Obama ambassador's testimony on intelligence unmasking raises new questions

Congressional testimony by President Barack Obama’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, about the “unmasking” of U.S. citizens’ names she requested in hundreds of foreign intelligence intercepts by the National Security Agency, has raised new questions about how the sensitive information was ordered up, and subsequently handled.

Power spoke to the House Intelligence Committee on Oct. 13 behind closed doors, and what she said is still cloaked in secrecy. But on Oct. 17, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, who also sits on the Intelligence Committee, told Fox News: “Her testimony is they [the unmasking requests] may be under my name, but I did not make those requests.” Gowdy said little else about the session.

The sheer volume of such requests submitted to U.S. intelligence authorities in her name was already unusual. But if she did not initiate them, then who did, and why? Was the resulting information delivered to Power, as the normal protocols of handling such constitutionally-protected information require? Was she even aware of the gush of highly sensitive and secret information solicited under her name?
According to former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, a Fox News contributor, if someone submitted unmasking requests in Power’s name without her knowledge or consent, it would be “potentially criminal.”

“Unmasking” involves asking U.S. intelligence authorities to fill in the redacted names of U.S. citizens whose comments are caught up in the NSA’s foreign intelligence intercepts, which are routinely removed to protect their Fourth Amendment rights. Such revelations are supposed to be relatively rare, clearly justified and tightly controlled.
Interestingly enough, for purposes of congressional inquiries into the unmasking issue, all three of the politically appointed former Obama administration officials — Power, Rhodes and Rice — have something else in common: lawyers who served alongside them in the Obama White House, adding another layer of insider complexity to the issue.

In July, for a meeting with investigators from the Senate Intelligence Committee, Power was represented by David Pressman, a former Obama administration official, who was described in news accounts at the time simply as her attorney. At the time, Pressman declared, among other things, that “any insinuation that Ambassador Power was involved in leaking classified information is absolutely false.”

As reported by Fox News on Sept. 12, Pressman’s ties to Power were closer and rather more extensive than simply legal representation. He had worked intensively with Power during most of the interval under scrutiny in the unmasking probe.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/10/20/obama-ambassadors-testimony-on-intelligence-unmasking-raises-new-questions.html

when it all comes out in the wash we will understand how sleezy and dispicable these liberal creeps are and that will be the end or any power they may still hold. And that will be a GREAT day in bringing back the integrity this country held before the liberals started hacking away at freedom and personal responsibility. You liberals are an embarrassment to my country.