Executive Order 12333 and Obama the Serial Surveiller

The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that the Senate Judiciary Committee will investigate President Trump's claims of being wiretapped during the presidential campaign. Declaring that Congress "must get to the bottom" of Trump’s claim, Senators Lindsey Graham, Republican, and Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat, asked Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente and FBI Director James Comey to produce the paper trail created when the Justice Department’s criminal division secures warrants for wiretaps. The Senators, who are part of the congressional inquiry into Russia’s efforts to sway the US election, called on the Justice Department Wednesday to produce any evidence that supports President Trump’s wiretapping allegation. • The question is why the committee is not sending subpoenas to James Clapper and Loretta Lynch and Valeric Jarrett. • • • FISA AND SECRET SURVEILLANCE WARRANTS. The Federal Information Surveillance Act (FISA) has always been controversial legislation, but, as former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett put it last weekend, nobody could have conceived that a sitting President or administration would use it to spy on a candidate from the opposing party. Bennett told Fox News he does not blame President Trump for being : "hot on this one, as he should be. What will the American people think of this?" • In February, author James Hirson reported that days before Trump's inauguration, Obama issued an executive order allowing the National Security Agency (NSA) to share raw communications -- presumably the communications were taken by surveillance under the FISA warrants -- with 16 other intelligence agencies including the FBI, the DEA, and the Department of Homeland Security. Former Reagan Deputy Attorney General Mark Levin, now a conservative radio host, pointed out in a Fox News interview that the Obama DOJ under Loretta Lynch tried on two occasions to get FISA court approval to intercept communications between Trump campaign surrogates and Russian officials. The first attempt in June was rejected, then the DOJ came back in October with a more narrowly focused request -- possibly omitting references to Donald Trump -- that was granted. This was reported in January by multiple outlets including the New York Times. Numerous media reports indicated that the Obama DOJ and the FBI sought FISA warrants against Trump campaign insiders and then-presidential candidate Trump himself during the final months of the presidential campaign. The FISA approved the more narrowed request for a surveillance warrant in October, the same month Trump alleges the wiretaps in his offices occurred. More information is needed, Bill Bennett said, but he does not think much attention was given to the FISA rulings in October, when there was so much going on with the election. Bennett noted : "The New York Times I think a couple of days ago pointed out that the results of some of what was being found out by some intelligence agencies was spread pretty far and wide in the agencies before Obama left. A lot of people would have access to information they had no right to have access to. This could explain the widespread leaks we have been talking about." • • • EXECUTIVE ORDER 12333. Bennett was referring to EO 12333, Twelve-Triple Three as it is often called. EO 12333 was signed by President Reagan on December 4, 1981, and was intended to extend powers and responsibilities of US intelligence agencies and direct the leaders of US federal agencies to co-operate fully with CIA requests for information. EO 12333 was expanded by President Obama just before then-President-Elect Trump’s inauguration, authorizing intelligence agencies to share unfiltered telephone surveillance information, specifically allowing NSA to share raw intercepted communications with 16 agencies that include the FBI, DEA and Department of Homeland Security -- among others. • The Atlantic published an article on January 13, titled Why Is Obama Expanding Surveillance Powers Right Before He Leaves Office? The Atlantic's Progressive Democrat readership will be pleased with the answer -- that it could be to prevent Trump from extending them even more. Author Kaveh Waddell states : "With the new changes, which were long in the works, those agencies can apply for access to various feeds of raw, undoctored NSA intelligence. Analysts will then be able to sift through the contents of those feeds as they see fit, before implementing required privacy protections." Under the Reagan EO 12333, NSA applied those privacy protections itself, before forwarding select pieces of information to agencies that might need to see them. Waddell explains : "The updated procedures will multiply the number of intelligence analysts who have access to NSA surveillance, which is captured in large quantities and often without requiring a warrant. The changes angered privacy advocates, who oppose a broadening of surveillance powers -- especially before Donald Trump’s inauguration. Trump and Mike Pompeo, the President-Elect’s nominee for CIA