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President Donald Trump insists, against all evidence, that there is something called Obamagate: some crime, or perhaps series of crimes, that the preceding administration committed against him, or against his adviser Michael Flynn, or maybe against even more of the Trump team. Yet the president fails to say what the crime(s) might be. Instead, he seizes on the language, alludes to improprieties, andincreasinglywields it all to tar his rival for the presidency, Joe Biden. Countering Trumpian disinformation campaigns like this one demands disentangling the threads that Trump has weaved into Obamagate, debunking the falsehoods that Trump is propagatingand, at the same time, acknowledging where there may in fact have been serious missteps during the previous administration.

That means acknowledging that there may well be a lurking truth to a serious allegation against former government officials in how they handled the counterintelligence file involving Michael Flynn. However, there is no evidence that those actions implicate President Barack Obama or Vice President Biden personally, or discredit the legitimacy of the investigations of Russias 2016 election interference, the investigation of Trump campaign associates support for the Kremlins effort, officials requests to unmask a U.S. person appearing in intelligence reports who turned out to be Flynn, the FBIs decision to interview Flynn, or the Justice Departments charging Flynn for lying to the FBI.

That said, there has been a rush by many to say that no crime has been credibly alleged, and that no serious wrongdoing by former administration officials has been identified. Thats an oversight, and fails to grapple with a potential outcome: the prospect of well-founded criminal indictments against one or more former officials who leaked the content of the classified intercept of the Dec. 29, 2016 phone call between Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and Flynns identity in that communication.

As Ill explain, the issue here is not limited to the initial leak by a senior government official to the journalist David Ignatius who revealed the Flynn-Kislyak phone call in the pages of the Washington Post on the evening of Jan. 12, 2017.

Independent observers and analysts should understand the strength of the allegations of misconduct, which could trigger criminal liability. Indeed, it is valuable to identify any credible complaints of official wrongdoing, and separate those from Trumps deceptive and deliberately false accusations.

As for practitioners who are engaged in countering disinformation, they should consider how this foreseeable outcome of one or more criminal indictments will be used by Trump, his Attorney General Bill Barr, and the Director of National Intelligence (whether Rick Grenell or John Ratcliffe) to conflate truth and falsehoods. Indeed, the failure to have appreciated the seriousness of the allegations will bolster Trump and his surrogates disinformation campaign. It will be used to discredit analysts. They will be accused of dishonesty and bias, not just of an analytic oversight. More Americans will be encouraged to think of Trump and his political loyalists as validated sources of information. And the public will be left with even less ability to sort fact from fiction.

Indeed, a well-orchestrated disinformation tactic, pioneered by Soviet intelligence, would involve the following steps:

Phase One: Make grossly unfounded claims of misconduct by former and current US officials (such as a Deep State conspiracy to undercut the Trump 2016 campaign and the Trump presidency), anticipating a reaction among experts and partisans to challenge those claims;

Phase Two: Reveal true official misconduct that has some, even if limited, connection to the original conspiracy theory, with experts and partisans failing to adequately anticipate or recognize the true misconduct, and some even quick to dismiss it.

Phase One of this disinformation campaign is well underway.

How likely is a key step in Phase Two, namely, the genuine revelation of official misconduct? Barrs handpicked federal prosecutor John Durham reportedly has in the crosshairs of his ongoing criminal investigation the leaks to the media. Attorney General Bill Barr has signaled confidence that Durham will find criminal wrongdoing (in gross defiance of long-standing Justice Department policy to refrain from any acknowledgement, let alone comments on the prospective outcome, of an ongoing investigation). Whats more, several former senior officials told Congress, under penalty of law, that they were not the source of the leak, either in closed testimony that the House Committee on Intelligence released last week or in prior public hearings. That may create another layer of legal vulnerability if a source of the leak denied it to Congress.

