By Col Jim Waurishuk, USAF (Ret.), National Security Analyst May 29th, 2020
As the 2016 election cycle approached, a
number of Republican candidates solicited Flynn’s advice to include Ben
Carson, Carly Fiorina, and Ted Cruz. In a sense, Flynn chose Donald
Trump as much as Donald Trump chose him. At the time, the candidate’s
understanding of what he called “the swamp” consisting of bureaucrats,
elected officials, consultants, and contractors enriching themselves at
the expense of the American taxpayer, was mostly theoretical. But Flynn
had detailed knowledge of how the Beltway worked.
With that, the two men hit it off and as a result, the General
traveled with candidate Trump regularly. In fact, outside of Trump’s
family, Flynn was his closest adviser. The foreign policy initiatives he
articulated were the president-elect’s, and when he spoke to foreign
officials, Flynn indeed, was speaking for Trump.
The other thing that Flynn was aware of was that the Obama
administration’s major spying operations on its foes and opponents. As I
have talked about in previous writings on Obama administration domestic
spying, which is a felony if identified and released, was a frequent
occurrence. By law, the names
of Americans are minimized in transcripts of intercepted foreign
communications to protect their privacy. For instance, an American
swept-up in an intercept might be referred to as a “U.S. Person.” It is
not illegal or even necessarily improper for U.S. intelligence officials
to de-minimize, or “unmask,” their identities and find out who “U.S.
Person” is, provided there are genuine and legitimate intelligence and
national security reasons for doing so. Period. Regardless, the names
need to be protected from public expose.........To Read More...
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