director, have made it clear that they think overzealous civil-liberties protections should be cleared away in favor of stronger surveillance laws. But while the changes may subject more Americans to warrantless surveillance, the last-minute timing of the announcement actually might have been designed to cut future privacy losses, says Waddell. • Susan Hennessey, a Brookings fellow and the managing editor of Lawfare, says firming up the changes before Trump takes office makes it harder for the incoming President to encroach even further on civil liberties." Hennessey was interviewed by Waddell and said : "Under Executive Order 12333 as it previously existed, NSA analysts had to make an initial determination and apply a set of privacy rules before sharing raw signals-intelligence information with other parts of the intelligence community. After this change, it doesn’t necessarily have to be an NSA analyst that makes that determination [about sharing raw signals-intelligence information with intelligence community groups outside the NSA] -- that information can be shared with other parts of the intelligence community [without such a determination that includes privacy considerations]. • • • OBAMA OPENED THE DOOR TO UNIVERSAL WARRANTLESS SURVEILLANCE. There should be no feeling of comfort for US citizens whose phone calls are being scooped up by NSA without a warrant or the need to show probable cause. Now, this raw signals-intelligence information gathered without even so much as an easily-obtained FISA warrant can be read by 16 agencies in the intelligence community before any privacy determination is made. • Hennessey says : "Intelligence agencies other than the NSA will have to provide justification for why they need access to that data. It can only be for foreign intelligence, or other enumerated purposes. So it’s not that those agencies will just be able to see whatever they want -- it’s that they will be able to request, with particular justifications, access to more raw signals-intelligence than they had before. Then, they will need to apply those minimization procedures for themselves. • But, what Hennessey trivializes is the possibility that during the review of properly received raw signals-intelligence information, any agency -- the FBI for example -- could stumble on information passed on to it and reviewed incidentally -- that is, under the new rule, the FBI could not obtain access to or search raw intelligence information for ordinary criminals in an ordinary criminal investigation against a US person, BUT, if the FBI incidentally seized evidence of a crime while reviewing raw signals-intelligence information properly made available to it, the FBI is allowed to use that information. That is where the potential impact of this change on US persons lies. While Hennessey says : "I think it’s important to understand that these minimization procedures are taken very seriously, and all other agencies that are handling raw signals-intelligence are essentially going to have to import these very complex oversight and compliance mechanisms that currently exist at the NSA....Within the NSA, those are extremely strong and protective mechanisms. I think people should feel reassured that the rules cannot be violated -- certainly not without it coming to the attention of oversight and compliance bodies. I am confident that all of the agencies in the US intelligence community will discharge those very same obligations with the same level of diligence and rigor, adhering to both the spirit and the letter of the law....These changes have actually been in process for eight or nine years. One of the things that I think individuals who had insight into intelligence activities and were concerned about the election of Donald Trump -- specifically, some of the statements he’s made about adherence to the rule of law -- a lot of those people’s minds went very quickly to these procedures....I think the bottom line is that it’s comforting to a large national-security community that these are procedures that are signed off by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and not by the DNI and Attorney General that will ultimately be confirmed under the Trump Administration." • Now, there is real Progressive elitism at work -- we can rest peacefully knowing that DNI James Clapper, who lied under oath about what he was doing to collect US citizen data, was behind the decision to open up to the quasi-totality of the US intel community the raw signals-intelligence, gathered without warrants, including from US citizens. • • • AND WHAT ABOUT OBAMA'S SURVEILLANCE?? Liberty Headlines and WND reported on Tuesday that "record shows Obama was ‘President Surveillance’...let the great cover-up begin." WND says that after Trump called out Obama, some conservative political analysts say the "cover-up" started -- "now, after President Trump threw a Twitter dart that landed between the collective eyes of the Obama administration and its scheme to take down Trump." Obama used the federal surveillance apparatus against his foes during his eight years in office, but, says WND, his defenders nonetheless cried “conspiracy