Bizarre, International, Politics, Uncategorized

Shaken Not Scripted: Spicer Repeats Allegation That British Intelligence Spied On Trump For Obama . . . Administration Reportedly Apologizes [UPDATED]

sean_spicerDie_another_Day_-_UK_cinema_posterYesterday’s press conference by White House Spokesman Sean Spicer seemed uncomfortably close to a Saturday Night Live parody as Spicer spared with CNN and other news outlets over President Trump’s wiretapping allegations.  I actually was sympathetic with Spicer on one point:  the media continues to take a literal meaning of Trump’s reference to “wiretap.”  Some after the first tweet, I stated on CNN that I did not believe that Trump was speaking literally and that he likely meant “surveillance.”  I have written and litigated in the field of surveillance over the course of decades and the use of “wiretap” to mean surveillance is a common, if inartful, practice  — particularly among older Americans.  That does not mean that Trump’s allegation of surveillance is true or supportable.  That should be the focus, not this recurring rhetorical point.  However, there has been a truly shocking lack of discipline among high-ranking Trump staffers in their public comments, including comments that have undermined the immigration orders.  A good example of that ongoing problem is the suggestion that British intelligence surveilled Trump for Obama. This allegation had no place in a White House briefing and led to a reported embarrassing apology from the Administration to the British and a promise not to repeat it. It appears that there was no James Bond contract to surveil and the Administration is again shaken not stirred scripted. [UPDATE: CNN is reporting late Friday that Sean Spicer has denied that any apology has been made to Britain.  For its part, Fox News reportedly is saying that it has no support for the allegation raised by Judge Napolitano]

The United States and Great Britain  are members of the Five Eyes alliance – a joint intelligence co-operation agreement of the United States, England, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The agreement expressly states that it cannot be used to circumvent national laws.  In other words, GCHQ could not engage in the alleged surveillance without not just breaking U.S. law but the agreement.

Spicer  repeated a conspiracy theory that the secretive Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) were used into avoid any “American fingerprints” — an allegation that the British immediately called “totally untrue and quite frankly absurd.”  Other British leaders called the allegation “shameful.”

Spicer attributed the theory to Andrew Napolitano.  On March 14th, Judge Napolitano made the following statement:

Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command. He didn’t use the NSA, he didn’t use the CIA, he didn’t use the FBI and he didn’t use the Department of Justice.

He used GCHQ. What is that? It’s the initials for the British intelligence-finding agency. So, simply by having two people saying to them president needs transcripts of conversations involving candidate Trump’s conversations, involving president-elect Trump, he’s able to get it and there’s no American fingerprints on this. Putting the published accounts and common-sense together, this leads to a lot.

At the White House, Spicer said:

“Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command.  He didn’t use the NSA. He didn’t use the CIA. He didn’t use the FBI, and he didn’t use Department of Justice.

“He used GCHQ. What is that? It’s the initials for the British spying agency.

“They showed simply by having two saying to them the President needs transcripts of conversations involving candidate Trump’s conversations involving President-elect Trump, he’s able to get and there is no American fingerprints on this.”

The subsequent apology reportedly came from both Spicer and the U.S. government.  This is obviously embarrassing not just for Spicer but the country as a whole.  It reveals a continued free-lancing and improvisational character of Administration officials in their public comments. That is particularly serious when it involves the White House spokesman who is supposed to maintain a coherent and well-supported position for the Administration.

The Administration cannot simply careen in this fashion from controversy to controversy. Once again, the valid point (concerning the use of “wiretap”) was lost in the firestorm created by the reference to the conspiracy theory.

 

 

124 thoughts on “Shaken Not Scripted: Spicer Repeats Allegation That British Intelligence Spied On Trump For Obama . . . Administration Reportedly Apologizes [UPDATED]”

  1. This was a very frustrating incident.

    First, regardless of what GCHQ says, we mutually spy on our foes and allies, and they spy on us. All sorts of juicy information flows. But you do not make the faux pas of admitting it (as happened in that NSA spying scandal under Obama) or accusing allies of it in public. It undermines relations.

    But the salient point is that if Trump suspected there was foul play with the abuse of surveillance, then he should have gone to the intelligence community first and had it quietly investigated FIRST before revealing any conclusions and proof to the public. If a news story piqued his interest then he should have investigated it first. Catherine Herridge, the intelligence analyst for Fox, does not break a story without a thorough investigation and proof in her hands, which is why she has a record of integrity. She doesn’t say she heard it on the news and declare it fact on Twitter, for God’s sake, without investigating it.

    Twitter is not the venue to make allegations. How very different this would be if he had gone to NSA, got the FISA requests against him, ran all the evidence down, and then triumphantly laid each piece down like a royal flush.

