Spider Web Unmasking Jared Kushner; The Russians; Susan Rice: All Equals Turmoil

Man at the Center of it All

Two Key Players: Their Connections Still Unresolved

(Jared Kushner and Michael Flynn)

Former Obama NSC Adviser, Susan Rice

(Into the Unmasking Mix Again)

The following is related to this post.

Updated. Re: The GOP turmoil about “unmasking” – that is revealing American names who are picked up on NSA intercepts … case in point and again: Jared Kushner at the center of this:

Former CIA and NSA director and Ret. USAF General Michael Hayden, said on CNN that it makes sense that Obama’s NSC Adviser Susan Rice would have tried to determine with whom Russian Ambassador Kislyak and his superiors in Moscow were talking about when they said someone on the Trump transition team wanted to set up a secret backchannel line of communication.

Hayden said: “This is off the map.  I know of no other experience like this in our history, and certainly not within my life experience.” He went on to tell Business Insider back in March that the NSA “is notoriously conservative in revealing US identities in its reporting. Obviously, a request from the national security adviser to unmask an identity would be given great weight. That said, it is not automatic and goes through a carefully documented process at the NSA before an identity is unmasked.”

Also, there is another very valid reason why Rice may have wanted to unmask Kushner according to Paul Pillar, a 28-year veteran of the CIA and former executive assistant to the CIA's deputy director for intelligence who also told Business Insider back in March: “If Ms. Rice was communicating with members of Trump's team regarding transition matters and she learns from intelligence sources that some such members also are communicating with the Russians, she would want to know exactly who is doing that so she can be extra careful in her own talks, lest something she says gets relayed back to Moscow from that inside person.”

At least one other member of Trump's transition team had his conversations picked up incidentally during routine surveillance of Kislyak last year: Michael Flynn, and he was forced to resign in February after reports surfaced that said he spoke with Kislyak about sanctions on Russia, despite telling Vice President Mike Pence that he hadn't.

Boy is this story getting complex and now with so many lawyers entering with the clients (e.g., Kushner, Flynn, et al) it is apt to get a lot more complex as deals and such are made for whatever reason to avoid any kind of prosecution and all that follows that possibility.

As always, stay tuned.