theory” Monday in their attempts to deflect Trump’s Twitter accusations. Obama and his spokespersons and surrogates have denied ordering any such action, but, as we pointed out in Tuesday's blog, a careful reading of their denials reveals the possibility of gaping executive overreach and even illegal activity. • Andrew McCarthy explained in an op-ed for National Review how, technically, a President doesn’t “order” such surveillance. And just because a “wiretap” may not have been placed directly on a Trump Tower phone line doesn’t mean other forms of surveillance weren’t taken against Trump or his campaign surrogates. McCarthy pointed out : "This seems disingenuous on several levels. First, as Obama officials well know, under the FISA process, it is technically the FISA court that ‘orders’ surveillance. And by statute, it is the Justice Department, not the White House, that represents the government in proceedings before the FISA court. So, the issue is not whether Obama or some member of his White House staff ‘ordered’ surveillance of Trump and his associates. The issues are (a) whether the Obama Justice Department sought such surveillance authorization from the FISA court, and (b) whether, if the Justice Department did that, the White House was aware of or complicit in the decision to do so. Personally, given the explosive and controversial nature of the surveillance request we are talking about -- an application to wiretap the presidential candidate of the opposition party, and some of his associates, during the heat of the presidential campaign, based on the allegation that the candidate and his associates were acting as Russian agents -- it seems to me that there is less than zero chance that could have happened without consultation between the Justice Department and the White House.” • And WND points out that there was a bombshell in the NYT article : “One official said intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House.” Levin asks the right question : “Are you telling me Barack Obama did not know what was going on in six agencies? I need to make the case, because the media seems to be confused about their own reporting.” • • • THE DEEP STATE PROTECTS OBAMA. Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch, said the “deep state” is in full rebellion against Trump and it will go to any lengths to cover its tracks: Fitton states : “I’ve been saying for some time that the scandal involves surveillance and illegal leaks of information concerning the Trump team. The left had been trying to distract the public with the unicorn theory of election and the Russians ‘stealing’ the election when in fact you had the President’s people in the Obama administration surveilling and trying to influence the election prior to it and then afterward leaking information in a way to destroy the Trump administration. Trump is more right than he knows. Whether he was specifically, by name, the target of a wiretap as opposed to his campaign or something like that, we don’t know. That’s why we sued today, to get more information through FOIA requests, and we’ve been investigating this for months. It goes back to General Flynn and what came out about him as well.” The irony, says Fitton, is that "Trump can make it come out.” Fitton said Trump may not have ordered copies of all the intel reports on communications that were scooped up during FISA-approved intercepts : “My guess is he’s not being direct in getting access to this information in order to satisfy ethics concerns, no matter how misplaced those concerns may be, by people in the agencies. What most Americans don’t realize," Fitton said, "is that the federal bureaucracy that controls the intelligence agencies is the same bureaucracy that worked under Obama. Only a few Trump loyalists have been appointed to these agencies since the transfer of power with thousands of job openings still to be filled by the Trump administration." Fitton sketched this image of the current status in Washington : “People call it the deep state. But another way to think about it is you have the Trump administration, the White House, in the hands of a newly elected President and then you have all the government organized against him thinking they can run Washington rather than the elected President and the laws of America.” • • • WIKILEAKS LIST OF OBAMA SURVEILLANCE. ikiLeaks released the following list on February 23 of Obama administration wire taps : • The US National Security Agency bugged a private climate change strategy meeting between UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin. • Obama bugged the chief of staff of UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for long term interception, targeting his Swiss phone. • Obama singled out the director of the rules division of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Johann Human, and targeted his Swiss phone for long term interception. • Obama stole sensitive Italian diplomatic cables detailing how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu implored Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to help patch up his relationship with President Obama, who