Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI. Read more opinion SHARE THIS ARTICLE Share Tweet Post Email 
 
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 White House lawyers last month learned that the former national security adviser Susan Rice requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter. 
 
 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. Normally those names are redacted from summaries of monitored conversations and appear in reports as something like "U.S. Person One." 
 
 Nunes Says Trump Team Caught in U.S. Surveillance Net 
 
 The National Security Council's senior director for intelligence, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, was conducting the review, according to two U.S. officials who spoke with Bloomberg View on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. In February Cohen-Watnick discovered Rice's multiple requests to unmask U.S. persons in intelligence reports that related to Trump transition activities. He brought this to the attention of the White House General Counsel's office, who reviewed more of Rice's requests and instructed him to end his own research into the unmasking policy. 
 
 The intelligence reports were summaries of monitored conversations -- primarily between foreign officials discussing the Trump transition, but also in some cases direct contact between members of the Trump team and monitored foreign officials. One U.S. official familiar with the reports said they contained valuable political information on the Trump transition such as whom the Trump team was meeting, the views of Trump associates on foreign policy matters and plans for the incoming administration. 
 
 Rice did not respond to an email seeking comment on Monday morning. Her role in requesting the identities of Trump transition officials adds an important element to the dueling investigations surrounding the Trump White House since the president's inauguration. 
 
 Both the House and Senate intelligence committees are probing any ties between Trump associates and a Russian influence operation against Hillary Clinton during the election. The chairman of the House intelligence committee, Representative Devin Nunes, is also investigating how the Obama White House kept tabs on the Trump transition after the election through unmasking the names of Trump associates incidentally collected in government eavesdropping of foreign officials. 
 
 Rice herself has not spoken directly on the issue of unmasking. Last month when she was asked on the "PBS NewsHour" about reports that Trump transition officials, including Trump himself, were swept up in incidental intelligence collection, Rice said: "I know nothing about this," adding, "I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that account today." 
 
 Rice's requests to unmask the names of Trump transition officials do not vindicate Trump's own tweets from March 4 in which he accused Obama of illegally tapping Trump Tower. There remains no evidence to support that claim. 
 
 But Rice's multiple requests to learn the identities of Trump officials discussed in intelligence reports during the transition period does highlight a longstanding concern for civil liberties advocates about U.S. surveillance programs. The standard for senior officials to learn the names of U.S. persons incidentally collected is that it must have some foreign intelligence value, a standard that can apply to almost anything. This suggests Rice's unmasking requests were likely within the law. 
 
 The news about Rice also sheds light on the strange behavior of Nunes in the last two weeks. It emerged last week that he traveled to the White House last month, the night before he made an explosive allegation about Trump transition officials caught up in incidental surveillance. At the time he said he needed to go to the White House because the reports were only on a database for the executive branch. It now appears that he needed to view computer systems within the National Security Council that would include the logs of Rice's requests to unmask U.S. persons. 
 
 The ranking Democrat on the committee Nunes chairs, Representative Adam Schiff, viewed these reports on Friday. In comments to the press over the weekend he declined to discuss the contents of these reports, but also said it was highly unusual for the reports to be shown only to Nunes and not himself and other members of the committee. 
 
 Indeed, much about this is highly unusual: if not how the surveillance was collected, then certainly how and why it was disseminated. 
 
 This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. 
 
 To contact the author of this story: 
 
 Eli Lake at elake1@bloomberg.net 
 
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 / Updated By Ken Dilanian and Corky Siemaszko 
 
 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. 
 
 "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.” 
 
 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." ||||| Multiple sources tell Fox News that Susan Rice, former national security adviser under then-President Barack Obama, requested to unmask the names of Trump transition officials caught up in surveillance. 
 
 The unmasked names, of people associated with Donald Trump, were then sent to all those at the National Security Council, some at the Defense Department, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and then-CIA Director John Brennan – essentially, the officials at the top, including former Rice deputy Ben Rhodes. 
 
 The names were part of incidental electronic surveillance of candidate and President-elect Trump and people close to him, including family members, for up to a year before he took office. 
 
 Expand / Contract Rice was ambassador to the UN when she went on Sunday news shows to say the Benghazi attack was prompted by a video. (Fox News Photo) 
 
 It was not clear how Rice knew to ask for the names to be unmasked, but the question was being posed by the sources late Monday. 
 
