Another Cotton Picking Liar
Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2017 6:00 pm
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said Congress should investigate because if the story is true, it’s strange that someone in Rice’s White House position would request for names to be unmasked.
"You're right that it's not necessarily illegal," Cotton said in an April 4 interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper. "It is unusual, though. The White House doesn't conduct criminal investigations. The White House doesn't conduct counterintelligence investigations. The White House is a consumer of intelligence. Normally, those kind of unmasking requests would be done by the agencies responsible for those activities."
However, experts in intelligence collection and classified information told us it’s normal for someone in such a high-up national security role to make unmasking requests, and it would be hard, though not impossible, to abuse the practice for political purposes.
mplied in Cotton’s statement is that Rice may have made unmasking requests for political purposes. The idea is that an official could use unmasking requests to surreptitiously dig up information about a U.S. citizen, such as a political opponent, without a warrant to surveil them.
But experts said abusing the unmasking process would be difficult, in large part because the agency does the actual unmasking, not the requester.
The official who wants to abuse the process would have to get agency workers on board with her plan because they would have to make sure she receives reports about the American in question. They would also have to make sure that any unmasking request would be granted, said Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty & National Security Program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, a civil liberties group.
"It’s certainly not an easy or direct route to spying on political opponents," she said, adding that there are other provisions of surveillance laws that are far more susceptible to abuse.
Only a select group of high-up officials in the intelligence and national security communities have the authority to make or approve unmasking requests, and they have to do so while complying with an elaborate set of minimization guidelines, compliance procedures and documentation, said Susan Hennessey, a national security fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former NSA lawyer.
These procedures, along with the intelligence community’s extreme sensitivity to accusations of political abuse, likely deters intelligence officials from complying with illegitimate unmasking requests, Rovner said.
Hennessey added that the media reports about Rice are so inconsistent and vague that it’s not really possible to assess whether the unmasking requests in question (if they occurred) were legitimate.
But "I have not seen anything in the public record that indicates there is any kind of problem here," she said.
Our ruling
Cotton said, "It is unusual" for a White House official like former National Security Adviser Susan Rice to make unmasking requests.
As the president’s top consultant on issues of national security, Rice and other national security advisers consume a large amount of intelligence. There are numerous legitimate reasons why Rice might ask an intelligence agency to reveal the identity of an unnamed person in an intelligence report.
It might not be an everyday occurrence, but it is not so "unusual" as to raise suspicion, as Cotton said. We rate Cotton’s claim False.
"You're right that it's not necessarily illegal," Cotton said in an April 4 interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper. "It is unusual, though. The White House doesn't conduct criminal investigations. The White House doesn't conduct counterintelligence investigations. The White House is a consumer of intelligence. Normally, those kind of unmasking requests would be done by the agencies responsible for those activities."
However, experts in intelligence collection and classified information told us it’s normal for someone in such a high-up national security role to make unmasking requests, and it would be hard, though not impossible, to abuse the practice for political purposes.
mplied in Cotton’s statement is that Rice may have made unmasking requests for political purposes. The idea is that an official could use unmasking requests to surreptitiously dig up information about a U.S. citizen, such as a political opponent, without a warrant to surveil them.
But experts said abusing the unmasking process would be difficult, in large part because the agency does the actual unmasking, not the requester.
The official who wants to abuse the process would have to get agency workers on board with her plan because they would have to make sure she receives reports about the American in question. They would also have to make sure that any unmasking request would be granted, said Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty & National Security Program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, a civil liberties group.
"It’s certainly not an easy or direct route to spying on political opponents," she said, adding that there are other provisions of surveillance laws that are far more susceptible to abuse.
Only a select group of high-up officials in the intelligence and national security communities have the authority to make or approve unmasking requests, and they have to do so while complying with an elaborate set of minimization guidelines, compliance procedures and documentation, said Susan Hennessey, a national security fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former NSA lawyer.
These procedures, along with the intelligence community’s extreme sensitivity to accusations of political abuse, likely deters intelligence officials from complying with illegitimate unmasking requests, Rovner said.
Hennessey added that the media reports about Rice are so inconsistent and vague that it’s not really possible to assess whether the unmasking requests in question (if they occurred) were legitimate.
But "I have not seen anything in the public record that indicates there is any kind of problem here," she said.
Our ruling
Cotton said, "It is unusual" for a White House official like former National Security Adviser Susan Rice to make unmasking requests.
As the president’s top consultant on issues of national security, Rice and other national security advisers consume a large amount of intelligence. There are numerous legitimate reasons why Rice might ask an intelligence agency to reveal the identity of an unnamed person in an intelligence report.
It might not be an everyday occurrence, but it is not so "unusual" as to raise suspicion, as Cotton said. We rate Cotton’s claim False.