Daily Archives: May 13, 2020

Unmasking List is not Complete

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Primer: Crossfire Razor = LTG Flynn investigation, launched July 2016, cleared January 2017 (calls with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak included the call in question which was December 29, 2016. There were clearly requests prior to Samantha Power, it is unclear yet by whom and those results. We are told there will be more releases.

Crossfire Typhoon = George Papadopoulos

Crossfire Hurricane full FBI investigation operation

* The list below is hardly a full list of unmasking requests during the late part of the Obama presidency. This report was released by Senator Grassley. For example, Susan Rice is not listed. The below documents are for a specific time-frame. Note the requests prior to the main phone call that has raised the ire of the Democrats. For additional reference, LTG Flynn had the official job as National Security Advisor to President Trump from January 23, 2017 to February 13, 2017.

Other designations listed below are as follows:

DOE in Briefer is the Department of Energy (nuclear weapons division)

COS can be both Chief of Staff or Chief of Station (CIA)

CMO is Collection Management Officer

DCOS is Deputy Chief of Station

CMO is Chief of Missions Officer (Reports Officer)

CIA/CTMC Counter Terrorism Military Coordinator

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* Samantha Power: U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, married to Cass Sunstein who was the Information and Regulatory Czar for President Obama.

* James Clapper: Former Director of National Intelligence, previously served as the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the same one that LTG Flynn was Director of at the time he was fired by the Obama administration.

* Kelly Degnan, previous Deputy Chief of Mission to Italy, San Marino and was nominated by President Trump to be Ambassador to Georgia and she speaks 5 languages.

* John R. Phillips, Former Ambassador to Italy and San Marino, and presently a lawyer at the whistleblower law firm of Phillips and Cohen. His wife is Linda Douglas and is head of communications for Bloomberg in WDC.

* John Brennan, Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, previously was the Assistant to Obama for Homeland Security. (He at CIA when he set up the system that spied on Senate staffers working for Senator Feinstein doing work on the torture report)

* Patrick Conlon, Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the Treasury Department, formerly 19 years at CIA

* Jacob Lew, Secretary of Treasury until 2017.

* Arthur Danny McGlynn, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence.

* Mike Neufeld, Deputy Assistant Secretary U.S. Treasury

* Sarah Raskin, Lawyer, formerly on the Board of the Federal Reserve and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, married to Jamie Raskin of the 8th District of Maryland, U.S. House of Representatives.

* Nathan Sheets, Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs

* Adam Szubin, Under Secretary of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence at U.S. Treasury

* Robert Bell, Civilian Representative of the Secretary of Defense in Europe and Advisor to U.S Ambassador to NATO.

* VDAM John Christenson, U.S. Military Representative to NATO Military Committee in Brussels.

* James Comey, Former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

* LTC Paul Geehreng, Defense Policy Advisor to US Mission NATO, policy advisor on Russia.

* Douglas Lute, US Permanent Representative to NATO married to Jane Holl, currently serving as UN Special Envoy to Cyprus, former Deputy Secretary of Department of Homeland Security.

* James Hursh, Acting Secretary of Defense in Europe and Acting Defense Advisor to US Mission NATO.

* Scott Parrish, U.S. State Department, Political Officer, NATO.

* Elizabeth Sherwood Randall, US Deputy Secretary of Energy, previously White House Coordinator for Defense Policy, brother is President of ABC Disney Group and ABC News.

* Tamir Waser, NATO Operations Officer, London

* John F. Tefft, U.S. Ambassador to Russia, career Foreign Service Officer.

* Ambassador John R. Bass, Turkey, former Ambassador to Georgia. Former Chief of Staff and Policy Advisor to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott.

* Denis McDonough, Former White House Chief of Staff for President Obama, former Senior Fellow at Center for America Progress.

* Michael Dempsey, Former Acting Director of National Intelligence for January to March of 2017, formerly with the CIA as a WINPAC Expert

* Stephanie O’Sullivan, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, former senior leader at CIA.

* Joseph Biden, Former Vice President for President Obama and attended the January 5, 2017 Oval Office meeting in question that included President Obama,  Susan Rice, Sally Yates and James Comey.

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WHAT IS UNMASKING?

During routine, legal surveillance of foreign targets, names of Americans occasionally come up in conversations. Foreigners could be talking about a U.S. citizen or U.S. permanent resident by name, or a foreigner could be speaking directly to an American. When an American’s name is swept up in surveillance of foreigners, it is called “incidental collection.” In these cases, the name of the American is masked before the intelligence is distributed to administration officials to avoid invading that person’s privacy.

Unless there is a clear intelligence value to knowing the American’s name, it is not revealed in the reports. The intelligence report would refer to the person only as “U.S. Person 1” or U.S. Person 2.” If U.S. officials with proper clearance to review the report want to know the identity, they can ask the agency that collected the information — perhaps the FBI, CIA or National Security Agency — to “unmask” the name.

WHEN WOULD AN INTELLIGENCE AGENCY UNMASK A NAME?

