Trump team ‘caught up in’ foreign spying
UNITED STATES: The Republican chairman of the US House of Representatives intelligence committee set off a political firestorm yesterday when he said the communications of members of Donald Trump’s transition team were caught up in incidental surveillance targeting foreigners.
Representative Devin Nunes said at a news conference that it was possible President Trump’s own communications were also intercepted and disseminated among US intelligence agencies.
The White House seized on Nunes’ remarks, which had cited anonymous sources, to bolster Trump’s unproven assertion that former President Barack Obama’s administration spied on the incoming president. Nunes himself said there is no proof of that, as have other lawmakers of both parties and the FBI director.
A short while later, Trump spokesman Sean Spicer cited Nunes’ comments at his White House news briefing. ’’I do think it is a startling revelation, and there’s a lot of questions that need to get asked,’’ Spicer said.
Democrats denounced Nunes’ statements as highly unusual from the chairman of an intelligence committee, with the top Democrat on the committee saying its members had not been informed and implying that Nunes was giving political cover to the president.
Intelligence reports about the communications appeared to ‘‘unmask’’ the identity of the Trump associates and the names were widely shared among the agencies, Nunes said. He said it was possible Trump’s own communications were also collected.
The National Security Agency routinely collects electronic communications on foreigners through a variety of surveillance tools. But information about Americans is also sometimes incidentally gathered, such as when someone is communicating to a foreign target.
Typically the names of Americans are made anonymous, or masked, in foreign intelligence reports unless an intelligence agency determines the identity of that person is relevant to national security or a criminal investigation.
It was unclear why the reports Nunes cited contained unmasked names.
A US government source said it was logical, if not normal, that communications from Trump aides would have been incidentally intercepted by US agencies after his election, given that they would have an interest in talking to foreign governments. Trump took office on January 20.
Two days ago, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey, told a hearing of Nunes’ committee that his agency was conducting a criminal investigation of potential links between Trump associates and Russia’s attempts to influence the 2016 US election to benefit Trump.
In an interview with CNN, the committee’s leading Democrat, Adam Schiff said, ‘‘The chairman will need to decide whether he is the chairman of an independent investigation into conduct which includes allegations of potential coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russians, or he’s going to act as a surrogate of the White House, because he cannot do both.’’
Former intelligence officials and Democrats said Nunes’ announcement was highly unusual from the chairman of an intelligence committee.
Schiff said he was not consulted by Nunes before his news conference. Nunes’ decision to share the information with the White House before informing the committee was a ‘‘profound irregularity,’’ Schiff said, adding that ‘‘a credible investigation cannot be conducted this way.’’ - Reuters