    1. So when do they put the sleep mats on the floor and curl up in a fetal position because of the humiliation and shame?

      1. Well, if our politicos didn’t curl up in the fetal position after being caught with the following, I doubt they’ll start now:
        It was a video that caused a spontaneous demonstration in Benghazi.
        If you like your plan, you can keep it. If you like your doctor you can keep him.
        Obamacare is affordable and will save average American families $2500 a year.
        Did I wipe it with a cloth?
        I neither sent nor received classified information.
        Selling 1/5 of our uranium to Russia after they paid Bill Clinton half a million for a short speech and gave $144 million to the Clinton Foundation.

        But you think, after all of the above failed to raise a blush on either the perpetrators or their voters, that someone would grovel in shame over alleging he was spied on during the election after we all heard about his advisor Flynn being taped by our intelligence community and leaked? That’s your bar for embarrassment?

  2. Trump and his merry thieves made apologies to the U.K. 🇬🇧. Long live Her Majesty.

  3. If Melissa McCarthy stood in for Sean Spicer at the daily briefing, would anybody notice?

    2. Re Melissa McCarthy subbing for Sean Spicer, it would be a whole lot more honest. But then Trump might come rushing tin the room with his hair on fire, and (completely paranoid and delusional) Sean Hannity following right behind with the gun he totes everywhere, including on the set at Faux News and in the hallways pointing it at Juan Williams because he disagrees with Hannity. (Like every other sane person.)

      Now THAT would be Reality Television I’d like to see!

  5. Funny how the Steak-Salesman invokes the “fake news” NYT as a source for his wiretap claim.

    One would think “I’m like a smart person, ok” Trump would know not to use fake news as a source of anything.

    Or the Pizza Hut spokesman and his spokespeople are just a liars. Hmm.

    And where’s the investigation on the 3 million who voted illegally? Elections are “sacred,”‘ someone once tweeted.

  7. Oh no, I am NOT in support of Trumps lies or Trump himself just pointing out his supporters are in denial about what this man is doing to this country.

  8. When Trump tweeted on March 4 , only a Trump apologist would think he meant something different. For five years, Trump provided no evidence to negate Obama’s false birthplace claims and then he admitted those claims were wrong in a ten second statement tacked on to a commercial for his new hotel. These wiretap claims are in the same vein. We need someone in the presidency who can be trusted to speak the truth. That someone is not Donald Trump. His presidency assures that fact-checkers will have job security as long as he is president.

  9. What do you mean the president was not speaking literally when he said “wiretap?” As a lawyer, when have you supported a lawyer who told a jury that the defendant was not speaking literally when he said

    “I shot that scumbag? Maybe he only meant he shot a picture of that scumbag, Ladies and Gentlemen.”

    The term wiretap didn’t even exist in the lexicon for the first hundreds of years while “surveillance” did. You’re making unworthy excuses for the man who claims to be the leader of the free world. If anyone in the world should expect to have everyone assume he is saying what he means, it should be the person occupying the Oval Office.

    I’m disappointed in your defense here.

  10. What will it take for Trump supporters to see they have been conned? How can we believe anything they say? Its not 60 days yet and Trump and his team have proven they are lies and cheats. And every lie they put out covers the fact this is all about cutting taxes for Trump and his tax class. Please put country over party and demand facts and truth from the man that is representing our nation.

  11. The Brits have two spy agencies called MI5 and MI6. The second one works overseas. Their agents will sometimes admit to you in conversations at a bar, say in Cairo, that they work for MI6.
    Whereas, the American intelligence agents speaking to you and them will say that they work for Bell Helicopter or some front. Get em drunk, you can learn a lot.

  12. The UKUSA Community: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States
    The United Kingdom – United States of America Agreement (UKUSA, /juːkuːˈsɑː/ ew-koo-sah)[1][2] is a multilateral agreement for cooperation in signals intelligence between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The alliance of intelligence operations is also known as the Five Eyes.[3][4][5][6][7] In classification markings this is abbreviated as FVEY, with the individual countries being abbreviated as AUS, CAN, NZL, GBR, and USA, respectively.[8]

    Emerging from an informal agreement related to the 1941 Atlantic Charter, the secret treaty was renewed with the passage of the 1943 BRUSA Agreement, before being officially enacted on 5 March 1946 by the United Kingdom and the United States. In the following years, it was extended to encompass Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Other countries, known as “third parties”, such as West Germany, the Philippines, and several Nordic countries also joined the UKUSA community.[9][10]

    Much of the sharing of information is performed via the ultra-sensitive STONEGHOST network, which has been claimed to contain “some of the Western world’s most closely guarded secrets”.[11] Besides laying down rules for intelligence sharing, the agreement formalized and cemented the “Special Relationship” between the UK and the USA.[12][13]
    -Wikipedia

