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Sunday, December 8, 2024 - 03:48 AM

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

First Published in 1994

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF
UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

Michael Flynn did not seem to be the best choice President-elect Donald Trump could have made for his first national security advisor. My own publication, The Daily Caller, broke the story of Flynn writing an op-ed praising Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan just before Trump's election. The op-ed was a clear break from Flynn's past comments criticizing Turkey for their policies toward the ISIS terrorist group. The most troubling part was Flynn's failure to disclose the fact that his private-sector intelligence consulting firm had just signed a lucrative contract with a company closely aligned with Erdogan before the op-ed was published. The whole thing looked a lot like a paid foreign influence campaign.

Short of some sort of crime, though, Trump could have picked anyone he wanted to be his national security advisor. Trump won the presidential election. In doing so, he won the right to put together his White House team. A peaceful transition of power and respect for the will of the voters are fundamental to our system of government. New revelations are increasingly calling into question whether the Obama team abused this basic precept in the wake of Trump's election. It's now clear that numerous top Obama officials were spying on Michael Flynn.

In the intelligence world, the government has a system in place to spy on foreigners using less than the normal due process needed to spy on Americans. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authorizes the government to collect information on foreign powers and agents of foreign powers. Using this law, the Obama administration was spying on Russia's ambassador to the United States. Good for them. That's their job.

In monitoring the Russian ambassador, they picked up conversations he was having with Flynn, Trump's incoming national security advisor. Finding American communications in foreign intelligence in this way is referred to as "incidental collection." When this happens, we have "minimization" rules, which mandate that any American communications caught up in foreign surveillance be redacted to protect the American citizens involved. These redactions can be overturned, however, through a process called "unmasking."

We have now learned, thanks to a recent release by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, that a stunning 39 different Obama administration officials requested the unmasking of Flynn's communications in the time period between Trump's election and his inauguration. Those making the request included numerous ambassadors, Treasury Department officials and White House political staff, including the chief of staff and, just one week before Trump's inauguration, Vice President Joe Biden. Not surprisingly, in the wake of these unmaskings, Flynn's communications were then leaked to the press.

Such a high number of requests for information related to a rival political party is troubling to any but the most hardened anti-Trump partisan. As a former heavy consumer of intelligence reporting in my days as assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney for special projects, I can state categorically that top White House staff do not do this as a matter of course. Checking in with former colleagues confirmed that nobody recalls any unmasking related to rival political figures. Regardless of how anyone on Team Obama may try to spin this, such high levels of unmasking requests from top White House officials related to political rivals is completely and totally unprecedented.

None of this means we know for sure that the Obama requests were political, or even improper. We only know they were highly unusual and highly troubling because they present the distinct possibility of using our national security apparatus for political ends. There are a number of possibilities as to what was driving these requests. Maybe Flynn was involved with communications that, in the eyes of the Obama staff, raised such serious national security concerns that the unmasking was somehow proper, despite its political appearance. It's important to state here that it's common, and even necessary, for the incoming team during a presidential transition to begin outreach to those they will be working with, including foreign government agents. It's what's supposed to happen, so absent something more damning, Flynn speaking with the Russian ambassador should not be alarming.

The only way to get to the bottom of this matter is to release to the public the communications and unmasking requests in question and to thoroughly question each official involved. This transparency is not just advisable but absolutely necessary in order to restore the public's confidence that one party's leaders were not abusing the system for political ends.

Intelligence is declassified all the time, and it can be done in a way that doesn't endanger our intelligence sources or their methods. In the wake of 9/11, numerous sensitive intelligence reports were declassified to establish what the Bush administration had known ahead of time about any potential attack. A similar process is needed now. Given what appears to be a violation of some of our most basic liberties -- and to ensure that our system was not hijacked for political purposes -- the information surrounding these unmaskings must be declassified so the American people can see what is really happening. Trump has the authority to do this himself. So do numerous members of his team. They should use that authority and set this record straight.

If anyone on the Obama team misused our national security apparatus to spy on their political opponents, it would be the greatest political abuse in our country's history. Anyone who asked for an unmasking involving an incoming national security advisor would have known the risks going in. Hopefully, they did it for some legitimate reason. If that's the case, they should be at the front of the line asking for all this to be made public so everyone can see that there were no abuses at hand.

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Neil Patel co-founded The Daily Caller, one of America's fastest-growing online news outlets, which regularly breaks news and distributes it to over 15 million monthly readers. Patel also co-founded The Daily Caller News Foundation, a nonprofit news company that trains journalists, produces fact-checks and conducts longer-term investigative reporting. The Daily Caller News Foundation licenses its content free of charge to over 300 news outlets, reaching potentially hundreds of millions of people per month. To find out more about Neil Patel and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com

COPYRIGHT 2020 CREATORS.COM

 

Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel

Tucker Carlson currently hosts Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (weekdays 8 p.m. ET). He joined the network in 2009 as a contributor.

“Tucker Carlson Tonight” features powerful analysis and spirited debates, with guests from across the political and cultural spectrum. Carlson brings his signature style to tackle issues largely uncovered by the media in every corner of the United States, challenging political correctness with a "Campus Craziness" segment and tackling media bias and outrage during "Twitter Storm."

Carlson co-hosted “Fox & Friends Weekend” starting in 2012, until taking on his current role at “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

While at Fox News, Carlson has provided analysis for “America's Election Headquarters” on primary and caucus nights, including in the 2016 and 2012 presidential elections, as well as the 2014 midterm election. He also produced a Fox News special, "Fighting for Our Children's Minds," in 2010.

Prior to working at Fox News, Carlson hosted “Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered” on PBS from 2004 to 2005 and “Tucker” on MSNBC from 2005 to 2008. He joined CNN in 2000 as its youngest anchor ever, co-hosting “The Spin Room” and later CNN's “Crossfire,” until its 2005 cancellation. In 2003, he wrote an autobiography about his cable news experience titled "Politicians, Partisans and Parasites: My Adventures in Cable News."

Carlson graduated with a B.A. in history from Trinity College in Connecticut.

Neil Patel

In addition to his role as publisher of The Daily Caller, Neil Patel is co-founder and managing director of Bluebird Asset Management, a hedge fund investing in mortgage-backed securities.

Before starting his two companies, Neil served in the White House from 2005 to 2009 as the chief policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney. From 2001 to 2004, Neil was staff secretary to Vice President Cheney. Prior to joining the Bush administration, Neil was assistant general counsel at UUNET Technologies. Earlier in his career, Neil practiced law with Dechert Price & Rhoads. He also served as Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China. 

Neil received his B.A. from Trinity College in Connecticut and his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center, where he served as associate editor of the Journal of Law and Policy in International Business.

Neil lives in Washington, D.C., and Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with his wife, Amy, their two daughters, Caroline and Bela, and their son, Charlie.

COPYRIGHT 2019 CREATORS.COM