Merry Christmas. The intercept is reporting that former NSA Director, Admiral Mike Rogers, has been working with U.S. Attorney John Durham for several months during his investigation into the origin of the 2016 intelligence operation against candidate Trump.
This is particularly important because NSA Director Mike Rogers’ knowledge is at the epicenter of the origination of almost everything related to the FBI data-surveillance that was happening in 2015 and 2016.
(Via Intercept) Retired Adm. Michael Rogers, former director of the National Security Agency, has been cooperating with the Justice Department’s probe into the origins of the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump presidential campaign’s alleged ties to Russia, according to four people familiar with Rogers’s participation.
Rogers has met the prosecutor leading the probe, Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, on multiple occasions, according to two people familiar with Rogers’s cooperation.
While the substance of those meetings is not clear, Rogers has cooperated voluntarily, several people with knowledge of the matter said.
Rogers, who retired in May 2018, did not respond to requests for comment.
[…] Rogers’s voluntary participation, which has not been previously reported, makes him the first former intelligence director known to have been interviewed for the probe.
“He’s been very cooperative,” one former intelligence officer who has knowledge of Rogers’s meetings with the Justice Department said. (read more)
BACKSTORY: When Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes explained his concerns in March 2017 -about what he saw from a review of 2016 intelligence gathering, reporting and subsequent unmasking- the issue behind his concern was clouded in mystery. Indeed the larger headlines at the time were about demanding a special prosecutor and driving the Russia conspiracy narrative.
1.) …”On numerous occasions the [Obama] intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition.”
2.) “Details about U.S. persons associated with the incoming administration; details with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting.”
3.) “Third, I have confirmed that additional names of Trump transition members were unmasked.”
4.) “Fourth and finally, I want to be clear; none of this surveillance was related to Russia, or the investigation of Russian activities.
“The House Intelligence Committee will thoroughly investigate surveillance and its subsequent dissemination, to determine a few things here that I want to read off:”
•“Who was aware of it?”
•“Why it was not disclosed to congress?”
•“Who requested and authorized the additional unmasking?”
•“Whether anyone directed the intelligence community to focus on Trump associates?”
•“And whether any laws, regulations or procedures were violated?”
“I have asked the Directors of the FBI, NSA and CIA to expeditiously comply with my March 15th (2017) letter -that you all received a couple of weeks ago- and to provide a full account of these surveillance activities.”
~ Devin Nunes, 2017
Immediately after Nunes expressed those concerns during a press conference the media went bananas and Nunes became target #1.
In hindsight, and with information from our assembled timelines of 2016 though today, we can now revisit those March 2017 concerns expressed by Chairman Nunes with a great deal more perspective and information. Understanding the information helps us all understand the totality of Nunes original frame of reference.
Admiral Mike Rogers became NSA director in April 2014.
Sometime in early 2016 Admiral Rogers became aware of “ongoing” and “intentional” violations of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), Section 702(17) surveillance. Specifically item #17 which includes the unauthorized upstream data collection of U.S. individuals within NSA surveillance through the use of “About Query”.
Section 702 – Item #17 “About Queries” are specifically the collection of electronic messaging, emails and upstream phone call surveillance data of U.S. persons.
The public doesn’t discover this issue, and Director Rogers action, until May 2017 when we learn that Rogers told the FISA court he became aware of unlawful surveillance and collection of U.S. persons.
Put into context, with the full back-story, it appears that 2016 surveillance was the political surveillance, the stuff Chairman Nunes was questioning. The dates here are important as they tell a story.