The request is not automatically granted. The person asking has to have a good reason. Typically, the reason is that not knowing the name makes it impossible to fully understand the intelligence provided.

The name is released only if the official requesting it has a need to know and the “identity is necessary to understand foreign intelligence information or assess its importance,” according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s latest report, which includes statistics on unmasking. “Additional approval by a designated NSA official is also required.”

Former NSA Director Mike Rogers has said that only 20 of his employees could approve an unmasking. The names are shared only with the specific official who asked. They are not released publicly. Leaking a name, or any classified information, is illegal.

HOW OFTEN ARE NAMES UNMASKED?

The number of unmasking requests began being released to the public in response to recommendations in 2014 from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

There were 9,217 unmasking requests in the 12-month period between September 2015 and August 2016, the first period in which numbers are publicly available. The period was during the latter years of the Obama administration.

The number rose during the Trump administration. The 9,529 requests in 2017 grew to 16,721 in 2018 and 10,012 last year. More here.

 

 

Judge Sullivan Has Now Put AG Barr on Trial by Inviting Amicus Briefs

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There is no longer a prosecutor on the LTG Flynn case after the Department of Justice filed the motion to terminate the case against him. It was expected that Judge Emmet Sullivan would approve the DoJ motion yet the Judge went sideways and has now asked for Amicus Curiae briefs. Exactly who receives the invitation to file those briefs is to be scrutinized.

Judge Sullivan's accusations mar Flynn's sentencing hearing ... photo

This decision by Judge Sullivan is so legally contentious that an 11 page motion to leave the the amicus brief was immediately placed into the pipeline.

Judge Sullivan’s invitation was extended to a group known as former Watergate prosecutors. These lawyers were aiding the House Impeachment Team asserting that Donald Trump

● Trump conditioned protection of the military security of the United States and of an ally (Ukraine) on actions for his personal political benefit.

● Trump subordinated the integrity of our national electoral process to his own personal political interest by soliciting and encouraging foreign government interference in our electoral process, including by Russia and China. He also appears to have demanded that Ukraine investigate a potential 2020 political opponent and pursue the conspiracy theory that Ukraine had interfered in the 2016 presidential election, despite the unanimous conclusion of the U.S. intelligence community that it was Russia that had interfered.

● According to the evidence laid out in the Mueller report, Trump engaged in multiple acts of obstruction of justice in violation of federal criminal statutes and of his oath of office to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Because Mueller viewed Justice Department policy as precluding him from filing criminal charges against the president, the special counsel appropriately stated that these abuses are for Congress to address.

Additionally, there is yet another group that signed a letter condemning AG Barr’s motion regarding the Flynn case. This particular group was mobilized by an organization called Protect Democracy. The group was founded and is led by Ian Bassin who served as an Associate White House Counsel from 2009-2011, meaning the Obama White House. Bassin also says that the MAGA hats broke the Hatch Act law. So, this is not about a legal challenge but it is for sure political. Protect Democracy is still soliciting signatures through May 25. The Co-Founder and legal advisor is Justin Florence who most recently served as counsel in Ropes & Gray’s business & securities litigation practice group, where his practice focused on appellate and Supreme Court matters. He has represented clients in the Supreme Court and federal courts of appeals, as well as at the trial level. He has previously served in the Office of the White House Counsel as Special Assistant to the President and Associate Counsel to the President. Justin also worked for Senator Sheldon Whitehouse as Senior Counsel on the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The letter in part reads:

It is now up to the district court to consider the government’s motion to dismiss the Flynn indictment. We urge Judge Sullivan to closely examine the Department’s stated rationale for dismissing the charges — including holding an evidentiary hearing with witnesses — and to deny the motion and proceed with sentencing if appropriate. While it is rare for a court to deny the Department’s request to dismiss an indictment, if ever there were a case where the public interest counseled the court to take a long, hard look at the government’s explanation and the evidence, it is this one. Attorney General Barr’s repeated actions to use the Department as a tool to further President Trump’s personal and political interests have undermined any claim to the deference that courts usually apply to the Department’s decisions about whether or not to prosecute a case.

Finally, in our previous statement, we called on Attorney General Barr to resign, although we recognized then that there was little chance that he would do so. We continue to believe that it would be best for the integrity of the Justice Department and for our democracy for Attorney General Barr to step aside. In the meantime, we call on Congress to hold the Attorney General accountable. In the midst of the greatest public health crisis our nation has faced in over a century, we would all prefer it if Congress could focus on the health and prosperity of Americans, not threats to the health of our democracy. Yet Attorney General Barr has left Congress with no choice. Attorney General Barr was previously set to give testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on March 31, but the hearing was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We urge the Committee to reschedule Attorney General Barr’s testimony as soon as safely possible and demand that he answer for his abuses of power. We also call upon Congress to formally censure Attorney General Barr for his repeated assaults on the rule of law in doing the President’s personal bidding rather than acting in the public interest. Our democracy depends on a Department of Justice that acts as an independent arbiter of equal justice, not as an arm of the president’s political apparatus.

You can read the letter and see the signatures by clicking this link.