Phase Two: The Leak Investigation

The groundwork for phase two has been long in the making. A March 20, 2017 public hearing of the House Intelligence Committee with two witnesses then-FBI Director James Comey and then-NSA Director Mike Rogers raised concerns about the leaks of Flynns phone calls with Kislyak. Lawmakers directly and indirectly identified three news reports during the hearing. Here are the three reports including some passages added for context:

1. David Ignatius, Washington Post, Jan. 12, 2017:

According to a senior U.S. government official, Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, the day the Obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian officials as wellas other measures in retaliation for the hacking. What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the U.S. sanctions?The Logan Act (though never enforced) bars U.S. citizens from correspondence intending toinfluence a foreign government about disputes with the United States. Was its spirit violated? The Trump campaign didnt immediately respond to a request for comment.

2. Greg Miller, Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post, Feb. 9, 2017:

Neither of those assertions is consistent with the fuller account of Flynns contacts with Kislyak provided by officials who had access to reports from U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies that routinely monitor the communications of Russian diplomats. Nine current and former officials, who were in senior positions at multiple agencies at the time of the calls, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

3. Maggie Haberman, Matthew Rosenberg, Matt Apuzzo and Glenn Thrush, New York Times, Feb. 13, 2017

But the conversation,according to officials who saw the transcript of the wiretap, also included a discussion about sanctions imposed on Russia after intelligence agencies determined that President Vladimir V. Putins government tried to interfere with the 2016 election on Mr. Trumps behalf. Still, current and former administration officials familiar with the call said the transcript was ambiguous enough that Mr. Trump could have justified either firing or retaining Mr. Flynn.

It is important to stress what these news stories dont saynot even closethat all these officials actually revealed to the reporters any new classified information. Some of them might have discussed the information that the reporters told the officials they had, in order to provide context, etc., without disclosing anything new, or even without confirming the substance of the callssomething that happens routinely. Others might not have said anything at all about the substance of the calls. It is also important to note that the February news stories came after White House officials spoke on the record confirming the existence of the calls and discussing the content of the calls as well (including Vice President Mike Pence, Reince Priebus, and Sean Spicer).

To the extent there was an unauthorized disclosure of classified information to Ignatius or other reporters, thats something none of us as former government officials entrusted with protection of classified information can defend. Indeed, several of the former senior officials testifying before the House Intelligence Committee referred to such leaks as outrageous, illegal, and a serious crime. And Senator Dianne Feinstein joined Senator Chuck Grassley in a bipartisan letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director Comey on Feb. 15, 2017, in which the Chair and Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote that these reports raise substantial questions about the content and context of Mr. Flynns discussions with Russian officials as well as possible leaks of classified information by current and former government employees.

That said, the timing of all this coming to the fore with the Durham investigation is more than suspicious. Even if there were criminal misconduct involving the leak to the media over three years ago, ask yourself why the investigation just so happens to be heating up now as we enter the general election. And Trump and his surrogates have only now launched an effort to introduce Bidens name into the unmasking narrative blurring both the possible leaker with Biden and the legitimate practice of unmasking with the illegitimate practice of leaking. Whats more, now that the Trump campaign has explicitly asserted that this scandal directly implicates Biden, it should be more difficult for Barr and Durham to convince career Justice Department officials to go along with, and the public to accept, a violation of another long-standing Justice Department policy, which holds that the Justice Department should refrain from taking public action that could affect the outcome of an election. Durham, for one, should hesitate before going down this treacherous path.

Phase Two: The Unmasking Ruse

In laying the groundwork for phase two, some Republican lawmakers such as then-Rep. Trey Gowdy tied the leaks to unmasking from the start.

By way of background: The request to know the identity of a U.S. person appearing in multiple intelligence reports who turned out, upon unmasking, to be Flynn shows no evidence of wrongdoing by U.S. officials. The way in which some public figures such as Senator Rand Paul have spun the idea of unmasking as though it involves warrantless wrongdoing is extremely misleading and reckless. On the contrary, the variety of officials who were concerned enough about the intelligence they were reading to request the identity of the U.S. person likely indicates how much Flynns behavior alarmed an array of officials across different agencies.

