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Most people remember Susan Rice as President Obama's National Security Advisor who explained repeatedly that the terrorist attack on the US Embassy in Benghazi---and the killing of 4 Americans including our ambassador--- was not terrorism, but a spontaneous reaction to a video made by a guy in California.
When it became clear to the American people that was not the truth, Rice and the complicit press became silent on the subject---and moved on to other things.
Now, apparently, we know what at least some of the "others things" were.
Rice was even keeping "detailed spreadsheets" on Trump associate's phone calls.
Monday, Eli Lake with Bloomberg News began reporting that Rice had asked for Trump aides' names to be "unmasked" in intelligence reports.
Lake said this:
White House lawyers last month learned that the former national security adviser Susan Rice requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
The pattern of Rice's requests was discovered in a National Security Council review of the government's policy on "unmasking" the identities of individuals in the U.S. who are not targets of electronic eavesdropping, but whose communications are collected incidentally. Normally those names are redacted from summaries of monitored conversations and appear in reports as something like "U.S. Person One."
While the "unmasking" may have been "legal"---she was cleared to do so "if" there was a national security risk---but what she did with the names revealed by the unmasking is in serious question.
It's becoming apparent it wasn't really about a national security risk.
President Trump has repeatedly said he was "wiretapped" by the Obama administration. The press and the progressives have repeatedly mocked him, dismissing his claim as a lie or that he is incompetent, or merely a "conspiracy" meant to distract from more important issues.
Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham have done so as well.
Technically this isn't "wiretapping," but it is becoming clear that surveillance on Trump and his team was happening.
When Chairman of the House Intelligent Committee Rep. David Nunnes (R-Ca.) secretly met someone on the White House grounds last week, the far Left went ballistic.
However, these new revelations are beginning to bring some clarity.
Fox News says multiple sources are telling them that Susan Rice did indeed request the names be "unmasked."
She then sent the unmasked names, including Trump staff and family members, to all those at the National Security Council, some at the Defense Department, then Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and then CIA Director John Brennan. And they were sent to Rice's deputy Ben Rhodes.
I'll come back to Rhodes in a moment.
It is apparent to many that distributing these documents was calculated to ensure they be leaked to the press and others who seek to hurt Trump and his administration.
The handling of the surveillance was also calculated and methodical.
In fact, the Daily Caller is reporting:
“What was produced by the intelligence community at the request of Ms. Rice were detailed spreadsheets of intercepted phone calls with unmasked Trump associates in perfectly legal conversations with individuals,” diGenova told The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group Monday.
“The overheard conversations involved no illegal activity by anybody of the Trump associates, or anyone they were speaking with,” diGenova said. “In short, the only apparent illegal activity was the unmasking of the people in the calls.”
Some clarity is emerging.
Nunes' actions are now making sense. He went to the White House grounds at night last week because he knew---as Chairman of the House Intel Committee, much of what the public is learning this week.
The intel agencies had been stonewalling him. He had been asking for information for weeks and they simply were not getting it to him. There were other places he could have seen the information he, as chairman, was asking for, but he decided to go to the White House and check the logs for himself. In doing so he could protect the sources from within the intelligence agencies that were helping him do his job.
He then spoke to the press to get it on the record---without revealing the details at that time.
This is also bringing more clarity to what Evelyn Farkas, former Obama deputy secretary of defense, was saying in a television interview last month. She said, "I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill--it was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the administration."
What seemed to many to be almost incoherent at the time, makes much more sense toady.
According to Sara Carter with CIRCA, "The White House logs indicate Susan Rice consumed unmasked intel on Trump associates, beginning a year ago and greatly accelerating after the election continuing into January of this year.
Former Congresswoman Michele Bauchmann said on USA radio that this is "1000 times bigger than Watergate...This is how bold and how lawless the Obama administration was."
This will unfold today and in the days ahead. CNN was saying yesterday that they are refusing to report on this new revelation because it is "fake news."
Talk show host Mark Levine has worked with Fox News in gathering facts on this matter. He said yesterday he knew there was something very, very wrong going on, but had no idea it was this big and this far-reaching.
I'm certain the importance of this matter will far outweigh the news media's commitment to bury it and mislead the public.
Denial has already begun. Susan Rice told PBS when asked about it, "I know nothing at all about it." Ben Rhodes and Susan Rice were both implicated in the Benghazi terror attack in September 2012. They both claimed it was a spontaneous attack reacting to a video.
Since then, Rhodes has boasted of creating an "echo chamber" in the media to promote the Iran deal, feeding stories to contrived network "experts" who offered the public a steady stream of pro-agreement propaganda.
Night before last, Rhodes had already begun doing what he does. He re-tweeted a CNN story quoting Rep. Jim Hines (D-CT.) claiming that the alleged unmasking was "nothing unusual."
There is nothing about this matter that is "business as usual." It is political corruption, lies and half truths. It is a lesson in "the end justifies the means."
"The end," in this case, is to destroy Trump, get a far-Left progressive in the White House, and resume speeding down the secular progressive path to destruction---while populating the Supreme Court with far Left activists wearing black robes.
Deception at the highest levels is not new to the human experience. Remember this? "And he said to the woman 'Has God indeed said'....? Then the serpent said to the woman You will not surely die."
If you ignore the instruction and eat the fruit, "You will become as God," the serpent said, so God is just acting out of fear.
And it made sense to our distant relatives Adam and Eve (Genesis 3).
Last night Jake Tapper, lead host on CNN, was saying the reports of Russia influencing our election is far more important than what he called, "The President's latest attempt to distract from them."
What he fails to say is that "the reports" are being created by him and others like him in Ben Rhodes "echo chamber."
The Trump administration is not a fix or solution to the problems in our culture.
It is a reprieve. A reprieve intended, I believe, to allow the Christian church to do what God has called His church to do---redeem mankind by sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. And redeeming the culture by being the salt and light God has called us to be.
Be Faithful. Be Informed. Be Vigilant. Be Discerning. Be Prayerful.