Once again it appears that Trump was right: the conspiracy theory that a close Obama associate worked to “unmask” the Trump team, resulting in the ongoing media spectacle over “collusion” between Trump and the Kremlin, has been confirmed, first by Mike Cernovich, and now by Bloomberg itself.
As noted last night, Journalist and author Mike Cernovich dropped an exclusive bombshell – naming Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice as the official responsible for the ‘unmasking’ of the incoming Trump team during ‘incidental’ surveillance. This was apparently discovered after the White House Counsel’s office reviewed Rice’s document log requests:
The reports Rice requested to see are kept under tightly-controlled conditions. Each person must log her name before being granted access to them.
Upon learning of Rice’s actions, [National Security Advisor] H. R. McMaster dispatched his close aide Derek Harvey to Capitol Hill to brief Chairman Nunes.
Cernovich pointed out, as revealed in an article by Circa, that President Obama began loosening the rules regarding “incidental intercepts” starting in 2011 – making it easier for the US Government to spy on individuals who are not the primary target(s) of a surveillance operation.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
As his presidency drew to a close, Barack Obama’s top aides routinely reviewed intelligence reports gleaned from the National Security Agency’s incidental intercepts of Americans abroad, taking advantage of rules their boss relaxed starting in 2011 to help the government better fight terrorism, espionage by foreign enemies and hacking threats
And guess who had authorization to unmask individuals who were ‘incidentally’ surveilled? Former CIA Director John Brennan, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and Obama’s National Security advisor Susan Rice. Also of note is the claim that New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman has been sitting on the Susan Rice story for at least two days:
This reporter has been informed that Maggie Haberman has had this story about Susan Rice for at least 48 hours, and has chosen to sit on it in an effort to protect the reputation of former President Barack Obama.
Fox News anchor Adam Housley tweeted on Friday that the surveillance that led to the unmasking began before Trump was the GOP nominee, and that the person who did the unmasking is a “very senior” and “very well known” person in the surveillance community – and not someone in the FBI. As ZeroPointNow noted, “this of course begs the question of whether or not President Obama would have ordered Rice to perform the unmasking.”
* * *
Until this morning, the Cernovich report was unconfirmed, with many in the “legacy media” accusing Cernovich, who recently was profiled on 60 Minutes for being a prominent member of the “fake news” dissemination team for being – what else – fake news. However, moments ago Bloomberg’s Eli Lake confirmed that it was indeed Susan Rice who was responsible for the repeatedly “unmasking” multiple members of the Trump team, in what may be dubbed yet another “conspiracy” to delegitimize the current US president.
From Eli Lake:
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.”
As Lake adds, 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 has not yet responded to a Bloomberg 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.
Making matters worse, Rice appears to have lied:while 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.”
Ironically, it’s the same Susan Rice who two weeks ago tweeted the following:
Susan Rice: When the White House twists the truth, we are all less safe. Why veracity matters to our security. https://t.co/eqkReeBIsG
— Susan Rice (@AmbassadorRice) March 22, 2017
Lies aside, according to the Bloomberg reports, “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.”
Perhaps, but they also served a key political purpose: to create a media firestorm of controversy involving the Trump team, and to delegitimize Donald Trumpas much as possible.
Furthermore, the news about Rice also may explain what Bloomberg dubs 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.
In a tacit admission by Lake that Rice may have crossed numerous boundaries, the Bloomberg reporter adds “much about this is highly unusual: if not how the surveillance was collected, then certainly how and why it was disseminated.”
However the real question goes back to square one: did Obama order the unmasking, and if so, to what political purpose?
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-03/top-obama-adviser-sought-names-of-trump-associates-in-intel
DOUBLETHINK:
And
When you told us that you were going to the store to get a coke but you intended the whole time to get a 7UP,we all know what you meant but to those who oppose you it is an excuse to call you a liar.
The real problem is our fellow citizens.
more down votes here then up so i need to clarify what i meant since i thought most of you would agree with it-
uncola posted-“Rice’s requests to unmask the names of Trump transition officials does 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.”
trump used the term wiretap,as opposed to intercept-technically he was probably wrong since intelligence agencies no longer need to physically put a tap on the phone-
thusly,we know what he meant but his opponets call him a liar–
These actions were specifically target to “capture” certain Trump team members when they were in conversations with the usual national capitol targets…like the Russian ambassador. Slam her pathetic clown a$$ in jail tonight………
The problem is that there will be no accountability for the Democrats involved in this, so they will continue doing it.
Agreed, but we can thank Dubya & Chaney created/unleashed the surveillance BEAST post 9/11. They gave the monkeys the tools (not that they couldn’t have managed to come up with it all by themselves given 8 years and $19T. 😉 )
The Bush RINO establishment is as big an enemy of freedom as Obama and Hitlary. We never heard GW, the professional asshat criticize Obama’s police state BS did we? Bush greased the skids for his cousin Barry. He is in favor of the worst shit Obama did. AJMHO
2:30 p.m., Spicer Press Briefing
Popcorn time.