That said, theres at least a superficially plausible connection between unmasking of Flynn and the allegedly unlawful leaks. Those who obtained an unmasked transcript of the intercepted phone call might have had access to the very information leaked to the press. Along those lines, Rep. Trey Gowdy engaged in the following exchange with Comey during the March 2017 hearing:

GOWDY: So how would you begin your investigation, assuming for the sake of argument that a U.S. citizens name appeared in the Washington Post and the New York Times unlawfully. Where would you begin that investigation?COMEY: You would start by figuring out, so who are the suspects? Who touched the information that youve concluded ended up unlawfully in the newspaper and start with that universe and then use investigative tools and techniques to see if you can eliminate people, or include people as more serious suspects.

GOWDY: Do you know whether Director Clapper knew the name of the U.S. citizen that appeared in the New York Times and Washington Post?

GOWDY: Would he have access to an unmasked name?

COMEY: In in some circumstances, sure, he was the director of national intelligence. But Im not talking about the particular.

Gowdy then proceeded to walk through a series of other former senior officials, asking whether each one would have access to an unmasked U.S. citizens name. Comey answered each in a similar fashion.

The official list of officials involved in unmasking Flynn, however, is not a reliable proxy for identifying suspects who may be responsible for the leak.

A threshold question first: There is good reason to think the declassified NSA list of officials who requested unmasking is completely disconnected from the intercepted call between Kislyak and Flynn on Dec. 29. As Marcy Wheeler and Ben Wittes have explained, the intercepted call appears to be an FBInot an NSAproduct. That would stand to reason if Kislyak (the actual target of the surveillance) was in the United States at the time (thanks to Asha Rangappa for raising this important point). [Update: The Washington Post confirms the summary of the Dec. 29 call was an FBI, not an NSA, product which openly included Flynns name and thus there would be no reason for officials to request an unmasking from the NSA.]

There is good reason to think the declassified NSA list of officials who requested unmasking is completely disconnected from the intercepted call between Kislyak and Flynn on Dec. 29.

Even if the declassified NSA list somehow includes the Flynn-Kislyak calls, the list is both under-inclusive and over-inclusive. It is under-inclusive because a much larger group of officials in addition to the ones on the NSA list knew the details of the phone calls and that Flynn was the American on the call. That larger group includes lower-level and senior officials who participated in the FBIs debriefing Justice Department officials about the Flynn phone call on Feb. 4 and Feb. 6. Several of those officials have been named in declassified congressional hearings and declassified FBI 302 interviews yet they do not appear on the NSA list. Whats more, Yates and McCabe each told Congress that when either a transcript or summary of the call was circulated, Flynns name was already identifieditself understandable, given that the FBI operates under different guidelines in such circumstances from those that apply generally to the intelligence community.

YATES: When this information was provided to me, nobody was ever asking for his name to be unmasked. I was provided with the name in it.

MCCABE: I do not believe that that summary was ever masked. Im also not familiar with any requests that we received to unmask anything. Im not Im not aware that if we got one, it would strike me as unnecessary if nothing was masked.

The list is also over-inclusive because many of the unmasking requests were made before Flynn and Kislyaks Dec. 29 phone call occurred, and its not known whether requests after that date would be for different intercepted communications.

Finally, the unmasking is not well-connected to the leak taking as our example Biden himself. Following the public release of the NSA list, multiple articles in the National Review and the opinion piece by the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board were quick to say that Bidens office requested or received an unmasking of Flynns call on the same day that Ignatius story ran in the Washington Post (Jan. 12). But that was the date the request was received by the NSA, not when it was granted or obtained, according to the cover note by the head of the National Security Agency, General Paul M. Nakasone. Biden might have received the unmasked information only after the Post story published (indeed, the Post story might have inspired his office to initiate the request). We also dont know whether Biden actually saw the unmasked name. While the principals are identified below, we cannot confirm they saw the unmasked information, the declassified NSA document states. Relatedly, as former acting C.I.A. director Michael Morell explained to the New York Times, an officer briefing a senior official may make the unmasking request, but that would be logged as a request from the senior official. We also dont know whether the request from Bidens office was even for the Dec. 29 call between Kislyak and Flynn. Finally none of this really matters when it comes to the leak. It has been known for years that Biden was informed about Flynns phone call with Kislyak on Jan. 5, 2017 when the issue was discussed in a pull-aside meeting in the Oval Office with Obama, Biden, Comey, Yates, and Susan Rice. That might cut against Biden in some fever dream of a conspiracy hatched against the Trump administration. It also shows that the quest for the list of unmaskers is a ruse. Biden, like many, many, many other officials at the time did not need to request unmasking Flynn to leak to the media. In fact, the smartest move for a leaker might have been not to submit a request. At bottom, the most plausible explanation of Trump, Barr, and now Sen. Lindsey Grahams focus on unmasking is its service in the aid of a disinformation campaign to further Trumps political ambitions.

