ON TARGET

4/5/17     by Dave Gunn

The Smoking Gun

     First she denied and now she is deflecting.  However, there is a smoking gun in the Obama Administration unmasking scandal, and the one holding the smoking gun is none other than Susan Rice.

     You will remember Susan Rice as being the serial liar who went on five Sunday morning television talk shows to advance the Obama Administration position that the Benghazi attack was the result of a demonstration by unhappy Libyans, who happened to be carrying military grade automatic rifles and rocket propelled grenades.  I say that Rice was a serial liar because she told what she knew was a complete falsehood, and did so repeatedly.  But I digress.  Back to present-day issues.

     We now know that members of the Trump presidential campaign and transition team were surveilled by intelligence agents of the Obama Administration, and that they were illegally unasked.  Further, we know that Susan Rice, top security advisor to then President Obama, was right in the middle of all of it.

     Now it is not unusual, in fact it is quite common, for the communications of foreigners to be monitored by our intelligence agents.  This is a prudent and proper measure.  In doing this monitoring, some American citizens who communicate with the surveilled foreigners are also recorded.  Also there are times when monitored foreigners discuss Americans by name among themselves.  When these Americans are not material to the investigations conducted by our government, their names are redacted, or masked, in written reports disseminated throughout our intelligence apparatus.

     Having said that, senior national security officials can request the identities, or unmask, the identities, of Americans if those Americans are material to the investigations or if the knowledge of their identities help in the understanding of the intelligence.  Other unmasking of American citizens is illegal.

     What we now know is that Susan Rice went to the highest levels of the Obama Administration to repeatedly request the ability to unmask the names of members of the Trump Campaign and the Trump transition team, and that such names were distributed among at least 16 intelligence agencies of the United States government.  This is chilling on a number of levels.  Was Rice looking for confirmation of the suspicion that Trump aides were colluding with the Russians?  If so, once evidence was not found – and it was not – the names should have remained redacted.

     What we do not know is who gave Rice permission to do the unmasking?  Did President Obama know of this?  If so, when did he know of this?  If he did not know of it, how is it that his top officials took such a drastic and risky action without his knowledge?  Was Obama in control of his own administration?

     Should Susan Rice be summoned to Congress, placed under oath and

questioned about all this?  I don’t know if it would be any good.  I fully expect she would lie like she always does.  However, a full investigation should be launched, and those guilty should be prosecuted.  The Obama Administration’s Orwellian practices must be punished.

     By the way, we also know that the Obama Administration knew for an entire year that the Russians were attempting to hack into the computers of the Democrat National Committee, the Clinton Campaign, the Republican National Committee, and the Trump Campaign.  However, rather than warn their fellow Democrats, Obama and his minions sat on the information.  Why?  I don’t know.  However, if I were a Democrat I would be demanding to know.

[Dave Gunn is the nom de plume of Dr. David E. Gonnella, Pastor of the Magnolia Springs Baptist Church in Theodore, Alabama.  The opinions expressed are his own, and do not necessarily represent those of the church or its membership.]