“Something wicked this way comes….”
The negro is a race apart. Always have been; always will be.
What’s this have to do w/race?
Every Democrat is a crook or they wouldn’t be a Democrat,and she & Obama are lapping white Republicans.
Don’t mean to sound flip but life is about learning. I’m just a few years from the grave and I still continue to learn. One thing I’ve learned (at least to my satisfaction) is that everything is tied into race. That’s why the globalists push diversity and despise the idea of a homogenous society. I don’t mean to be obscure but I’m slow on the keyboard and to give a detailed explanation of my above statement would take hours. Regardless, I accept your opinion of it.
I suspect that the problem with the “races” here, and in most of the demo party is not the specific race per se, but has more to do with the fact that for so long these “minorities” have had the attitude, and have risen in the ranks because of such, that they are entitled to something BECAUSE of their race.
Increasingly, it is becoming clear that Trump needs to fire anyone that is “of color” and served under Obama, NOT because of their race specifically, but because they see their race as a reason to be an all out SJW entitled idiot for “the cause”.
History in the making.
End times?
“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.”
Watch “The Resistance” try to use the last sentence as a defense, and claim that Trump (or some of his team members) was/were a national security threat despite no evidence of collusion of any sort with Russia, or any other nation for that matter. This could conceivably drag on for a very long time despite the truth that the Trump team was indeed spied upon, and his team personnel unmasked for political purposes only.
That, I think, is the entire reason for the fake Russian collusion story; to set up a plausible excuse for Obama’s domestic political spying. They had to think of this quickly when Hillary lost. Her victory would have kept it under wraps and there would have been no need for an excuse.
The exposure of Susan Rice continues a routinized pattern. It seems true that too many associates of Hillary Clinton end up impawned in various gambits intended to enhance her interests, but at the risk and expense of the chums. Always Mrs. Clinton has plausible deniability for pulling strings, yet it seems the risks are growing ever larger. This latest stratagem of spying on Trump and leaking the reports defies any sanity at all. It looks like Hillary losing the election was only half the battle. Any idea that Rice concocted this scheme on her own is preposterous, but BHO would not be my first choice as the instigator.
I wouldn’t think the standard of “foreign intelligence value” would include domestic political expediency; but, hey, that’s just me.
Whoever wins the battle of the narratives in this case (i.e. “Russian collusion” vs. “felonious unmasking”) wins the entire nation; lock, stock, and barrel.
There will be no participation trophies.
Scott, Les, Dave, Chuck, Andrea (Mrs. Alan Greenspan), NYT, WaPo, CNN and your local news will see to it which narrative wins out.
This will not be headline news, it will be brushed aside for a real news story, like:
“there is a flood alert, it is going to rain, and low lying areas should be aware that water will be in a state of oversupply, leading to a demand in water pumps, local hardware stores just can’t keep up with demand”
cause, you know, were are all dumb all over out hear in the real world.
only Hoi polloi in Washington can save us now.
There is the issue of the “unmasking” which a legalist could argue may be ok … but then there is ALSO the issue of releasing that info to press persons.
What are the connections, if any, between Obama and George Soros? Has Obama been a Soros puppet all along? Or are there multiple puppetmasters tugging Obama’s strings? Is Jarrett connected to the Iranian mullahs?
The rabbit hole may be deeper than anyone imagined.
This last Anon was I; some kind of glitch.
JtW
Obama is no puppet – he’s Michelle’s butt monkey.
One big problem in getting to the bottom of this is James Comey. This compromised POS has so befouled his and the reputation of his agency that no one trusts him anymore. His recent assertion that he will complete his term as the FBI director reeks of arrogance and or complicity in Obama’s skullduggery.
Too bad Trump hasn’t fired his ass, cause or no. Trump could fire him, let Congress throw a fit, let the lawsuits be launched and let the fucking FBI go rudderless. A free nation of laws doesn’t need a secret police like the FBI anyway. It was formed through the ambition of one twisted, power seeking nutjob anyway. It wouldn’t be missed.
Ed,you’re correct,Trump can fire him and I agree,he should.
https://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2016/11/03/yes-the-president-may-fire-the-fbi-director/1/
Well, Red, I was kinda hoping that Trump would beat the piss out of Comey, but firing him would make a decent alternative outcome. Thanks for the link.
With the use of the Internet, different police agencies can work together to solve crimes unlike in the past, even agencies of different states, so there’s no longer a need for a federal police, if there ever was one.
You gotta love when a fake news guy like Cernovich scoops the NY Times.
Even my bleeding heart liberal wife is starting to question what she reads in the mainstream media.
