美国国家公共电台 NPR 'Unmasking' 101: The Next Chapter In The Trump-Russia Imbroglio

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

Members of Congress return to Washington next week, and that means we can expect to hear again soon about what's known as unmasking. Republicans on the committees investigating Russia's role in the U.S. presidential election have made unmasking a central theme of their inquiries 1. NPR's David Welna has more.

DAVID WELNA, BYLINE 2: There is one rule all U.S. intelligence agencies have to follow. If they spy on Americans, they have to get a warrant to do so. But what happens if they're spying on a foreigner who just happens to talk with or mention an American?

National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers was asked about that last month at the House Intelligence Committee's only public hearing on Russian meddling 3. Rogers told the panel that when an American's name pops up in so-called incidental collection, the data is often discarded. But there are times, he added, when such names do have intelligence value.

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MIKE ROGERS: In our reporting then, we will mask the identity of the individual. We'll use a phrase like U.S. person one or U.S. person two. And those redacted intercepts 4 often get passed on to U.S. officials. Raj De was general counsel at the NSA during the Obama administration. The Americans' names in those reports, he says, remain masked.

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RAJ DE: But it's not uncommon 5 for an intelligence recipient 6 in given circumstances to request for a name to be unredacted if it's necessary, one, to understand the intelligence - is the standard - or, two, if there's potential evidence of a crime.

WELNA: Just how many Americans have had their identities unmasked is still not clear. Republicans suspect one who did and who then lost his job is Trump 7's first national security adviser 8, Michael Flynn. Just days before Trump took office, The Washington Post reported several phone calls made by Flynn to the Russian ambassador. The Post's source was a senior government official whom Republicans suspect was Flynn's predecessor 9, Susan Rice. At that same house hearing, South Carolina Republican Trey Gowdy pressed FBI Director James Comey about what Rice might have known.

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TREY GOWDY: Would National Security Adviser Susan Rice have access to an unmasked U.S. citizen's name?

JAMES COMEY: I think any - yes, in general, and any other national security adviser would I think as a matter of their ordinary course of their business.

WELNA: A couple of weeks later, The New York Times' Glenn Thrush asked President Trump, who'd already tweeted that President Obama had had him wiretapped, about Rice's alleged 10 actions.

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GLENN THRUSH: Do you think she might have committed a crime?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Do I think?

THRUSH: Yeah.

TRUMP: Yes, I think

WELNA: A day earlier, Rice had declared on MSNBC that there indeed were times when she needed the identities of Americans unmasked in order to understand intelligence reports.

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SUSAN RICE: What I would do or what any official would do is to ask their briefer whether the intelligence committee would go through its process - and there is a longstanding, established process - to decide whether that information, as to who the identity of the U.S. person was, could be provided to me.

WELNA: Rice, whom Republicans would like to haul before the House Intelligence Panel, denies having leaked any classified information. Still, Elizabeth Goitein, a privacy advocate at the Brennan Center for Justice, says it's worrisome that the standard for unmasking Americans' identities is understanding the importance of foreign intelligence.

ELIZABETH GOITEIN: That may not sound like a major loophole, but the definition of foreign intelligence information in the statute 11 is so broad, it would encompass 12 casual conversations about current events. So it's actually quite a significant loophole.

WELNA: Ironically, the only official who's in trouble over unmasking is the House Intelligence Panel's Republican chairman, Devin Nunes, who stepped aside from leading its Russia probe. Nunes is now facing an ethics 13 inquiry 14 after citing classified intelligence intercepts to suggest the identities of Trump and some of his associates may have been unmasked during the post-election transition.

But the issue isn't being dropped. If and when another hearing's held, Republicans will likely be asking more questions about the unmasking of Americans by U.S. intelligence agencies than about alleged meddling in American elections by Russian agents. David Welna, NPR News, Washington.

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