ODNI And NSA Impede Lawmakers Review Of Obama Admin ‘Unmasking’ Requests

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By

Sara Carter

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February 19, 2019

 

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Agency still have not granted access to Republican lawmakers to review hundreds of unmasking requests made on Americans by Senior Obama Administration officials, SaraACarter.com has learned.

Despite an order from President Trump more than a year ago, ranking member Rep. Devin Nunes, R-CA, on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence said his committee has been stymied in its investigation into the unmasking requests that rocked Washington D.C. when discovered in 2017.

 

The ODNI and NSA were ordered by President Trump to make available the highly classified documents for congressional review. In order to make those classified documents available the ODNI needed to set up a secured repository for lawmakers on the committee to review the documents, added Nunes.

Ordinarily, Americans names are redacted or minimized by the NSA before being shared with outside intelligence sources. The names of Americans in these communications with foreign persons are considered highly classified and are rarely unmasked. However, it was discovered that many senior officials in the Obama Administration unmasked more frequently than previous administration. In some cases the names were unmasked, in other cases they were specific enough that the American’s identity was easily ascertained, intelligence sources had told this reporter.

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Samantha Power’s Unmasks Nearly 300 Americans

This reporter and others revealed in 2017 that senior Obama officials, including former Secretary of State Susan Rice, former United Nation’s Ambassador Samantha Powers and former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had made requests. Further, there were other senior Obama officials who also made unmasking requests.

Powers had made nearly 300 unmasking requests of private communications of Americans, including members of the Trump campaign, prior and after the 2016 presidential election.

In October, 2017 then Chairman Trey Gowdy, revealed that Powers had made as many as 260 requests to “unmask” Americans. Unmasking occurs when the intelligence agencies intercept communications where an American is speaking to a non-U.S. citizen overseas.

The “requests to unmask may have been attributed to her, but they greatly exceed by an exponential factor the requests she actually made,” said Gowdy, regarding Power’s then testimony.

Powers stressed in her testimony that she did not sign off on all the requests that were made in her name, raising speculation that someone was falsifying her signature, said Gowdy.

 

https://saraacarter.com/odni-and-nsa-impede-lawmakers-review-of-obama-admin-unmasking-requests/