Former national security adviser Susan Rice on Tuesday denied leaking any information about associates of President Trump who were caught up in incidental surveillance of legitimate targets, and said there was no political motivation behind requests for their identities.
In an interview on MSNBC, Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser, said no one in Obama’s administration used intelligence information for political purposes.
Rice said she would occasionally receive reports that referred to “U.S. persons” caught up in legal surveillance. Occasionally, she would make a request to the intelligence community for the identities of those people in order to get more context and determine if that person was a danger to national security.
The intelligence community would then have to decide whether to reveal to the requester’s identity.
“The intelligence community made the determination whether the identity of that U.S. person could be provided to me,” Rice said.
She added it was “absolutely not for any political purposes, to spy, expose or anything.”
Rice has been accused of unmasking American citizens who were close to Trump, after which those reporters were then leaked for political purposes.
Rice said she would not leak the identities of Americans provided to her by the intelligence community because it would reveal classified information. “I leaked nothing to nobody, and never have and never would,” she said.
Susan Rice: "I leaked nothing to nobody and never have and never would." pic.twitter.com/H5m3BjfON5— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) April 4, 2017
She said that information would only come back to the person who requested it and is not widely spread throughout the national security community or the government. Asking for the identity of American citizens caught up in surveillance of foreign targets is a normal part of the national security adviser’s job, she said.
Rice also denied that Obama ordered Trump Tower to be placed under surveillance during the election, as alleged by Trump in a series of tweets last month.
“Absolutely false. The intelligence community, the director of the FBI, has made that very clear,” she said. “There was no such collection or surveillance on Trump Tower or individuals … directed by the White House.”