Susan Rice: “It was a video………..Oh, wait a minute……”
Just for fun, I checked the headlines at MSN and Huffington Post. It was 4:44 PM Eastern time. What the hell? Nope. No bias there at all.
Like a bunch of starving Cambodians: NO RICE!!!!!!
[img[/img]
The only thing on CNN is a video on why it is not a problem, no real story.
Power corrupts.
Time for Jeff Sessions to go to work and put some of these sons of bitches in prison. Preferably in with some gang members who are illegals. I know! that isn’t going to happen.
Damn. I thought it was former DNI Director James Clapper with CIA Director John Brennan running a close second. Just goes to show you an ex-spook doesn’t know shit from Shinola about anything.
Clapper and Brennan are probably involved as well.
Orange , the new black . As for Comey 30 minutes on the automatic slapper machine and then fire him and turn him out on to Pennsylvania Avenue barefoot in a loose orange jumpsuit . Let the D.C. Cops mess with him like they do with the crazy homeless
Rand Paul: Rice Should Testify Under Oath If Obama Ordered Her To “Unmask” Trump Team
by Tyler Durden
Apr 3, 2017 9:39 PM
After it emerged courtesy of Mike Cernovich that former National Security Advisor Susan Rice had made numerous requests to “unmask” the identities of Americans associated with President Trump in intelligence reports, senator Rand Paul who in recent days has been on increasingly better terms with the president and even went golfing with him this weekend, said Rice should testify under oath about her involvment in a potentially illegal scandal that she herself denied she had any knowledge of as recently as 2 weeks ago.
The Kentucky senator called the unmasking an “enormous deal” and indicated that it should be illegal.
“If it is allowed, we shouldn’t be allowing it, but I don’t think should just discount how big a deal it is that Susan Rice was looking at these and she needs to be asked, ‘Did President Obama ask her to do this? Was this a directive from President Obama? I think she should testify under oath on this.” Paul told reporters.
“I think she should be asked under oath, did she reveal it to The Washington Post. I think they were illegally basically using an espionage tool to eavesdrop or wiretap — if you want to use the word generally — on the Trump campaign,” Paul said.
The report about Rice is linked to Devin Nunes’s claim that the Trump transition team was “accidentally surveilled” and associated information was widely disseminated in intelligence community reports.
Nunes made the claim nearly two weeks ago, infuriating his Democratic colleagues by briefing the media and Trump on the information before revealing it to his committee. Nunes said he was particularly concerned with the possibility that Trump associates were “unmasked” in the intelligence reports. Nunes revealed the information weeks after Trump accused Obama of having his “wires tapped” at Trump Tower ahead of the presidential election.
Paul used Monday’s development to renew his push for reform of a controversial provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that allows the U.S. intelligence community to target non-Americans outside the United States without a warrant. The provision, Section 702, is up for renewal later this year. Paul also signaled that he sees Nunes — who has long been an advocate for the foreign intelligence law — as a potential ally for reform.
Nunes previously took issue with the fact that Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, had his communications monitored by the intelligence community, which were later the subject of media reports.
“I have been very impressed with Devin Nunes,” Paul said. “All of the intelligence hawks don’t like him because he appears to have found something and he’s willing to talk about it with the president.”
“I think it is inappropriate and it should be illegal,” Paul said of “incidental collection” on Americans without a warrant, i.e. spying by the NSA first revealed by Edward Snowden.
“I don’t think you should be allowed to listen to Americans’ conversations without a warrant. They are doing it without a warrant. They are targeting a foreigner, and because they are targeting a foreigner they are gathering all of this information on Americans.”
“Is there a possibility that Susan Rice was politically motivated? Let’s ask her why she was opening up all of the conversations with Trump transition figures.”
Last Friday, in a rare public compliment of a political figure, Matt Drudge said that “Rand Paul is America’s best senator.”
Despite the fact that this is one of the biggest stories to break over the past year that goes to the heart of corruption and high crimes inside the Obama Whitehouse, there is still no coverage in the Canada by the Fake News MSM – CBC, CTV, Globe and Mail, National Post, Sun, etc. Better to keep the people in the dark when current events do not support the FAKE narrative and agenda. This just confirms that the true north not so strong and definitely not so free is now the land of FAKE NEWS from sea to glorious sea. And Canadians are wasting over a billion dollars each year on a propaganda FAKE NEWS organization, the CBC. BTW, the BBC – British Bulls**t Corporation – has not yet covered the story either.
This is 1000 times bigger than Watergate.
They used the NSA for politics. That’s 1000 times worse than using the IRS for politics.
What do you expect from a group of corrupt assholes that put up a worthless piece of shit in Hillary for president to keep the money flowing?
Affirmative Action Presidency, as one should have expected.
What city, town or country run by blacks isn’t a cesspit of corruption?
