Sen. Rand Paul called on former Obama national security adviser, Susan Rice, to testify on reports that she "unmasked" the names of President Trump officials swept up in surveillance. Paul cited reports in Bloomberg and Fox News in which Rice was named as the Obama official responsible for the unmasking. "Those names were apparently sent to members of the National Security Council and the heads of the CIA and National Intelligence," reports Fox:
As Fox News reported Monday, the names were part of incidental electronic surveillance of candidate and President-elect Trump and people close to him, including family members, for up to a year before he took office. These were not targets in the eavesdropping.
“I don’t think we should discount how big a deal it was 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?” Paul reportedly said.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, asked about the revelations at Monday’s briefing, declined to comment specifically on what role Rice may have played or officials’ motives.
“I’m not going to comment on this any further until [congressional] committees have come to a conclusion,” he said, while contrasting the media’s alleged “lack” of interest in these revelations with the intense coverage of suspected Trump-Russia links.
Rice did not respond to an email seeking comment from Bloomberg View on Monday. The report pointed out that Rice was asked on “PBS NewsHour” in March about the possibility of incidental intelligence gathering and she responded, “I know nothing about this.”
The names of Americans who are swept up in surveillance of foreign parties are supposed to be redacted, unless there are grave crimes of national security threats posed, according to Fox News sources. "There are loopholes and ways to unmask through back-channels, but Americans are supposed to be protected from incidental collection," the report adds.
Sen Paul says he is weighing the possibility of introducing legislation on unmasking in response to the scandal.