 Such amazing reporting on unmasking and the crooked scheme against us by @foxandfriends. "Spied on before nomination." The real story. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 3, 2017 
 
 "What I know is this ... If the intelligence community professionals decide that there’s some value, national security, foreign policy or otherwise in unmasking someone, they will grant those requests," former Obama State Department spokeswoman and Fox News contributor Marie Harf told Fox News' Martha MacCallum on "The First 100 Days." "And we have seen no evidence ... that there was partisan political notice behind this and we can’t say that unless there’s actual evidence to back that up." 
 
 White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, asked about the revelations at Monday’s briefing, declined to comment specifically on what role Rice may have played or officials’ motives. 
 
 Expand / Contract Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., says he has seen incidental surveillance reports he fears were used for political reasons. (The Associated Press) 
 
 “I’m not going to comment on this any further until [congressional] committees have come to a conclusion,” he said, while contrasting the media’s alleged “lack” of interest in these revelations with the intense coverage of suspected Trump-Russia links. 
 
 When names of Americans are incidentally collected, they are supposed to be masked, meaning the name or names are redacted from reports – whether it is international or domestic collection, unless it is an issue of national security, crime or if their security is threatened in any way. There are loopholes and ways to unmask through backchannels, but Americans are supposed to be protected from incidental collection. Sources told Fox News that in this case, they were not. 
 
 This comes in the wake of Evelyn Farkas’ television interview last month in which the former Obama deputy secretary of defense said in part: “I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill – it was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people, get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the administration.” 
 
 Meanwhile, Fox News also is told that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes knew about unmasking and leaking back in January, well before President Trump’s tweet in March alleging wiretapping. 
 
 Nunes has faced criticism from Democrats for viewing pertinent documents on White House grounds and announcing their contents to the press. But sources said “the intelligence agencies slow-rolled Nunes. He could have seen the logs at other places besides the White House SCIF [secure facility], but it had already been a few weeks. So he went to the White House because he could protect his sources and he could get to the logs.” 
 
 As the Obama administration left office, it also approved new rules that gave the NSA much broader powers by relaxing the rules about sharing intercepted personal communications and the ability to share those with 16 other intelligence agencies. 
 
 Rice is no stranger to controversy. As the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, she appeared on several Sunday news shows to defend the adminstration's later debunked claim that the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks on a U.S. consulate in Libya was triggered by an Internet video. 
 
 Rice also told ABC News in 2014 that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl "served the United States with honor and distinction" and that he "wasn't simply a hostage; he was an American prisoner of war captured on the battlefield." 
 
 Bergdahl is currently facing court-martial on charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy for allegedly walking off his post in Afghanistan. 
 
 Adam Housley joined Fox News Channel (FNC) in 2001 and currently serves as a Los Angeles-based senior correspondent. ||||| Susan Rice speaks during a conference on the transition of the U.S. Presidency from Barack Obama to Donald Trump at the U.S. Institute Of Peace, Jan. 10. 
 
 Susan Rice speaks during a conference on the transition of the U.S. Presidency from Barack Obama to Donald Trump at the U.S. Institute Of Peace, Jan. 10. Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images 
 
 Well, what do you know. On the matter of who “unmasked” the names of Trump transition officials in U.S. intelligence reports, we now have one answer: Susan Rice, Barack Obama’s national security adviser. 
 
 A U.S. intelligence official confirms to us the bombshell news, first reported Monday by Bloomberg, that Ms. Rice requested the name of at least one Trump transition official listed in an intelligence report in the months between Election Day and Donald Trump’s inauguration. 
 
 Ms. Rice received summaries of U.S. eavesdropping either when foreign officials were discussing the Trump team, or when foreign officials were conversing with a Trump transition member. The surveillance was legally authorized, but the identities of U.S. citizens are typically masked so they cannot be known outside intelligence circles. Ms. Rice asked for and learned the identity of the Trump official, whose name hasn’t been publicly disclosed and our source declined to share. 
 
