(Slate) — resident Trump and his aides have been doing all they can to divert attention from the mounds of evidence linking him or his campaign aides to Russian intelligence, but the latest distraction—the Susan Rice “unmasking”—ranks among the most desperate. Yet because the issues it raises are so obscure and confusing, it might also prove among the most effective. So let us wade into the muck.
Here are the facts, as we now know them. Sometime after the 2016 election, Susan Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser, obtained transcripts of telephone conversations in which Russian officials were discussing members of Trump’s transition team. It is unclear, from the news accounts, whether the Russians were talking with these team members or simply talking about them. Either way, under strictly observed law, the National Security Agency, which intercepted those phone calls, is required to redact the names of all American citizens or residents who happen to take part, or be mentioned, in such conversations—and, instead, to identify them as “U.S. Person 1,” “U.S. Person 2,” and so forth. As a result, the names of Trump associates in the Russian phone calls were “masked” in the transcript.
The charge is that Rice asked the NSA to unmask the names. According to Eli Lake, in Bloomberg News, this is the big revelation that Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, learned during his secret visit to the White House on March 21 and described in vague terms to reporters the following day.
