich said Obama’s national security advisor Susan Rice was “identified as the official who requested unmasking of incoming Trump officials.”

“The White House Counsel’s office identified (her) as the person responsible for the unmasking after examining (her) document log requests.”

Under Obama, unmasking rules were changed. Cleared to request and use unmasked NSA intelligence reports were Rice, CIA director John Brennan, attorney general Loretta Lynch, among others.

Information now known confirms Trump and his associates were spied on. Should it surprise? Everyone is spied on, our phone conversations and online communications.

Bloomberg News reported learning about spying on Trump and his team from White House lawyers, saying

“former national security adviser Susan Rice requested the identities of US persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign, according to US officials familiar with the matter.”

Rice failed to respond to a Bloomberg email, seeking her comments on the matter.

Last month on the PBS News Hour, she lied, saying “I know nothing about this.” Responsible for what happened, she knows plenty.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. 

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.