* * *

At bottom, the key point here is not allowing anyone, especially including the President of the United States and his attorney general, to convince the American public that there is any scandal beyond what may have happened with the leak. Trump and Barr can be counted on to run the same playbook as they have before a kernel of actual misconduct will be distorted by the Trump team and their congressional and media allies to make it look like an array of other activities that were actually legitimate appear illegitimate. Most memorably, when the DOJ Inspector General found wrongdoing in the Carter Page FISA surveillance applications, Trump and Barr distorted the IGs findings to try to attack the legitimacy of the Mueller investigation. For now, Trump and Barrs effort to rewrite the history of Flynns lying to the FBI looks like it may hit a brick wall in Judge Emmet G. Sullivans courtroom. The question is whether their deception may yet succeed in the court of public opinion.

In the final analysis, Obamagate should be best understood as the scandal in which a president manufactured false accusations against former government officials, including his political rival, using the full power of the Justice Department and Kremlin-style information warfare tactics to orchestrate it.

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Anticipating Phase Two of the Trumped Up Obamagate - Just Security

from the but-at-least-we-get-an-official-burial-of-the-bulk-phone-records-program dept

The Senate voted today to give us five more years of pretty much unaltered surveillance. The reauthorization of key spy powers is back on again, after Congressional inaction ran head-on into a global pandemic, allowing these to (briefly) expire. Not that this temporary expiration resulted in any less surveillance. And with this overwhelming vote in favor of resumed spying, it will probably only be a matter of days before a consolidated bill ends up on Trump's desk. Despite his continual agitation against the "Deep State," Trump is expected to give these powers his official blessing.

The Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly voted to reauthorize three national security surveillance authorities that have been expired since March.

The chamber voted 80-16 to extend the surveillance authorities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The vote occurred after the Senate adopted a bipartisan amendment on Wednesday from Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont to provide additional legal protections in the FISA court for targets of surveillance warrants. The Senate's amendment means the House will have to pass the new version of the legislation before it goes to the President's desk.

The additional protections in the amendment would expand outside review of FISA surveillance cases. The USA Freedom Act allowed for the appointment of amicus curiae (outside, neutral advocates) at the court's discretion. This amendment makes it a bit more mandatory, requiring the court to appoint one in any case involving "sensitive investigative matters." That covers a lot of ground, but the amendment was written with the targeting of US persons in mind.

More importantly, it grants the amicus the power to raise any issue at any time and gives them access to all pertinent court documents, including underlying warrant applications.

Unfortunately, this bill moved forward without stronger surveillance reforms, including an amendment written by Senators Ron Wyden and Steve Daines that would have added a warrant requirement for the collection of internet browsing history and search data. This fell one vote shy of passing -- something that any of the four missing senators that supported the amendment could have fixed by showing up and voting.

The Senate's approved version reauthorizes authorities affected by 2015's USA Freedom Act and parts of Section 215, like the infamous "roving wiretap" authority and the apparently never-used "lone wolf" provision that allows for the surveillance of people with no known ties to any terrorist group.

If it remains intact before passage, the bill would also formally end the NSA's bulk phone data collection. The NSA voluntarily retired this after it was unable to avoid over-collection even while having to approach telcos directly with reasonable suspicion-supported requests for call records. Having gone from mostly useless to completely useless, the NSA decided this collection was no longer worth the compliance headache. For whatever reason, the FBI fought to keep this zombie program alive, claiming that the slim possibility of it being useful as some undetermined point in the future justified its continued existence.

We'll have to see what survives the House's second pass before it heads to Trump for a signature. That's the version that's had plenty of input from Bill Barr, who apparently wants as much surveillance power as possible even as the Commander-in-Chief complains about the abuse of these powers to target him and his.

