Nearly a Decade Later, the Unmasking Scandal Comes Full Circle

Devin Nunes was put under investigation in 2017 for looking into abuse of foreign intelligence surveillance programs, including by Barack Obama's White House. New documents appear to vindicate him

VINDICATION? Above, former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice. Below, President’s Intelligence Advisory Board chief Devin Nunes

Last week, when Donald Trump’s Justice Department released notes of an FBI interview with a “whistleblower” from the Democratic staff of the House Intelligence Committee, the few media outlets to seriously cover the story focused on a grave accusation: then-Congressman Adam Schiff approved leaks of classified information in 2017 as a way “topple” the Trump administration. The document, which seemed to confirm mention of a “Committee Witness” in an Inspector General’s report last year, triggered heated denials from Schiff and fellow Democrat Eric Swalwell, who seethed that the only “real criminals” in Washington were in the White House.

Few noticed another passage deep in the report, in which the Democratic staffer described efforts to “unmask” identities of figures in Trump’s orbit. Typically, the names of Americans swept up in monitoring of suspected foreign terrorists or criminals are anonymized, and transcripts of their conversations are only available to non-intelligence personnel upon request from high-level officials. The whistleblower suggested these “unmasking” techniques had been abused by members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, or HPSCI:

HPSCI personnel contacted [redacted] and [redacted] and requested the number of documents the agencies had related to President Trump. The staff wanted to know how many of these documents were masked. They planned to request the unmasking of the individuals and then deal with them.

The report contains other mentions of efforts by “HPSCI attorneys” to unmask the identities of unnamed figures. It’s theoretically possible that the staffer was referring in certain places to actions by Republican HPSCI staffers, but it’s unlikely that’s the case throughout, especially in the above passage. Either way, there’s reason some of the Republicans who originally looked at this issue saw in that release a piece of overdue vindication, after being denounced for investigating these very practices nearly a decade ago.

Former House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes in 2017 was forced to recuse himself from the Russia investigation when Democrats launched a House Ethics Committee probe in response to his unmasking claims. Nunes was cleared later, but damage was done: investigation into Obama-era abuses of foreign surveillance programs ground to a near-halt, as everyone from the Washington Post to Talking Points Memo lambasted the “completely fake and stupid unmasking conspiracy theory.”

Over the years, however, evidence surfaced suggesting abuse claims were anything but conspiracy theory, and that Nunes was correct to raise an alarm about misuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) program. Although a Trump-appointed Special Counsel, John Bash, issued a report finding no evidence of misuse of unmasking procedures for political purposes, Trump-Russia investigators in both the Senate and the House have long believed there was more to the story, and that Bash’s report ignored significant evidence of corruption. “Not gonna lie. The Bash thing was a gut punch for us,” is how one former Republican Senate aide put it. “It sucked.”

Now the unmasking story is back in the investigative picture. According to a Justice Department spokesperson, the FISA court in June unsealed more Carter Page materials for oversight purposes, giving Russiagate investigators new documents to examine. Along with last week’s FBI whistleblower release, hopes have been reignited that the issue of using FISA to spy on Americans for political reasons will finally be re-examined, after a nearly decade-long delay.

“We pushed for years for transparency and accountability for the Russia hoax and were continually disappointed,” a Nunes-era HPSCI staffer told Racket. “But right now, some of us are feeling a strange sense of optimism that we’re not used to.”

After a post-Congressional sojourn as the CEO of Truth Social, Nunes is back in government, heading Trump’s Intelligence Advisory Board. If he’s vindicated on unmasking, it wouldn’t be his first belated victory. In February 2018, after release of the so-called “Nunes memo” put together by then-investigator Kash Patel accusing the FBI of lying to the FISA court, Patel and especially Nunes were denounced as conspiracist rogues in the most abject terms. Nancy Pelosi claimed his “dishonest” actions and “bogus memo” so “disgraced” the House that he needed to step down. The Washington Post agreed, calling the memo’s release “Trump’s most unethical act.” Former CIA chief John Brennan, who set historic standards for cherry-picking in his construction of the 2017 Intelligence Assessment on Russian meddling, railed against the “cherry-picked” document, saying the “appalling” Nunes “abused the office of the Chairman”:

A little over a year later, though, the Barack Obama-appointed Inspector General of the Justice Department, Michael Horowitz, published a 400-page report supporting all of Nunes’ major claims, forcing even the Washington Post to admit there was “vindication.” Will a similar adjustment to conventional wisdom now take place with regard to the requests by Obama White House officials like former National Security Adviser Susan Rice to unmask the identities of Trump figures for dubious reasons? There are new reasons to believe that’s the case.