Former Obama National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes is now a "person of interest" in the House Intelligence Committee's current unmasking investigation. Details were revealed by the committee in a letter sent Tuesday to the National Security Agency (NSA), Circa reports. The outlet provides details: 

The House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-CA, sent the letter to the National Security Agency requesting the number of unmaskings made by Rhodes from Jan. 1, 2016 to Jan. 20, 2017, according to congressional sources who spoke with Circa. Rhodes, who worked closely with former National Security Adviser Susan Rice and was a former deputy national security adviser for strategic communications for President Obama, became a focus of the committee during its review of classified information to assess whether laws were broken regarding NSA intercepted communications of President Trump, members of his administration and other Americans before and after the election, according to congressional officials. The committee is requesting that the NSA deliver the information on Rhodes by August, 21. 

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, Rice and former CIA Director John Brennan have all been named in the House Intelligence Committee's investigation into the unmasking of Americans. A letter sent last week from Nunes to Dan Coats, the director of National Intelligence, suggested that top Obama aides made hundreds of unmasking requests during the 2016 presidential elections.

While those in question, including Rhodes, reportedly had legal authority to unmask in extreme circumstances, it is not common. Circa continues: 

​Multiple federal law enforcement and intelligence officials told Circa, that requesting an unmasking for intelligence and analytical purposes is something that is done only when the information is absolutely necessary to analyze a specific threat or for other national security purposes. An intelligence source, with direct knowledge of the type of requests made by the Obama aides, said "it's like hell and high water to fill out and gain approval for these types of unmaskings. It's something analysts take seriously and could entail filling out 80 pages of paperwork to prove there is a need to unmask. If top officials were unmasking without oversight it's something everyone should be concerned about and it puts our intelligence community in a very bad place."

The number of Americans' identities who have been unmasked appears to have increased beginning last July around the same time Trump secured the GOP nomination. The number accelerated after Trump’s election in November launched a transition that continued through January, as reported by Circa.  U.S. officials and lawmakers have raised concern that the gathering of such intelligence was used for political espionage, Circa has learned.

Political espionage, indeed.