was refusing to talk to Netanyahu. • Obama intercepted top EU and Japanese trade ministers discussing their secret strategy and red lines to stop the US “extort[ing]” them at the WTO Doha rounds (the talks subsequently collapsed). • Obama explicitly targeted five other top EU economic officials for long term interception, including their French, Austrian and Belgium phone numbers. • Obama explicitly targeted the phones of Italy’s ambassador to NATO and other top Italian officials for long term interception. • And Obama intercepted details of a critical private meeting between then French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Merkel and Berlusconi in which the latter was told the Italian banking system was ready to “pop like a cork.” • In addition to the above list, WND also says it is now known now that Obama wiretapped various individuals in the US media that were reporting information not flattering to the Obama administration. It is widely known that Obama’s Justice Department targeted journalists with wiretaps in 2013. In 2013, the left-leaning Washington Post expressed outrage after the revelation that the Justice Department had investigated the newsgathering activities of a Fox News reporter as a potential crime in a probe of classified leaks. The reporter, Fox News’ James Rosen and his family, were part of an investigation into government officials anonymously leaking information to journalists. Rosen was not charged but his movements and actions were tracked. Also in 2013, members of the Associated Press were a target of surveillance. The left-leaning New Yorker even noted : “In moderate and liberal circles, at least, the phone-records scandal, partly because it involves the dear old A.P. and partly because it raises anew the specter of Big Brother, may well present the most serious threat to Obama’s reputation.” Reporter Sharyl Attkisson said in 2014 that her personal computer and CBS laptop were hacked after she began filing stories about Benghazi that were unflattering to the Obama administration. A source who checked her laptop said the hacker used spyware “proprietary to a government agency,” according to the New York Post. • Even former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said in an interview on Fox's “Justice with Judge Jeanine” last Saturday that the Obama administration listened in on conversations between then-Senator Jeff Sessions and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak : "What we have seen from the previous administration is they did spend time listening to conversations between then Senator Jeff Sessions and the ambassador to Russia while he was in his US Senate office. If that were to take place -- which supposedly did take place -- what other conversations are they listening in on.” • • • DEAR READERS, Newsmax said on Wednesday that Donald Trump and Barack Obama haven't spoken since Inauguration Day as the relationship between the two men continues to crumble, citing two media reports. Obama was described as irked and exasperated after Trump's claim that he was responsible for wiretaps during the presidential campaign, according to CNN. The news network said Obama and his aides were left in disbelief after Trump made his charges on Twitter. Both CNN and the Wall Street Journal say the two men have not been in touch since January 20 when Trump was sworn in. The budding feud between the two goes against a tradition of an "almost unwritten rule that you treat your predecessor with a degree of grace and decorum," said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian, adding, "There are these kinds of things that have happened in the past, but nothing to the degree where a sitting President would charge his predecessor with a felony. It creates a feeling of instability in the United States." • "Exasperated"??? "Feeling of instability"??? There seems to be no sense of propriety or truthfulness, nor even objectivity, in these media stories. Why shouldn't President Trump be able to say that his phones were 'tapped,' or somehow surveilled, during a presidential campaign in which he was the candidate. Why shouldn't he call out then-President Obama, a known serial surveiller, for committing a probable crime and breaching every protocol of American political campaign and past-President behavior. If anyone should be "exasperated," it is Trump. If anyone caused and is causing "instability," it is Obama. The Wall Sreet Journal apparently knew that Obama was "livid" over the claims. While the two have not talked, Trump had attempted to call Obama to thank him for a letter he had left for him in the Oval Office. Obama, who was traveling at the time, never responded, the WSJ said. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich summed up Trump's feeling this way : "It's a sign of how deeply frustrated he is. They have a much bigger assault against them than people have had in the past." • That is being extremely kind, Newt. President Trump is being hounded, wiretapped, surveilled, called mentally unstable, and ridiculed for trying to put some order into the garbage heap of malfeasance in office Obama left behind him.