Comey Confirms Trump Team Part of Russian Investigation and Says Intel Chiefs Knew Flynn's 'Unmasked' Name

UPDATE. Newsmax has reported a conversation General Michael Hayden, former NSA Director and CIA Director, had on CNN's Smerconish. General Hayden explains the "incidental collection" surveillance possibility very clearly : "Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the attorney general and director of national intelligence can authorize spy agencies to 'sweep up' the telephone and Internet data of US residents who communicate with foreign targets in what is known as 'incidental collection.' The secret FISA court allows the surveillance in accordance with the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. The agencies can then search those communications for evidence of crimes, even if they are not related to terrorism. This happens fairly routinely. If that [foreign] target now gets involved in a communication to, from -- or even about -- a US person, we are allowed to continue to cover the target. We just have to protect the US person's privacy. In that case, we do what's called 'minimize' the information.' That keeps the identity of the US individual secret unless it is critical to the intelligence. Should that identity be revealed, it is called 'unmasking.' We are just targeting the foreigners," Hayden told Smerconish. He said that this is how the surveillance tactic relates to Trump's assertions : "I suspect that if there is any example of a US identity being unmasked that has any relationship to the Trump campaign or Trump Tower -- again, very normal, very correct and very legal -- the White House goes : 'Ah-ha. I told you so.' I think this is where it is going," Hayden said. He noted that the top Republican and Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee asked spy agencies this week to provide data on recent incidental collection efforts. "This is actually a very good way to do our job and protect American privacy." • • • TRUMP & THE INTEL COMMUNITY vs PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS. Fox News on Monday reported that President Trump "again vociferously denied that he or his campaign had any involvement with Kremlin operatives in the run-up to the November 8 vote." Trump tweeted his comments about the "fake news" just hours before FBI Director James Comey was set to testify to Congress about alleged Russian meddling in the US presidential election. Trump referred to recent statements made by former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper -- an Obama administration appointee -- to back up his denial of any wrongdoing during his upset win over Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton : "James Clapper and others stated that there is no evidence Potus colluded with Russia. This story is FAKE NEWS and everyone knows it! The Democrats made up and pushed the Russian story as an excuse for running a terrible campaign. Big advantage in Electoral College & lost!” Trump has steadfastly maintained he never worked with Russian agents and has no knowledge of anyone in his orbit doing so, but an intelligence report hurriedly produced in January at then-President Obama's request found that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to influence the US election in Trump’s favor. Clapper earlier this month said there was “no evidence” of collusion between Trump and Russia, a position repeated Sunday by Representative Devin Nunes, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee that Comey testified before on Monday. But Progressive Democrats persisted, even at the Monday hearing, in their smear campaign by citing "unnamed" government sources and raising circumstantial "what-ifs" to create doubt about President Trump. Representative Adam Schiff, the ranking Democratic member on the House Intelligence Committee, told Meet the Press on Sunday that “circumstantial” evidence exists : “There is direct evidence, I think, of deception and that’s where we begin the investigation." Despite Schiff's view -- which is shared by many Democrats -- Trump tweeted Monday that Congress should drop the Russia probe and focus on who has been leaking classified and politically damaging stories about his administration : "The real story that Congress, the FBI and all others should be looking into is the leaking of Classified information. Must find leaker now!" • • • AN INTEL SWEEP OF TRUMP TEAM? Eli Lake, a national security and intelligence journalist who was at Newsweek and the Daily Beast before moving to Bloomberg, wrote on Monday : "On March 1, the New York Times reported that in the final days and weeks of the Obama administration, White House officials rushed to preserve and distribute intelligence on connections between Russia and Trump’s associates throughout the government. In practice this meant that raw intelligence was processed into analytical reports and classified at a relatively low level. 'As Inauguration Day approached, Obama White House officials grew convinced that the intelligence was damning and that they needed to ensure that as many people as possible inside government could see it,' according to the Times." • We know this, but Eli Lake has been concentrating on the dismissal of General Michael Flynn as the Director of National Intelligence [DNI], and Lake asks : "Did this raw intelligence include Flynn’s calls with the Russian ambassador? Depending on what Schiff and Nunes turn up, this could be a real scandal, particularly if the names of other Trump associates picked up in incidental surveillance were unmasked and distributed widely within the government. This would mean that the Obama administration had effectively short-circuited the FISA process by checking to see if Trump associates were picked up incidentally on existing surveillance, and then disseminating the take [incidental collection] widely within the intelligence bureaucracy. That’s not the same as ordering -- without court oversight -- a targeted wiretap on Trump Tower. But it’s pretty serious, nonetheless." • Lake says it is not clear how "effective and thorough the congressional hearings will be...to date, by their very nature, and given the Democrats' certain efforts to muddy the waters, they may not get to the bottom of this, but the President is confident the truth will out and soon." Lake adds : "Barring an unexpected turn of events, FBI director James Comey will confirm on Monday before the House Intelligence Committee that what Trump tweeted on March 4 was literally false. There was no authorized surveillance of Trump Tower." • Nonetheless, says Lake, there may be reason to take the gist of Trump's tweet seriously. At least this is the sense of the latest turn in the story. Last Wednesday Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and it's ranking Democrat, Adam Schiff, announced they were seeking "information on how the identities of American citizens picked up in eavesdropping on foreign targets were unmasked in more widely disseminated intelligence reports." Lake agrees with the growing number of experts who think Trump and his team were the subjects of incidental intel sweeps whose principal target was someone else. • But, Lake goes farther : "This is important because of the case of Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security advisor. He resigned after the Washington Post reported on his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the US, Sergei Kislyak, that took place after Trump's victory but before his swearing in. At the time, the story was about how Flynn had not come clean about an element of those conversations, touching on sanctions just imposed on