Despite Wednesday’s blockbuster news about the dozens of Obama administration officials who “unmasked” then-incoming Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, there remains a gaping hole in the story: Where is the record showing who unmasked Flynn in connection with his fateful conversation with Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak?
There isn’t one.
There is no such evidence in the unmasking list that acting National Intelligence Director Richard Grenell provided to Sens. Chuck Grassley, R- Iowa, and Ron Johnson, R-Wis.
I suspect that’s because Lt. Gen. Flynn’s identity was not “masked” in the first place. Instead, his Dec. 29, 2016 call with Kislyak was likely intercepted under an intelligence program not subject to the masking rules, probably by the CIA or a friendly foreign spy service acting in a nod-and-wink arrangement with our intelligence community.
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“Unmasking” is a term of art for revealing in classified reports the names of Americans who have been “incidentally” monitored by our intelligence agencies. Presumptively, the names of Americans should be concealed in these reports, which reflect the surveillance of foreign targets, primarily under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Broadly speaking, FISA governs two kinds of intelligence collection.
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The first is “traditional” FISA – the targeted monitoring of a suspected clandestine operative of a foreign power. If the FBI shows the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) probable cause that a person inside the United States is acting as a foreign power’s agent, it may obtain a warrant to surveil that person.
If the foreign power’s suspected agent communicates with Americans, the latter are incidentally intercepted even though they are not the targets of the surveillance.
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