Republicans harp on leaks as danger to national security
Gowdy: “If there are 100 people who have the ability to unmask.... then that’s 100 different potential sources of an investigation...”
“What other US government agencies have the authority to unmask a US citizen’s name?”
Comey: NSA, CIA, FBI, I don’t know for sure beyond that. Oh yeah, “main justice” meaning the justice department. And “consumers of our products can ask the maskers to unmask... the White House can make similar requests.. but they can’t on their own collect, so they can’t on their own unmask.”
Gowdy: How would you begin your investigation of a leak? Where would you begin?
Comey: First ask who touched the information. Then use investigative tools and techniques.
Gowdy: Did Clapper know Flynn’s name?
Comey: Can’t say.
Gowdy: Would he have access?
Comey: Maybe.
Gowdy: Former CIA directer John Brennan? Former national security adviser Susan Rice? Former White House adviser Ben Rhodes? Former attorney general Loretta Lynch? Acting AG Sally Yates?
Now it’s back to the Republican side, and Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor.
Gowdy is in charge of hammering on the villainy of the leaks that first revealed Michael Flynn’s secret conversations with Sergey Kislyak and other Trump camp ties to Russia.
Gowdy is trying to get Comey to say that reporters are as culpable in the event of leaks of classified material as leakers. He’s also pressing on how reporters would find out classified material.
“Somebody told them who shouldn’t have told them,” Comey explains.
Guardian national security editor Spencer Ackerman on “an extraordinary development” at the hearing:
The leaks that Republicans are citing as damaging to the Trump administration are having an effect that for years was unthinkable: threatening the reauthorization of a key NSA authority for mass surveillance.
That authority is known as Section 702. Created in 2008, it is the wellspring of legal authorization for NSA’s Prism program and its “Upstream” vacuuming of data transiting over the internet. All this occurs without warrants, and, though ostensibly targeting foreign activity oversees, necessarily involves the “incidental” collection of Americans’ communications.
Section 702 is up for reauthorization in December. Civil libertarians want it to die on 31 December. Ron Wyden, a Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, has fought unsuccessfully for years for the NSA to disclose how many Americans’ communications have been swept up under 702.
Republicans on the intelligence committees are typically the champions of 702. That was before leaks that Trump has attributed to the intelligence agencies concerning his team’s ties to Russia undermined Trump’s lines that all this is malicious politicized claims.
Trey Gowdy, formerly of the Benghazi inquiry, said the leaks “jeopardize Americans’ trust in the surveillance programs.” Florida Republican Tom Rooney, who said he supports 702, said “it is very difficult to keep that sacred trust” should the NSA discover that it leaked Michael Flynn or anyone else’s name and didn’t hold anyone accountable. Chairman Devin Nunes has already speculatedthat 702 may not be reauthorized.
This is an extraordinary development. The Snowden revelations, of mass surveillance that implicated the privacy of ordinary Americans, did not budge anyone on the committees, Democrat or Republican, off support for 702. Causing the resignation of Trump’s national security adviser, it turns out, might.
A supreme irony in all of this is that should NSA have collected Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak’s conversation with Flynn, it wouldn’t have done it under 702, but under a different component of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. NSA director Mike Rogers gingerly clarified that collection within the United States falls under a different authority (title 1 of FISA, to specify).
Himes wonders whether “Russian hacking” refers to the fact that the intelligence community believes that Russians penetrated DNC and Podesta, stole info and disseminated it.
Is that a fair characterization?
Yes sir, says Rogers.
But Rogers did not analyze whether that activity affected the election outcome.
Of course you didn’t, Himes said. Next question: Was there any equivalent stolen information from the RNC or Trump?
Comey answers flatly, No. Not, “not that we know of.” Comey says there was no equivalent theft on the Trump side.
Do you know who Roger Stone is? Do you know he associated with Paul Manafort? Are you aware that he has publicly acknowledged communicating with Guccifer 2 (the hacker linked to Russian intelligence? How did Stone know Podesta’s emails would be released? When Podesta himself didn’t yet know he’d been hacked?
Comey says he has read public accounts but can’t comment beyond that.
Rogers is asked whether he agrees with British intelligence’s assessment that it collaborated in surveillance of Trump was “nonsense” and “utterly ridiculous.”
Yes, Rogers says. He agrees that the whole charge is nonsense.
Rogers says the charge has been an inconvenience to US-British cooperation but it has not destroyed the relationship.
Comey: No information to support Trump's claim that Obama wiretapped him
With respect to the president’s tweets about Obama wiretapping him, Comey says:
I have no information that supports those tweets, and we have looked carefully inside the DoJ has asked me to share with you that the answer is the same for the DoJ in all its components.
Now Trey Gowdy, the Republican from South Carolina, is at bat.
He says that Fisa and other surveillance programs are “intentionally designed” to preserve the privacy of US citizens.
Gowdy to Comey, on the gravity of leaking classified material:
We are going to give you the tools and government in return promises to safeguard the privacy of US citizens. And when that agreement is broken, it violates the trust...
Gowdy has brandished the terrifying prospect of the government breaking its promise to safeguard the privacy of US citizens as it conducts surveillance.