 Potomac Watch Podcast 
 
 Our source did confirm that Ms. Rice also examined dozens of other intelligence summaries that technically masked Trump official identities but were written in such a way as to make obvious who those officials were. This means that the masking was essentially meaningless. All this is highly unusual—and troubling. Unmasking does occur, but it is typically done by intelligence or law-enforcement officials engaged in antiterror or espionage investigations. Ms. Rice would have had no obvious need to unmask Trump campaign officials other than political curiosity. 
 
 We’re told by a source who has seen the unmasked documents that they included political information about the Trump transition team’s meetings and policy intentions. We are also told that none of these documents had anything to do with Russia or the FBI investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. While we don't know if Ms. Rice requested these dozens of reports, we are told that they were only distributed to a select group of recipients—conveniently including Ms. Rice. 
 
 All of this helps to explain the actions in the last week of House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, the one official in Washington who seems interested in pursuing the evidence of politicized surveillance. Mr. Nunes was roundly criticized by Democrats and the media last week for publicly revealing at least one instance of Obama White House unmasking, albeit without disclosing any names. 
 
 Now we know he is onto something. And we know that Mr. Nunes had to go to the White House to verify his information because the records containing Ms. Rice’s unmasking request are held at the National Security Council. 
 
 Where are the civil libertarians when you really need them? These columns support broad surveillance powers for national security, but executive officials need to be accountable if those powers are abused. If congressional oversight of U.S. intelligence operations is going to be worth the name, then it should include the unmasking of a political opponent by a senior official in the White House. 
 
 Democrats certainly raised a fuss during the Bush years and after Edward Snowden kicked off the debate about “metadata,” which are merely telephone numbers without names. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden went so far as to introduce a bill in 2013 to strengthen the ban on “reverse targeting”—in which intelligence agencies surveil foreigners but with the goal of capturing U.S. citizen communications. 
 
 Yet now that there’s evidence that the Obama Administration may have unmasked Trump officials, Democrats couldn’t care less. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on House Intelligence, has spent the past week denouncing Mr. Nunes for revealing that a name was unmasked and for having sources at the White House. But he hasn’t raised a peep about the unmasking itself or who was behind it. 
 
 The news about Ms. Rice’s unmasking role raises a host of questions for the Senate and House intelligence committees to pursue. What specific surveillance information did Ms. Rice seek and why? Was this information related to President Obama’s decision in January to make it possible for raw intelligence to be widely disbursed throughout the government? Was this surveillance of Trump officials “incidental” collection gathered while listening to a foreigner, or were some Trump officials directly targeted, or “reverse targeted”? 
 
 We were unable to locate Ms. Rice Monday to ask for comment, and she hasn’t addressed the unmasking as far as we know. But asked last month on the “PBS NewsHour” that Trump officials might have been surveilled, she said, “I know nothing about this” and “I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that account today.” She certainly deserves her turn under oath on Capitol Hill. 
 
 None of this should deter investigators from looking into the Trump-Russia connection. By all means follow that evidence where it leads. But the media have been running like wildebeest after that story while ignoring how the Obama Administration might have abused domestic surveillance for its political purposes. Americans deserve to know the truth about both. ||||| CLOSE Skip in Skip x Embed x Share The woman at the center of the Trump surveillance story is trying to get her version of what happened out there. Susana Victoria Perez (@susana_vp) has more. Buzz60 
 
 In this July 22, 2015 file photo, Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice speaks during the daily briefing at the White House. (Photo: MANDEL NGAN, AFP/Getty Images) 
 
 WASHINGTON — Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice said Tuesday that she did not seek to "unmask" the names of Trump associates for political purposes, but also described the process of asking for the intelligence community to reveal the names of U.S. citizens as a "longstanding, established process." 
 
 "The allegation is that somehow Obama administration officials utilized intelligence for political purposes," Rice told MSNBC. "That's absolutely false." 
 
 Rice was responding to allegations in conservative media outlets that she used her office to request information about Trump transition officials. While she would not discuss specific information that she asked for — or whether Trump associates were involved — she described the process of "unmasking" Americans mentioned in intelligence reports as routine. 
 
 The controversy over "unmasking" is an outgrowth of the investigation into Russian interference of the 2016 presidential election. President Trump has denied any collusion with Russia, and instead has said the investigation should focus on his claims — as yet unsubstantiated — that President Barack Obama ordered surveillance on Trump Tower. 
 
