ODNI Releases Declassified Flynn ‘Unmasking’ List to Congress
By Janita Kan May 13, 2020 Updated: May 13, 2020
Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell has sent a copy of the declassified list of Obama administration officials who may have requested the “unmasking” of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn to Congress.
The draft letter, signed by Grenell, was first obtained by CBS News’ Catherine Herridge on Wednesday.
The document was sent to Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) in response to their request to ODNI and DOJ to provide Congress with information regarding the “unmasking” of U.S. citizens by Obama administration officials during the time of the 2016 election through to January 2017.
The two senators made the request in a letter to Attorney General William Barr and acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell on Tuesday following the revelation that Grenell had declassified information about Obama administration officials who were allegedly involved in the “unmasking” of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, whose communication with the former Russian ambassador during President Donald Trump’s transition period was leaked.
Sen. Rand Paul, who also requested the declassified information, has also released the list separately.
The list contains names of recipients who may have received Flynn’s identity in response to a request processed between Nov. 8, 2016, and Jan. 31, 2017, to unmask an identity that had been generically referred to in a National Security Agency foreign intelligence report.
The names of that list include former Vice President Joe Biden, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former FBI director James Comey, and former Director of the CIA John Brennan.
Tweeter feed from Catherine Herridge
“Each individual was an authorized recipient of the original report and the unmasking was approved through NSA’s standard process, which includes a review of the justification for the request,” the declassified document said.
“Only certain personnel are authorized to submit unmasking requests into the NSA system. In this case, 16 authorized individuals requested unmaskings for [redacted] different NSA intelligence reports for select identified principals. While the principals are identified below, we cannot confirm they saw the unmasked information.”
The list also does not include requests made outside the specified time frame, the document states.
In their letter on Tuesday, Grassley and Johnson stressed that the American people are looking for transparency and answers for “significant unanswered questions” about what had occurred during the 2016 election, in particular, “how many Americans were ‘unmasked,’ at whose request, and for what purpose.”
“Based on recent press reports, it is our understanding that you conducted a classification review and declassified information related to numerous requests to ‘unmask’ the names of U.S. persons who appeared in certain intelligence reporting around the time of the 2016 election through January 2017,” the senators wrote in their letter (pdf).
“[W]e firmly believe that the best way to resolve these issues is to determine the truth, and to make clear to the American people what did and did not occur,” they wrote.
In the course of monitoring communications with foreign officials, the conversations of U.S. citizens are at times incidentally collected by intelligence agencies. The identity of these people is usually redacted in transcripts or intelligence reports if they’re not the subject of surveillance. “Unmasking” refers to the process of revealing the name of the U.S. citizen.
DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec told Fox News’ Martha MacCallum on Tuesday that the DOJ did not intend to release the information. Kupec said that the ODNI is the owner of the declassified document and that they would have to make the call on whether to release it.
Kupec confirmed that Grenfell provided information about unmasking to the DOJ last week and that the information may be reviewed by U.S. Attorney John Durham in his investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia FBI counterintelligence probe if it is considered relevant.