The Trump campaign was spied on during the 2016 election.
Federal investigators used wiretaps, informants, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants, the whole nine yards. Whether it was lawful is a separate question. For now, the basic truth of the matter is that federal investigators secretly surveilled and collected intelligence on the GOP nominee and his associates.
Astonishingly enough, the American press is coming to the defense of the spies, arguing that what happened in 2016 does not count as spying. Some newsrooms are even claiming that it was all perfectly normal, routine stuff.
In the world of print, newsrooms like the New York Times and the Associated Press have teetered back-and-forth between arguing that election-year spying is typical, everyday law enforcement activity and that there is not enough evidence to justify using words like “spy,” “spied,” and “spying.”
The AP, for example, published a report this week wherein it stated in reference to Attorney General William Barr saying “spying did occur” during the election that, “Barr provided no details about what ‘spying’ may have taken place but appeared to be alluding to a surveillance warrant the FBI obtained on a former Trump associate, Carter Page, and the FBI’s use of an informant while the bureau was investigating former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos.”
Well, yes. Other than all of that spying, what spying?
Also, for no reason at all, here are three AP headlines from 2005:
- Justice Department begins investigation into leak of Bush’s domestic spying
- Bush defends domestic spying program as effective tool in war on terror
- Daschle says Congress didn’t give domestic spying authority to Bush
Then there is the Times, which published an article this week that included the line [emphasis added], “Law enforcement officials have also drawn intense criticism for using an informant — a typical investigative step — to secretly report on Mr. Page and Mr. Papadopoulos after they left the campaign.”
Very normal and typical stuff.
But what is probably the most absurd attempt by a newsroom to whitewash what happened during the election was when the Times published an article titled, “F.B.I. Sent Cloaked Investigator To Question Trump Aide in 2016.”
This “cloaked investigator” was a “government investigator posing as a research assistant … The F.B.I. sent her to London as part of the counterintelligence inquiry opened that summer to better understand the Trump campaign’s links to Russia.” That is called a “spy.” The word the Times is looking for is “spy.”
For what it is worth, the paper’s use of the bizarre euphemism “cloaked investigator” in place of the word “spy” is the first for any major newsroom anywhere, according to Nexis. The only other hits that appear in a historical search for the term “cloaked investigator” were from articles mocking the Times’ attempt to sanitize what happened in 2016. Also, it is worth remembering the Times did not previously struggle with the “S” word. In fact, in 2002, the paper specifically defined surveillance by the federal government as spying. Now it suggests that these are separate things.
Next, there are the reporters and pundits who flat-out dispute that the Trump campaign was spied on, including CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who was distraught in April after Barr said “spying did occur.”
Cooper said the use of the word “spying” was “uncharacteristically broad,” and that Barr had “fanned the flames” for Trump. CNN’s Chris Cuomo said using the word “spying” was “an insult to the men and women” who work for Barr and a “defamatory way to refer to surveillance.” CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said simply that Barr’s words were “loaded” and “false” and that the “paranoid lunacy of the right-wing” had infected the Justice Department.
These are curious sentiments, considering their network had no problem using words like “spy” and “spying” to describe surreptitious intelligence gathering activities that occurred during the Bush administration. Here is a CNN headline from 2008: “Report: U.S. spied on Americans’ intimate conversations abroad.” And here’s one from 2006: “Bush defends NSA spying program.” The cable network also aired dozens of news segments with titles like, “Inside the NSA: The Secret World of Electronic Spying,” and “Spying on America.”
I will concede the word “spy” is a loaded term, and that it is used often to insinuate unlawful surveillance. But that did not stop newsrooms from using the word until very, very recently.
Barr was correct when he said in his defense earlier this month that “spying” is a “good English word.” He is right. It is a good English word, especially when applied properly, as in the case of describing what the intelligence community did to the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election.
