Sharyl Attkisson’s timeline

[Valin]

Power Line:

Paul Mirengoff

April 20, 2017

 

nvestigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson has prepared an “Obama-era Surveillance Timeline.” It is a mixed bag, containing seemingly indefensible conduct by the Obama administration, but also conduct that I consider justified and proper (e.g. the prosecution of CIA leaker Jeffrey Sterling).

 

It’s clear to me from the timeline, though, that the kinds of intelligence abuses we’re hearing about now did not begin when Team Obama became concerned about Donald Trump. Attkisson says that in April 2009, just a few months into the Obama presidency, “someone leak[ed] the unmasked name of Congresswoman Jane Harman to the press” According to news reports, the Bush administration NSA had incidentally recorded and saved Harmon’s phone conversations with pro-Israel lobbyists who were under investigation for espionage. But it was during the Obama presidency that the information was leaked to the press.

 

Harman is a liberal Democrat. However, she was more hard line than most Democrats on national security. Perhaps more significantly, she was a political enemy of Nancy Pelosi.

 

There was also the case of Fox News’ James Rosen. In May 2010, the government secretly applied for a warrant to obtain Google email information regarding Rosen. Three years later, Fox News learned that the Justice Department secretly labeled reporter Rosen a possible “criminal co-conspirator” and “flight-risk” in obtaining warrants to monitor his movements, phone records, and emails in a leak investigation starting in 2011.

 

(Snip)