What is 'unmasking?' How intelligence agencies treat U.S. citizens

Gregory Korte, USA TODAY Published 2:14 p.m. ET April 4, 2017 | Updated 12:35 p.m. ET April 8, 2017

 

WASHINGTON — The investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election — and President Trump's counterattack against surveillance and leaking — has brought a new term into the American political lexicon.
 
"Unmasking."
Until now, the process for revealing information about U.S. citizens in intelligence reports was almost completely obscure outside of the intelligence community.
 
But the issue has taken on new importance since House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes alleged that the Obama administration may have improperly identified Trump transition officials in classified reports he had access to — reports that later turned out to be provided to him by the Trump White House.
 
Here's what we know about the hows and whys of unmasking:

'Minimization' procedures

When U.S. spy agencies eavesdrop on terrorists or foreign agents, they often come across information about U.S. citizens who are not the target of their investigation. This "incidental collection" is not illegal or improper, but specially trained intelligence officers are required to go through an established procedure to protect the privacy of U.S. persons, known as "minimization."
(U.S. persons are defined as U.S. citizens and permanent residents, no matter where they are in the world.)


Identifying information about that person will generally be excluded in intelligence reports that are distributed throughout the intelligence community, including those that go to the White House. Instead, the reports will refer only to "U.S. Person One," "U.S. Person Two," etc.

Exceptions to the rule

But the intelligence community's policies on minimization are not absolute, and there are several exceptions. The National Security Agency, for example, will contain the names of U.S. persons in intelligence reports when:


► The information is available publicly, meaning "information that a member of the public could obtain on request, by research in public sources, or by casual observation."
► "The identity of the United States person is necessary to understand foreign intelligence information or assess its importance, e.g., the identity of a senior official in the executive branch."


► The intelligence indicates that the U.S. person may be "an agent of a foreign power."

Who can 'unmask?'

If a national security official who receives an intelligence report feels like he or she needs to know the identity of a U.S. person in an intelligence report, that official can make a request to "unmask."
The procedures for doing so are less well understood than the minimization process, but about 20 officials at the National Security Agency have the authority to approve an unmasking, NSA Director Michael Rogers told the House Intelligence Committee last month.
 
Especially sensitive requests would come to his attention personally. "I'm the senior-most of the 20 individuals. Requests will be pushed to my level, say 'Hey, sir, we just want to make sure that you're comfortable with this,'" he said.
 
Rogers said those officials all have specific training. "There are specific controls put in place in terms of our ability to disseminate information out of the databases associated with U.S. persons," he said.
Other intelligence agencies — including the CIA, FBI and the National Counterterrorism Center — have their own procedures for minimization and unmasking.

Susan Rice's unmasking requests

In an interview with MSNBC Tuesday, Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice denied making requests to unmask the names of Trump associates for political purposes. She described the process as routine, but declined to say specifically how often she made requests or for what purposes.
"There were occasions when I would receive a report in which a U.S. person was referred to. Name not provided, just a U.S. person," she said. "And sometimes in that context, in order to understand the importance of the report, and assess its significance, it was necessary to find out, or request the information, as to who the U.S. official was.
 
"So when that occurred, what I would do, or what any official would do, is to ask their briefer whether the intelligence community would go through its process — and there's a long-standing, established process — to decide whether that information as to who the identity of the U.S. person was could be provided to me. So they'd take that question back, they'd put it through a process, and the intelligence community made the determination as to whether or not the identity of that American individual could be provided to me."

'Unmasking' as protection

Rice gave a hypothetical example of foreign agents attempting to buy bomb-making materials from a U.S. citizen. "Is this some kook sitting in his living room communicating via the internet, offering to sell something he doesn't have?  Or is it a serious person or company or entity with the ability to provide that technology perhaps to an adversary? That would be an example of a case where knowing who the U.S. person was, was necessary to assess the information."
 
But former CIA director John McLaughlin says the debate over unmasking has often ignored more benign reasons for identifying citizens whose name come up in foreign intelligence.
 
"Sometimes you unmask the name in order to protect an American citizen," McLaughlin told MSNBC Tuesday. He used the hypothetical example of a senator who needs to know that the foreign official he's planning to meet with is actually a spy. "You need to know who you were talking to, just for your protection and information."

Unmasking is not leaking

When the name of a U.S. person is unmasked, that information is provided only to the intelligence official who requested that unmasking, Rice said Tuesday. "There's no equivalence between so-called unmasking and leaking," she said.
 
Of course, the recipient of unmasked information could then illegally disclose it through a leak.
Rice denied leaking. "I leaked nothing to nobody, and never had and never would," she said.

Unmasking is not a crime

The process for unmasking vary from agency to agency and case by case depending on how the information was collected. But the exact procedures are not publicly known and may be classified.
“None of this unmasking procedure is in law. It's in procedure. Executive branch procedure," said Carrie Cordero, a national security lawyer who worked on surveillance issues in the Justice Department in the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations.
 
“What I think I’m seeing as the biggest fallacy being reported, or being 'pundited,' is that if there was some kind of improper unmasking, that it's illegal. And that’s wrong,” she said. If procedures weren't followed, they would most likely be subject to administrative discipline, Cordero said.