 House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, a Republican, gave fuel to those allegations last month when he said he had viewed intelligence reports with the names of Trump transition figures in them. 
 
 Names of citizens and permanent residents — "U.S. persons" in intelligence parlance — are typically excluded from intelligence reports to protect their privacy, but there are exceptions. 
 
 "There were occasions when I would receive a report in which a U.S. person was referred to, name not provided," Rice said. If she felt the name of that person was important to understand the significance of the intelligence, she would ask her intelligence analysts for more information, she said. 
 
 "They would take that question back, they would put it though a process, and the intelligence community would make a determination about whether the identity of that U.S. person could be provided to me," Rice said. "And sometimes in that context, in order to understand the importance of the report, and assess its significance, it was necessary to find out, or request the information, as to who the U.S. official was." 
 
 She described her requests as similar to that of any other high-ranking national security official. 
 
 But White House press secretary Sean Spicer suggested she was changing her story since an interview on PBS last month. "I know nothing about this," she said of Nunes's allegations of unmasking. 
 
 "I do think that there is a sharp contrast between a few weeks ago when she was very public in saying she didn’t have any clue what Chairman Nunes was talking about, and yet now we’re finding out that she’s trying to figure out how she can go to some kind of friendly way of discussing this," he told reporters Tuesday. "The more we find out about this the more we learn that there was clearly something there and that there was a lot of activity." 
 
 Rice has long been a target of conservative critics, especially after she appeared to downplay the role that terrorism played in the assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya in 2012. On Monday, Trump used Twitter to promote stories in conservative media outlets alleging — based on anonymous sources — that she ordered intelligence agencies to report on Trump and his associates during the campaign. 
 
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– Former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice is back in the news again, this time regarding President Trump's wiretapping allegations. On the right, she is being accused of abusing her power while in office to "unmask," for political advantage, the names of Trump associates caught up in intelligence surveillance. Trump critics, meanwhile, say the story doesn't amount to much and accuse the White House of trying to divert attention from the president's wiretapping allegations. A look at coverage: A key story comes from Eli Lake at Bloomberg News. He reported Monday that Rice requested the identities of Trump transition officials who were mentioned, but not named, in US intelligence reports. Those reports were mostly summaries of monitored conversations between foreign officials talking about the Trump transition, but sometimes between Trump associates and foreign officials. (The National Security Council logs of Rice's requests are apparently what Rep. Devin Nunes went to the White House to view.) Lake's piece raises questions about why Rice wanted those names revealed—she didn't respond to the story—but he also notes that her requests "were likely within the law." He adds that the story doesn't "vindicate" Trump's unsupported accusation that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower. Adam Housley of Fox News also reported on Rice's requests, and his appearance on the network prompted Trump himself to weigh in via tweet: "Such amazing reporting on unmasking and the crooked scheme against us by @foxandfriends. 'Spied on before nomination.' The real story." A post at Slate notes that Trump associates are under FBI investigation over allegedly improper communications with Russians, "so there may well have been urgent, legal reasons for Rice to have wanted information about the relationships between specific Trump-related figures and foreign individuals." But the editorial page at the Wall Street Journal accuses the media and Democrats of hypocrisy. It wants any Trump-Russia ties investigated, but complains that the "media have been running like wildebeest after that story while ignoring how the Obama Administration might have abused domestic surveillance for its political purposes. Americans deserve to know the truth about both." On CNN, Don Lemon accused the "right-wing media" of helping the White House try to divert attention from the controversy over Trump's wiretapping claims, adding that his show will not "aid and abet people who are trying to misinform you, the American people, by creating a diversion," he said, per Mediaite. The conservative NewsBusters blog accused ABC, NBC, and CBS of covering up the story by failing to report on the "massive revelation" Monday in their evening broadcasts. On MSNBC Tuesday morning, frequent Trump critic Joe Scarborough blasted the New York Times for not having the story on its front page. "What is Susan Rice unmasking names for and spreading them across the government," he asked on Morning Joe, per Mediaite. But the Times story on the subject (inside the paper) generally downplayed the significance of Rice's requests: "Former national security officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, described the requests as normal and said they were justified by the need for the president’s top security adviser to understand the context of reports sent to her by the nation’s intelligence agencies."