Rice and Samantha Power were the two bitches who labored tirelessly to make the Middle East safe for the military industrial complex. Of course, she was happy to do whatever she could to disrupt any attempt on the part of Trump to improve relations with Russia. I do not like much of Trump’s agenda, but this horseshit from a Democratic war-whore REALLY pisses me off. I am starting to rant and rave again and must desist before I become totally incoherent.
They will never indict or go after this negress or the Obamanation . If they did it would bring about a race war , or maybe thats what they want . Imagine videos of all these snowflake college students in Chicago ,N.Y city, Los Angeles being raped and killed by hordes of nigs and spicks that might get the ball rolling.
Affirmative Action President.
Affirmative Action Attorney General.
Affirmative Action National Security Advisor.
PLEASE, for the love of GOD, let the sun set on Affirmative Action EVERYWHERE. END the worship of blacks, browns, women, etc. simply for their being black, brown or female!
There are huge numbers of qualified Blacks. Just none of them are Democrats.
How do you know?
I’ve worked with blacks and frankly, while I liked some and didn’t like others (yeah, like everyone else) there was no way to know who landed the job out of ability and who was a box-check.
The old system (under the old narrative) told me all sorts of things about blacks, browns and women that under this new narrative I know were LIES. It is still forbidden (under pain of being labeled a racist, if not Literally-Hitler) to speak the truth about black mean IQ and black propensity for violent crime, even though we have decades of data proving there are population-level differences between whites, blacks and browns (and Asians) regarding these things.
I no longer trust those purveyors of Knowledge. They were LYING, they ARE lying.
So sure, there are statistically perhaps ten thousand blacks in the USA with an IQ as high or higher than mine. But in an Affirmative Action world, I don’t trust that any black I meet is one of them. (Which is why Affirmative Action hurts smart blacks by tainting any accomplishment with the stench of “preference.”)
I forgot where I heard this line, but it went like this-
“Is the Media part of the Democratic Party or is the Democratic Party a part of the media?”
Way back in my intellectual infancy I deduced that the Media (MSM, Legacy Media, The Press, whatever you want to call them) was in fact the head of the snake. Yes, corporate interests are powerful, yes the bankers wield a lot of clout, indeed the entrenched political class and their toadies are a destructive influence, and the never ending waves of hopelessly inassimilable third worlders crashing on our shores daily poses an existential threat to our continued existence but none of it, not one little bit could have been remotely possible were it not for the power of the MSM. They control the mind of the population in a death grip, they’ve made the truth outrageous and the outrageous a reality.
They see themselves as members of the White Rose and any act, no matter if it is immoral, illegal or improper is off the table. They see themselves as The Way and The Truth and The Light no matter how far off course, no matter how false, no matter how dark their actions and words are.
This will not end until they are removed from power. They cannot be reasoned with, they have no allegiance to their fellow countrymen or the nation, not respect for authority or common decency, they abhor the truth and revel in deception the way a firebug enjoys a conflagration. The worse things get the better it is for them because then everything is EXCITING!
Expect them to never admit defeat, never to apologize, never to recant. If they remain, then we lose.
No one can stage-manage public opinion forever. In fact, I believe they don’t manage it at all.
People believe what they want to believe. It’s that simple. When the time arrives for a new belief to take over (a new dominant narrative), nothing anyone can do will stop it.
We are witnessing exactly this today. Ever more people are spontaneously peeling away from the Old Narrative. As they do so, the Legacy Media (Old-Narrative to the bone) is simply seen as Pravda-US-style, a bunch of liars who lie and lie, the lie some more.
Those who have shifted to the New Narrative simply regard contrary information as “Fake.” It’s all about trust, and New Narrative devotees simply don’t trust the Legacy anything.
This is a once-in-very-long-cycles event. We should all take a moment and wrap our minds around the pivot in history we’re present to witness (and in which we will participate, willingly or not.)
I concur completely, this is a very rare moment, one of the most crucial in human history because of the convergence of Technics and Globalism. Even the likes of Napoleon, Alexander and Ghengis Khan couldn’t begin to fathom the kind of power that can be wielded when information becomes a weapons system and modern technology reduces the planet to a single battlefield.
Not sure if I’m interested in the outcome, but it comes nonetheless.
You’re very interested in the outcome, because you have kids, same as why I’m interested.
None of us may be interested in the coming conflict, but that conflict is damn certain to be interested in us.
Watching Wolf Blitzer. They are in full meltdown tonight. It is full on damage control. Now the talking heads are saying Rice unmasked because she needed to know who was working behind the scenes in Trump campaign trying to overturn the Obama sanctions.. But what has them really riled is Rand Paul saying he wants Rice to appear before Senate Committee.
Now they are attacking ivanka Trump and her husband. AGAIN!
Fuck CNN is pathetic!
Now we have Erin. Still no rice.