Filed Under: fisa, patriot act, reauthorization, senate, surveillance

Read more:
Senate Passes Surveillance Reauthorization Bill 80-16 -- One Stripped Of Almost All Of Its Reforms - Techdirt

By K J M Varma

Beijing, May 15 (PTI) China on Friday reacted guardedly to US President Donald Trump''s threat to cut off the bilateral relationship between the world''s top two economies and asked America to meet it halfway in the fight against the coronavirus.

Relations between the two countries nosedived after the coronavirus outbreak, which originated from the central Chinese city of Wuhan, and spread to other parts of the world.

The pandemic has claimed over 85,000 lives in the US, the highest in the world.

Trump, who has been pressing China to agree for an inquiry into the origin of the virus, including the allegation that it emerged from a bio-lab in Wuhan, further hardened his rhetoric on Thursday by threatening to cut off US ties with Beijing.

Reacting to Trump''s threat, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian reacted guardedly, saying that the relationship is in the fundamental interest of the two countries.

"To maintain the steady development of China-US relations is in the fundamental interests of the people in both countries, and is conducive to world peace and stability," Zhao said.

"At present, China and the US should continue to strengthen cooperation against the epidemic, defeat the epidemic as soon as possible, treat patients, and restore economy and production. But it requires the US to meet halfway with China," Zhao said.

There has been increasing pressure on Trump from American lawmakers to take action against China.

"There are many things we could do ... We could cut off the whole relationship," Trump said on Thursday in an interview with Fox Business News."You''d save USD 500 billion if you cut off the whole relationship." Trump said that his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping is "very good" but added: "right now I just don''t want to speak to him".

Trumps threat followed after China on Tuesday released a new list of US products which will be exempted from the second round of additional tariffs on American products.

Trump launched a trade war with China in 2018, demanding Beijing to reduce a massive trade deficit of over USD 539 billion. PTI KJV NSA AKJ NSANSA

Disclaimer :- This story has not been edited by Outlook staff and is auto-generated from news agency feeds. Source: PTI

Originally posted here:
''Meet halfway'' in fight against COVID-19: China on Trumps threat to cut off ties - Outlook India

from the 'shows'-is-perhaps-a-strong-word-for-something-hidden-17-pages-in... dept

The Intelligence Community's latest transparency report [PDF] contains even more evidence of the FBI's inability to follow the law when helping itself to the NSA's collections. The infamous "backdoor searches" of the NSA's Section 702 collections -- which sweep up millions of electronic communications every year -- have always been a problem for the FBI. (But it's a problem the FBI likely doesn't mind having.)

Communications and data related to US persons are supposed to be minimized before being accessed by the FBI. The FBI may have permission to access this collection, but the impossible-to-stop "incidental" collection of US persons' communications means the FBI is supposed to use warrants when searching the data using US person queries. This mandate only applies to certain cases: criminal investigations not related to national security. The built-in minimization procedures are supposed to take care of the rest of the agency's backdoor searches, supposedly ensuring the FBI can't use a foreign-facing communications collection to spy on Americans.

In practice, this almost never works. It certainly didn't work in every case listed in the ODNI's latest report. Elizabeth Goitein, writing for Just Security, says the report contains more depressing admissions from the FBI. Every time the FBI has accessed US persons communications in cases where it's required to get a warrant, it hasn't bothered to get a warrant.

As minimal as this requirement is, the 2019 statistical transparency report reveals that the FBI has failed to comply with it in literally every relevant case. According to a table in the report, there were six instances in 2018 in which the FBI reviewed the contents of Americans communications after conducting a backdoor search in a criminal, non-national security case.

[...]

The same table indicates that the FBI obtained a warrant to review the contents of those communications exactly zero times. Similarly, for 2019, the table lists one instance in which the FBI ran a backdoor search in a criminal, non-national security case and reviewed communications content, but zero instances in which it obtained a warrant.

There's another caveat that could have salvaged these warrantless backdoor searches, making them compliant with the law. But, nope. This one doesn't work either.

