Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy says the real question regarding the “unmasking” of Michael Flynn is whether or not he ever was masked in the first place.
He suggest in an National Review column that Flynn could have been identified either by the CIA or a foreign intelligence agency providing information to the Defense Intelligence Agency.
“This is not just about unmasking. It is about how pervasively the Obama administration was monitoring the Trump campaign,” he writes.
McCarthy explains that there is no record showing who unmasked Flynn in connection with the Dec. 29, 2016, conversation with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak that led to his prosecution.
“I suspect that’s because General Flynn’s identity was not ‘masked’ in the first place. Instead, his December 29 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,” McCarthy says.
He notes that unmasking is the revealing in classified reports of the names of Americans who have been “incidentally” monitored by U.S. intelligence agencies.
McCarthy explains that for three years it’s been assumed that Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak was intercepted because the Russian ambassador was “routinely” monitored. The story has been that Flynn was in a conversation with Kislyak and later was “unmasked.”
“I no longer buy this story. If it were true, there would be a record of Flynn’s unmasking,” McCarthy writes.
He points out that acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell has said that the Obama officials in the list he provided last week to Sens. Charles Grassley and Ron Johnson were involved in all of the requested unmaskings of Flynn during the presidential transition period from the election of 2016 to the inauguration.
Yet, writes McCarthy, there doesn’t appear to be a single listed unmasking pertaining to the Kislyak call.
There was no request for unmasking on Dec. 29, 2016, nor for the following week.
The next unmasking is Jan. 5, 2017, by President Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough.
“This highlights how central that day is to the anatomy of the Democrat-crafted ‘collusion’ narrative,” McCarthy writes. “It was on the morning of January 5 when Obama, Vice President Biden, and National Security Advisor Susan Rice discussed Flynn and the Trump–Russia investigation with FBI director James Comey and acting attorney general Sally Yates.”
But Obama and his top officials already knew it was Flynn who was in the conversation with the Russian ambassador.
“Flynn was not unmasked in connection with the crucial December 29 call. Why not?” McCarthy asks.
One possibility is that Flynn was a FISA surveillance target, he says, and that the FBI was monitoring him as a “suspected agent of a foreign power.”
But the intel community eventual ruled that out.
“It is more likely, then, that the Flynn–Kislyak call was captured by intelligence operations that are not governed by FISA,” McCarthy writes.
One such operation is the CIA, which collects intelligence under executive order, because it’s operations are done outside the United States.
In fact, he said, Flynn was in the Dominican Republic on the day of the phone call, he says. Kislyak might have been in Russia.
McCarthy concludes that there were “several strands of the Trump-Russia probe and they date to as early as when Trump entered the race for the presidential nomination.”
“The CIA played a central role. The agency collaborated — I’m tempted to say colluded! — with a variety of friendly foreign intelligence services, especially NATO countries that Trump made a habit of bashing on the campaign trail,” he writes.