Just two weeks ago, former White House National Security Advisor Susan Rice told PBS she "knew nothing" about the unmasking of Americans, specifically Trump campaign officials or transition team members.
"I know nothing about this. I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that count today," Rice said.
Turns out, she knew all about it. After a bombshell report released Monday alleged Rice is the Obama official responsible for the unmasking of a number of Trump transition team members, her story has changed. She's gone from "knowing nothing," to unmasking being part of her job.
"We only do it to protect the American people and to do our jobs." Rice said, adding Obama officials never used intelligence to spy on Trump officials for political purposes. "I leaked nothing to nobody and never have and never would."
When asked whether she would be willing to testify under oath in front of Congress about her actions, Rice refused to give a direct answer.
Watch:
Over to you, Andrew McCarthy:
To summarize: At a high level, officials like Susan Rice had names unmasked that would not ordinarily be unmasked. That information was then being pushed widely throughout the intelligence community in unmasked form . . . particularly after Obama, toward the end of his presidency, suddenly — and seemingly apropos of nothing — changed the rules so that all of the intelligence agencies (not just the collecting agencies) could have access to raw intelligence information.
As we know, the community of intelligence agencies leaks like a sieve, and the more access there is to juicy information, the more leaks there are. Meanwhile, former Obama officials and Clinton-campaign advisers, like Farkas, were pushing to get the information transferred from the intelligence community to members of Congress, geometrically increasing the likelihood of intelligence leaks.
By the way, have you noticed that there have been lots of intelligence leaks in the press?
There’s an old saying in the criminal law: The best evidence of a conspiracy is success.