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Critics of former National Security Adviser Susan Rice say she’s caught in a lie about misusing intelligence for political purposes.
A few media sources, most prominently Bloomberg columnist Eli Lake, have said Rice repeatedly asked to learn the names of unidentified American citizens who appeared in intelligence reports in connection to the Donald Trump campaign and transition. These reports are based on anonymous sources, and Rice has neither confirmed nor denied them.
At first glance, this narrative clashes with an interview Rice gave to PBS on March 22, where she seemed to say she didn’t know if Trump associates had been picked up in surveillance. But looking at the PBS interview in its full context, it’s not 100 percent clear that Rice made an intentionally false statement, though she might have omitted relevant (and potentially classified) information.
In a separate fact-check, we explained why these allegations against Rice don’t automatically indicate wrongdoing.
What Rice told PBS’s Judy Woodruff on March 22
Woodruff asked Rice about Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., who claimed to have learned that surveillance of foreign individuals might have picked up Trump and his associates, and their names might have been disclosed. Nunes has since stepped away from his role chairing the House investigation into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election.
Woodruff: "We’ve been following a disclosure by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, that in essence, during the final days of the Obama administration, during the transition, after President Trump had been elected, that he and the people around him may have been caught up in surveillance of foreign individuals in that their identities may have been disclosed. Do you know anything about this?"
Rice: I know nothing about this. I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that count today.
Let’s back up and recall where we have been. The president of the United States accused his predecessor, President Obama, of wiretapping Trump tower during the campaign. Nothing of the sort occurred, and we’ve heard that confirmed by the director of the FBI, who also pointed out that no president, no White House, can order the surveillance of another American citizen. That can only come from the Justice Department with approval of a FISA court.
So today, I really don’t know to what Chairman Nunes was referring. But he said whatever he was referring to was a legal, lawful surveillance, and it was potentially incidental collection on American citizens. I think it’s important for people to understand what "incidental" means. That means that the target was either a foreign entity or somebody under criminal investigation, and the Americans who were talking to those targets may have been picked up.
It’s possible, given the question asked, Rice was trying to say that she didn’t know what Nunes was specifically talking about, as opposed to not knowing anything about incidental surveillance pickups of Trump’s associates generally — an explanation Rice herself gave on Twitter April 4.
"I said I did not know what reports Nunes was referring to when he spoke to the press. I still do not. But the full (House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) needs to know," she tweeted.
At this point, too little is known about the allegations against Rice, as well as Nunes’ claims, to assess whether Rice’s March 22 comment— "I know nothing about this" — was truthful.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/apr/07/context-did-susan-rice-lie-about-unmasking-trump-a/
EXCLUSIVE POLITICS APR 4 2017, 4:17 PM ET
Susan Rice Speaks Out on ‘Unmasking’ Accusations: ‘I Leaked Nothing to Nobody’
by KEN DILANIAN and CORKY SIEMASZKO
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Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice on Tuesday flatly denied that she sought to improperly "unmask" Trump campaign officials whose conversations were caught on surveillance by U.S. intelligence services.
"The allegation is that somehow the Obama administration officials utilized intelligence for political purposes, " Rice said on MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports." "That's absolutely false."
Rice added that it's not unusual to request the identities of people caught on intelligence surveillance.
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"There were occasions when I would receive a report in which a U.S. person was referred to, name not provided, just a U.S. person, and sometimes in that context in order to understand the importance of that report, and assess its significance, it was necessary to find out or request the information as to who that U.S. official was," she said, without going into specifics.
For example, she said, "if two foreigners were having a conversation" about a possible bombing with an American, they would want to know if that person "was some kook" or a legitimate threat.
"It was not uncommon, it was necessary at times to make those requests," she told Mitchell. "I don't have a particular recollection of doing that more frequently after the election."
Rice also batted away reports that she allegedly had a "spreadsheet" of telephone calls made by Trump campaign officials.
"There was no spreadsheet," she said. "There was nothing of the sort."
Related: What Is Unmasking, and Did Susan Rice Do Anything Wrong?
Rice denied revealing the name of Mike Flynn, President Donald Trump's former national security adviser, who resigned after his communications with Russian officials became public.
"I leaked nothing to nobody and never have and never would," Rice said.
Nor, Rice said, was she aware that Flynn was lobbyist for Turkey.
In her first interview since the story broke, Rice also said she was "surprised" and "shocked" when Trump tweeted a widely discredited claim that former President Obama personally ordered the bugging of Trump Tower and members of his team during the campaign.
"That's a very serious allegation, it had no basis in fact, and it wasn't typical of the way presidents treat their predecessors," Rice said of Trump's tweet.
Long a favorite target of the Republicans, Rice was plunged into controversy after blogger Mike Cernovich, best known for promoting the bogus story that a Washington, D.C. pizza parlor was a nest of pedophiles connected to Hillary Clinton, claimed she had sought to "unmask" Trump campaign aides.
Later Bloomberg View columnist Eli Lake picked up the tale. Citing anonymous "U.S. officials familiar with the matter," Lake reported Monday that the former national security adviser "requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign."
Image: US-ATTACKS-DIPLOMACY-SUMMIT-RICE
US National Security Adviser Susan Rice speaks during the closing session of the White House Summit to Counter Violent Extremism at the State Department on February 19, 2015 in Washington, DC. Mandel Ngan / AFP - Getty Images
"The pattern of Rice's requests was discovered in a National Security Council review of the government's policy on 'unmasking' the identities of individuals in the U.S. who are not targets of electronic eavesdropping, but whose communications are collected incidentally," Lake wrote.
Trump-friendly news outlets like Fox News and Breitbart quickly jumped on the story as possible evidence to back up the president's "wiretapping" claims.
In an interview with Fox News after the Rice interview, Lake said she "didn't really answer that question about whether she unmasked in many, in dozens of instances, the names of people who would be in the Trump transition."
MSNBC terrorism analyst Malcolm Nance, retired United States Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer in naval cryptology, said Rice said as much as she could. And he dismissed the story as "smoke and mirrors" by the Trump administration to distract from ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election.
NBC has learned that Rice didn't — and couldn't — "order" the unmasking of any American because only the agencies that gathered the surveillance (usually the NSA or FBI) can make that call and the process is subject to rules and reviewed by lawyers.
The bar is high too because there has to be a legitimate intelligence reason to justify identifying the person or persons.
Also, it's not unusual for administrations to request the identities of people captured on surveillance so they can better understand the intelligence. Former NSA chief Keith Alexander told NBC he routinely turned down unmasking requests by senior officials in the Obama and George W. Bush administrations.
Unmasking does not mean making public. The reports are still highly classified and viewable by just a select group of people with top secret clearance.
Rice stressed that point in her NBC interview.
"The notion that, which some people are trying to suggest, that by asking for the identity of an American person that is the same as leaking it, is completely false," she said. "There's no equivalence between so-called unmasking and leaking. The effort to ask for the identity of an American citizen is necessary to understand the importance of an intelligence report in some instances."
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/susan-rice-speaks-out-unmasking-accusations-i-leaked-nothing-nobody-n742486
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