[T]he requirement to obtain a warrant applies only when the investigation has reached a particular stage (namely, when it is designated as a predicated investigation). A footnote in the ODNI report, however, states that the Department of Justice reported each instance to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as a compliance incident. That means the warrant requirement appliedand was violatedin each case.

The news that the FBI violated the warrant requirement in every backdoor search fitting these parameters should have been front page news for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. But the ODNI apparently doesn't want this sort of information to be easily discernible in its ironically-named "Transparency Report." As Goitein points out, this news was buried in a footnote and inferred from a table on page 17. No public statement has been made by the ODNI or the FBI about its inability to secure warrants when warrants in the few instances are required.

Some may shrug this off as being of limited importance because there were only six violations. But that number only covers a single month in 2018 and those were only discovered because the DOJ decided to engage in some oversight for a change.

It's not like it's tough to adhere to the minimal demands Congress has made of the FBI when searching 702 collections. But apparently the FBI isn't up to it.

[T]here is nothing complicated about the requirement Congress imposed; it should have been an easy matter to educate FBI agents about their new obligation. There is no imaginable excuse for a compliance rate of zero percent.

The requirement has been on the books since the beginning of 2018. The FBI still couldn't find a way to comply with the warrant mandate several months later. This isn't acceptable, not when the agency is using a foreign-facing collection that's subject to almost zero oversight to search for communications incidentally swept up by the NSA's dragnet. It has continually abused this privilege to search unminimized communications and engage in domestic surveillance while pretending to be only interested in foreign terrorists. The FBI is a serial domestic abuser. For too many years, Congress and the FISA Court have been its enabler.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, backdoor searches, constitution, fbi, nsa, surveillance, warrants

See original here:
National Intelligence Report Shows The FBI Never Gets Warrants For Its Backdoor Searches Of NSA Collections - Techdirt

North Star Academy (NSA) 5th-graders had the opportunity to go beyond reading about and discussing the Civil War in class to experiencing it on a makeshift battlefield at Chatfield State Park in Littleton.

With the help of You Can Live History, a Denver-based nonprofit, 78 NSA students, along with their peers from Westgate Elementary, Platte River Academy and Ben Franklin Academy, dressed up as Union and Confederate soldiers to re-enact the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg in early March. Civil War reenactments are almost as old as the war itself, with the first recorded reenactment occurring in 1861. Since then, the purpose has evolved from recruiting new soldiers to a form of living history. For NSA 5th-graders, it is an opportunity to re-create pivotal moments in a war that helped shape our country.

North Star uses the Core Knowledge curriculum which identifies the specific core of shared knowledge children should learn while establishing strong foundations of knowledge grade by grade from preschool through 8th grade, according to the Core Knowledge Foundation website. Students touch on the Civil War in 2nd grade learning general information and providing a foundation that sets them up for success in 5th grade when students delve deeper into the topic. Each year, NSA 5th-grade students have the opportunity to learn about a specific Civil War battle culminating in a reenactment of that battle which provides them with a more meaningful perspective of what it was like to be a Civil War soldier.

We have students participate in the re-enactment because it provides them with a hands-on opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the things they are learning inside the classroom, said NSA 5th-grade teacher Mike Doyle. This is a great way to teach history and end our unit on the Civil War with the kids experiencing what the life of a soldier at this time may have been like.

Students were assigned roles portraying Union soldiers, Confederate soldiers, Generals and other battlefield positions. They dressed in uniforms complete with flags, fake guns, swords and cannons while playing drums and hauling covered wagons as they marched into battle. Front fire: Ready? Aim, yelled a volunteer for You Can Live History. The mock battle ensued with young soldiers charging forward in the snow and mud as they valiantly fought to uphold their positions.

The re-enactment was so awesome! We stomped through many feet of mud. This field trip showed many of us how the soldiers persevered in harsh conditions, said NSA 5th-grader Annie Cecil. We also learned marching commands, how to hold a weapon, and fight against the enemy. Many stories from the Civil War era and from the Soldiers point of view were told in great detail. There were many brave men who fought for the freedom we all sometimes forget.

The rest is here:
Fifth-Graders at North Star Academy Go Back in Time to Experience the Civil War - The Know