Famed reporter Bob Woodward spoke with Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly on Wednesday.
They were discussing the possibility that the Obama staffers “unmasked” Trump campaign officials in intercepted communications.
Real Clear Politics transcribed the following:
“It is not what Trump said [about the wiretap], but apparently what has happened here is a couple of diplomats who can be legitimately wiretapped, were talking about meeting with Trump or people on his transition team — and of course you can learn all kinds of things from diplomats gossiping, because that is what occurs. Under the rules –and they’re pretty strict– you are supposed to, it is called minimization, you don’t name the American person who is being discussed.
“But the idea that there was intelligence value here is really thin,” Woodward added. “It’s, again, down the middle, it is not what Trump said, but this could be criminal on the part of people who decided, oh, let’s name these people.”
He also noted: “Under the rules, that name is supposed to be blanked out, and so you’ve got a real serious problem potentially of people in the Obama administration passing around this highly classified gossip.”
Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra added to the controversy today.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Hoekstra revealed that even members of the Congressional Intel Committees aren’t privy to raw intelligence reports.
When I was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, I was routinely involved in briefings as a member of the “Gang of Eight”—both parties’ leaders in the House and Senate and on the intelligence committees. I cannot recall how many times I asked to see raw intelligence reporting and was refused because that stuff is just not made available to policy makers.
But according to Mr. Nunes, such information made its way to the Obama White House before Inauguration Day. Few if any people working in the White House would ever need to see raw intelligence. Like intelligence committee members, they are typically consumers of intelligence products, not raw intelligence.
The raw transcripts of masked persons—or unmasked persons, or U.S. persons who can be easily identified—making their way to the White House is very likely unprecedented. One can only imagine who, at that point, might be reading these reports. Valerie Jarrett? Susan Rice? Ben Rhodes? The president himself? We don’t know, and the people who do aren’t talking at the moment.
This story doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon.
And it could mean big trouble for former Obama officials…
Because DC is infested with a disease. They protect their own, regardless of political affiliation and criminal act. The ruling elite always acts that way, rather than in the interest of those they are sworn to serve.
Why is it only a possibility, and not likely, at that ALL the criminal actions of the past administration demand prosecution, not hypothetical musings.
Never will happen as no body has any hair on heir alls to do it.
Typical Fox News response: “Obama did it, too.”