Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s name was never hidden from view in a report about his contacts with a Russian envoy during the presidential transition period.
The FBI, not the National Security Agency, wiretapped Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak’s Dec. 29, 2016, conversations with President Trump’s incoming national security adviser, former U.S. officials told the Washington Post in a report published Wednesday.
“When the FBI circulated [the report], they included Flynn’s name from the beginning,” a former senior U.S. official said. “There were therefore no requests for the unmasking of that information.”
The revelation presents a new wrinkle for Republicans hunting down the source of leaks to the Washington Post in January and February of 2017, which helped generate a major public controversy that led to Flynn’s ouster as national security adviser, and their concerns about out-of-control “unmasking” across the government.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, asked acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell on Tuesday to disclose the names of individuals who “unmasked” Flynn.
The South Carolina Republican made the request after the release of a partially redacted list of Obama administration officials who received information about Flynn from the NSA responsive to “unmasking” requests between the time Trump won the 2016 and the Jan. 20, 2017, inauguration. Most of the requests were made prior to Flynn’s calls with Russia’s ambassador, and a wide range of officials received that information, including ambassadors, NATO officials, law enforcement and intelligence officials, and former Vice President Joe Biden.
The new report affirms a comment former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe made to the House Intelligence Committee on Dec. 19, 2017. “I do not believe that that summary was ever masked. I’m also not familiar with any requests that we received to unmask anything. I’m not — I’m not aware that if we got one, it would strike me as unnecessary if nothing was masked,” he testified.
Months earlier, former FBI Director James Comey told the same panel that the bureau was “tasked” with sharing any information it had about Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak, which focused on Russian sanctions and a United Nations vote, with the rest of the intelligence community. Comey said he gave copies of this information to the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, who then “briefed the President and the Vice President and then President Obama’s senior team.” He added that “our people judged it was appropriate, for reasons that I hope are obvious, to have Mr. Flynn’s name unmasked.”
Democrats and national security veterans have stressed that “unmasking,” or when the names of U.S. citizens that are covered up in intelligence reports about the surveillance of foreigners are revealed upon the request of authorized officials, is regularly done, often to better understand the information.
Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has accused Grenell of “selective declassification” for political reasons, and is asking for the disclosure of the underlying intelligence reports in which Obama administration officials unmasked Flynn. There have also been calls on both sides of the aisle for the transcripts of Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak to be released.
Flynn was a target of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, an endeavor that began in late July 2016 and was code-named Crossfire Hurricane. That inquiry was later wrapped into special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, which ultimately was unable to establish criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to FBI investigators about his December 2016 conversations with Kislyak about a United Nations resolution on Israel and sanctions. But Flynn now claims he was set up by the FBI, and the Justice Department is seeking to drop the case.
The leaks about the Flynn-Kislyak conversations to the Washington Post are reportedly being scrutinized by U.S. Attorney John Durham in his Russia investigation inquiry.
