Andy McCarthy: The Russia Story Finally Yields a Watergate-Sized Scandal, But Not the One the Leftist Media and Democrat Party (BIRM) Were Expecting

Worth reading in full.

One point he makes before this quote: Rice, at the NSC, was not a producer of intelligence, but a consumer of it. Decisions about who should be unmasked should be made by the producers of intel (the FBI, CIA, and NSA), not the consumer.

But she requested the unmasking.

Andy McCarthy argues Rice was shrewd enough to know which parties were being discussed even with their identities masked.

So why unmask them?

To let other less-plugged in people down the chain know who they were. And so that the people in the media those people would inevitably leak to would know.

[W]hile not a pillar of rectitude, Ms. Rice is not an idiot. Besides being shrewd, she was a highly involved, highly informed consumer of intelligence, and a key Obama political collaborator. Unlike the casual reader, she would have known who the Trump-team players were without needing to have their identities unmasked. Do you really think her purpose in demanding that names be revealed was to enhance her understanding of intelligence about the activities and intentions of foreign targets? Seriously?

I'm betting it was so that others down the dissemination chain could see the names of Trump associates -- names the investigating agencies that originally collected the information had determined not to unmask.

That is, the intel producers had determined that these names should not be unmasked/were not necessary to be unmasked to understand the report; but Rice essentially overrode them and requested them to be unmasked, despite the actual experts having decided that there was no justification for it. (Note that only the producers have the power to unmask, but as McCarthy notes, what are they going to say when Obama's right-hand woman tells them "I need these names unmasked so I can properly advise the president on national security issues?" They're gonna say "Yes, Ma'am.")

[F]finally, let’s consider the dissemination chain Rice had in mind. The most telling remark that former Obama deputy defense secretary Evelyn Farkas made in her now-infamous MSNBC interview was the throw-away line at the end: "That's why you have all the leaking." Put this in context: Farkas had left the Obama administration in 2015, subsequently joining the presidential campaign of, yes, Hillary Clinton --Trump's opponent. She told MSNBC that she had been encouraging her former Obama-administration colleagues and members of Congress to seek "as much information as you can" from the intelligence community.

"That’s why you have the leaking."

To summarize: At a high level, officials like Susan Rice had names unmasked that would not ordinarily be unmasked. That information was then being pushed widely throughout the intelligence community in unmasked form . . . particularly after Obama, toward the end of his presidency, suddenly -- and seemingly apropos of nothing -- changed the rules so that all of the intelligence agencies (not just the collecting agencies) could have access to raw intelligence information.

This all has to be viewed in that context:

Why would Obama suddenly allow broad dissemination of intel reports in his last days in office, making it impossible to find a leaker?

Why would Rice demand unmaskings of persons whose identities she probably knew in reports that had nothing to do with any criminal or counter-espionage probe?

The two moves were required together to start the conveyer belt of leaks from Rice, Clapper, and the whole gang to their co-conspirators at CNN and the Washington Post. The two work in tandem to propel the information across the national sea, like the sail that catches the wind and the mast that transfers the wind's power into the ship itself.

And that's why CNN is so furiously attacking a Real News story: They're protecting their sources, and protecting their own asses as well: In any genuine criminal probe of the leaks, CNN reporters could be sent to jail on a judge's contempt order if they refuse to reveal their sources, just as Judith Miller was ordered to jail for refusing to give up her sources in the Valerie Plame investigation.

Susan Rice gave an interview to a very friendly MSNBC reporter. "I leaked nothing to nobody," she said, but was not asked then how her word could be taken on this when she made a similar statement about having no idea what Nunes was talking about in a PBS interview several weeks ago.

The media does not ask follow-up questions or point out contradictions to Democrats. They are not interrogated -- they are afforded a public forum in which to deliver their scripted denials, without challenge.

But other people might be more aggressive about interrogating her, and under oath, no less:

But apparently in the very friendly just-friends-talkin' coffee chat she had on MSNBC, she was permitted to dodge the question of whether she would willingly testify before Congress.

Doesn't have to be willingly, sweetheart.

posted by Ace at 02:38 PM

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