Donald Trump’s counter-scandal claims ratchet up in direct proportion to the amount of heat he is feeling from investigators, and complaints about the “unmasking” of his associates have become a daily feature of his tweets.
For Trump, this perfectly understandable intelligence gathering process and not selling out his country to Russia is the “real scandal.”
The New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman tweeted that,
.@EliLake reports that Susan Rice repeatedly requested to unmask Trump aides picked up on intercepts of other people https://t.co/fT7chqiS6M
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— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) April 3, 2017
Lake wrote in Bloomberg that,
White House lawyers last month discovered 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.
Ana Navarro claims the revelation that Susan Rice’s involvement “muddies” the water. However, national security expert John Schindler tweeted that this is much ado about nothing:
I truly despise Susan Rice but her asking #NSA to unmask USPs in SIGINT reports is utterly normal.
There is no scandal here.
— John Schindler (@20committee) April 3, 2017
SIGINT is Signals intelligence as opposed to some other form of intelligence gathering, such as HUMINT, which is intelligence gathered from human sources, for example, debriefings or chats with military attaches.
According to the NSA:
SIGINT is intelligence derived from electronic signals and systems used by foreign targets, such as communications systems, radars, and weapons systems. SIGINT provides a vital window for our nation into foreign adversaries’ capabilities, actions, and intentions.
So as Schindler then pointed out,
OF COURSE the National Security Advisor had questions about SIGINT regarding Trump's foreign ties.#duhhttps://t.co/96Lgqfabm5
— John Schindler (@20committee) April 3, 2017
If Donald Trump didn’t want Susan Rice asking about who among his team was talking to the Russians, he shouldn’t have had his people colluding with Russia to help propel him into the White House.
All that has followed from that has been of his own making. As John Schindler said, this is no scandal. This is a perfectly natural outcome of Trump’s people talking to Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
