Former Intelligence Director James Clapper responds to ‘unmasking’ allegations
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper defended his conduct after being named among top Obama administration officials as having been involved in the effort to “unmask” former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Speaking during an appearance on CNN Thursday, Clapper argued that it was “routine” to “unmask” US citizens who are inadvertently included in the surveillance of foreign adversaries.
“It’s a routine thing,” the former intelligence chief said. “It’s appropriate and legitimate when you have a valid foreign intelligence target engaging with a US person. Is it, for example, an insider, someone in the government engaging with a foreign adversary? So it’s important from the standpoint of potential jeopardy to national security that you understand what’s going on.”
Clapper told the network that he would request to “unmask” individuals as frequently as “once or twice a week” during his tenure as DNI.
On Wednesday, Acting DNI Richard Grenell released a list of 23 Obama-era officials who allegedly tried to reveal the identity of Flynn during the presidential transition period through the process of “unmasking.”
US citizens sometimes have conversations incidentally picked up through surveillance practices by the intelligence community that monitor foreign officials. Those citizens’ identities are supposed to be kept private, or “masked,” absent a warrant to reveal their identity.
US intelligence officials, however, can request the names of those citizens if they feel the information is pertinent to understanding the intelligence. This is called “unmasking.”
Clapper went on to say that when the National Security Agency collects intelligence on a “known, validated foreign target” who was communicating with an American citizen, that citizen’s name would be redacted to maintain their privacy.
He argued that in order to understand the context of those conversations and their importance, “you almost have to have” the citizen’s actual name.
The former intel head, who has emerged as a major critic of the president in recent years, said he did not know that Flynn was the individual who was going to be named once he was “unmasked.”
Clapper argued that if he had known it was Flynn, he would not have had any need to request the “unmasking” in the first place.
Asked by the network if he was responsible for the leaking of the contents of the documents that included Flynn’s name, the video went dead and the anchor was unable to get an answer to his question.
Flynn pleaded guilty in late 2017 to lying to the FBI about the conversations he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. He later tried to withdraw that plea ahead of sentencing, claiming he did not intentionally lie.
The Justice Department moved to drop the charges against the former national security adviser earlier this month, after a four-page document released as part of a re-examination of the case showed the then-counterintelligence director of the FBI openly questioning whether the agency’s “goal” was to “get [Flynn] to lie.”