Russia. But another big part of that story is how the intercepted communications of an incoming national security advisor found its way into the newspaper." Lake takes aim at James Clapper, Obama's DNI, writing : "Earlier this month, Obama's last director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said there were no Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants that he knew about targeting Trump or his campaign. This surely means that Flynn was caught on a wiretap of the Russian ambassador. Normally, the names of Americans 'incidentally collected,' to use the intelligence community's phrase, are redacted from reports that are sent out to senior government officials. Was Flynn's name redacted in this case? If not, were summaries or transcripts of his conversation [including his name] widely distributed within the government? Which would have made it easier to leak. That's what Nunes and Schiff want to know." • In a March 15 letter to the heads of the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency, they asked for the total number of times a US person's identity was unmasked between June 2016 and January 2017. They also want to know the names of any US persons unmasked in incidental collection who were affiliated or part of the Trump or Hillary Clinton campaigns in this same period, and who inside the executive branch asked for these names to be unmasked. As Lake pointed out : "In Flynn's case, there may be sound reasons for why his name was not redacted from intelligence reports. Adam Klein, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told me Wednesday that it's plausible to find a foreign intelligence justification for unmasking the identity of someone like Flynn. 'That in and of itself is not necessarily improper,' he said. 'But we should remember what is relevant for foreign intelligence purposes is in the eye of the beholder. Something that might seem innocent on its face, might appear more nefarious from the perspective of someone who views the incoming team's policies with skepticism.' " • We need to ask why White House officials rushed to preserve and distribute intelligence on connections between Russia and Trump's associates widely throughout the government. This meant that raw intelligence was processed into analytical reports and classified at a relatively low level. The NYT says it was because the "Obama White House officials grew convinced that the intelligence was damning and that they needed to ensure that as many people as possible inside government could see it." Did this raw intelligence include Flynn's calls with the Russian ambassador? Was it the Obama White House that "unmasked" General Flynn and included his unmasked name in the intel reports they hastily circulated just befor the inauguration of President Trump? Was it in reality the Obama administration that short-circuited the FISA "unmasking" process by ignoring the FISA requirement to check to see if Trump associates were picked up "incidentally" on existing surveillance, wanting to disseminate the intel reports with Flynn's name unmasked. That would be a potentially criminal act. • • • COMEY'S TESTIMONY. FBI Director James Comey was as enigmatic as ever in his Monday testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. His most often repeated answers were "I can't answer that" and "That is not a question I can answer." But, he responded to questions about the Trump allegations that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower : "With respect to the President's tweets about alleged wiretapping directed at him by the prior administration, I have no information that supports those tweets. And we have looked carefully inside the FBI. The Department of Justice has asked me to share with you that the answer is the same for the Department of Justice and all its components : the Department has no information that supports those tweets." That Comey answer leaves enough space for a truck to drive through -- and it is the same space left in every intelligence community answer to that question thus far -- it responds only to the tweets and gives no broader context at all. So we still do not know if Trump Tower or Trump and his team were surveilled in any way, either directly or incidentally, except by wiretapping. • The most important information in the five hours of hearing on Monday came early when Director Comey made a stunning announcement : "As you know, our practice is not to confirm the existence of ongoing investigations, especially those investigations that involve classified matters, but in unusual circumstances where it is in the public interest, it may be appropriate to do so as Justice Department policies recognize. This is one of those circumstances. I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts. As with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed." There it is --- the blockbuster of a sword hung over the head of the Trump administration by the FBI Director and the Justice Department -- parenthetically, we may ask why Attorney General Sessions agreed to put the investigation in the public record. Comey then elaborated : "Because it is an open ongoing investigation and is classified, I cannot say more about what we are doing and whose conduct we are examining. At the request of congressional leaders, we have taken the extraordinary step in coordination with the Department of Justice of briefing this Congress' leaders, including the leaders of this committee, in a classified setting in detail about the investigation but I can't go into those details here. I know that is extremely frustrating to some folks. I hope you and the American people can understand. The FBI is very careful in how we handle information about our cases and about the people we are investigating. We are also very careful about the way we handle information that may be of interest to our foreign adversaries. Both of those interests are at issue in a counterintelligence investigation. Please don't draw any conclusions from the fact that I may not be able to comment on certain topics. I know speculating is part of human nature, but it really isn't fair to draw conclusions simply because I say that I can't comment." • In an obvious reference to his long condemnation of Hillary Clinton before he exonerated her, Comey added : "Some folks may want to make comparisons to past instances where the Department of Justice and the FBI have spoken about the details of some investigations, but please keep in mind that those involved the details of completed investigations. Our ability to share details with the Congress and the American people is limited when those investigations are still open, which I hope makes sense." • • • DEAR READERS, Representative Trey Gowdy, the former US prosecutor, punched the only real hole in Comey's wall of silence when he asked specifically if ex-DNI Clapper, ex-WH advisor Ben Rhodes, ex-CIA Director Brennan, ex-AG Lynch, ex-AG Yates and ex-NSA Rice knew Flynn's masked name. All but Rhodes got a "yes" from Comey -- Clapper, Brennan, Rice, Lynch and Yates knew the masked name was General Flynn. That Comey answer gives Gowdy and the House Intelligence Committee the first names on their list of possible sources for the leak of Flynn's name to the New York Times and Washington Post. It also gives ex-prosecutor Gowdy a starting point for seeking criminal activity inside the Obama administration. That makes Monday's hearing worth it, despite all the negative mainstream media coverage we will have to suffer through about Trump and his -- non-existent -- Russian connections. Thank you, Representative Trey Gowdy for a job well done.