    1. RAF Menwith Hill near Harrogate, England, which provides communications and intelligence support services to both the United Kingdom and the United States
      A cornerstone of the special relationship is the collecting and sharing of intelligence. This originated during World War II with the sharing of code breaking knowledge and led to the 1943 BRUSA Agreement, signed at Bletchley Park. After World War II the common goal of monitoring and countering the threat of communism prompted the UK-USA Security Agreement of 1948. This agreement brought together the SIGINT organizations of the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and is still in place today (see: Five Eyes). The head of the CIA station in London attends each weekly meeting of the British Joint Intelligence Committee.[27]

      One present-day example of such cooperation is the UKUSA Community, comprising the USA’s National Security Agency, the United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters, Australia’s Defence Signals Directorate and Canada’s Communications Security Establishment collaborating on ECHELON, a global intelligence gathering system. Under classified bilateral accords, UKUSA members do not spy on each other.[28]

  13. Paranoid and delusional come to mind about Trump and his staff. There is no excuse for the President to continue to lie. The only person that has exposed Trumps delusion about leaks in the White House is Trump himself. He outted the CIA in an interview with Tucker Carlson.

    2. What is with you people and your koolaide?
      ECHELON, originally a secret government code name, is a surveillance program (signals intelligence/SIGINT collection and analysis network) operated on behalf of the five signatory nations to the UKUSA Security Agreement[1]—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, also known as the Five Eyes.[2][3][4]

      The ECHELON program was created in the late 1960s to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies during the Cold War, and was formally established in 1971.[5][6]

      By the end of the 20th century, the system referred to as “ECHELON” had allegedly evolved beyond its military and diplomatic origins, to also become “…a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications.”[7]-Wikipedia

        1. Yes, it is unbelievable! Here’s more evidence: “United States asked Canada to help spy on candidates during 2012 French election: Central Intelligence Agency documents released by WikiLeaks Thursday list Canada as one of several countries asked to assist the United States while they spied on the 2012 French presidential election.

          The three CIA tasking orders request that current French president Francois Hollande, then president Nicolas Sarkozy and current first round presidential front runner Marine Le Pen all be closely monitored.

          CIA officers were asked to uncover the secret strategies of the candidates, as well as information on internal power dynamics within the parties. ”

          The documents are fully availabe to the public. This is the same organization which helped gin up war with Iraq. They have helped to kill a 100,000 people through so doing. Yeah, that’s most certainly a trustworthy organization! They fabricated entire false information for starting a war, but yes, I revere them and believe without question because I’m a Democrat!

  14. I feel a bit sorry for Spicer. He clearly is Trump’s mouthpiece and has to say what Trump wants. No wonder he sounds like a total idiot.

    Watching this administration every day is like being on a permanent disaster tourism vacation. Ghastly, but hard to turn off my excellent Twitter feed.

  15. Main article: Global surveillance disclosures (2013–present)
    The exact size of Snowden’s disclosure is unknown,[73] but Australian officials have estimated 15,000 or more Australian intelligence files[74] and British officials estimate at least 58,000 British intelligence files.[75] NSA Director Keith Alexander initially estimated that Snowden had copied anywhere from 50,000 to 200,000 NSA documents.[76] Later estimates provided by U.S. officials were on the order of 1.7 million,[77] a number that originally came from Department of Defense talking points.[78] In July 2014, The Washington Post reported on a cache previously provided by Snowden from domestic NSA operations consisting of “roughly 160,000 intercepted e-mail and instant-message conversations, some of them hundreds of pages long, and 7,900 documents taken from more than 11,000 online accounts.”[79] A U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency report declassified in June 2015 said that Snowden took 900,000 Department of Defense files, more than he downloaded from the NSA.[78]
    -Wikipedia
    People it’s GLOBAL surveillance! GLOBAL, what don’t you get???

  17. An apology was made to not repeat the charge–not an apology acknowledging or specifying that the underlying statement was completely false and had no merit. Big difference.

    2. I noticed that also. I think it’s highly likely that this happened. From the Snowden and wikileaks documents we know the 5/6 eyes spy on each other’s citizens (including their political candidates/office holders) all the time. It’s a known work around.

      It was absolutely stupid of Spicer to say this on TV without proof to back it up. However, I don’t think that evil organization should be given anymore credibility than Trump. This situation will out someday and I fall on the side of yes, Trump Towers like Merkel, like everyone else on this planet, is monitored by a completely out of control IC which is a danger to people in every nation. Unless Trump decides to stop this mass surveillance I have NO sympathy for him getting the same treatment as everyone else.

  18. From 2014, again for the dumb Left of today, this is years before Trump

    https://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/19415-national-journal-nsa-outsources-surveillance-of-americans-to-british-intelligence

    National Journal: NSA Outsources Surveillance of Americans to British Intelligence

    The National Journal reported that the NSA has given broad access to British intelligence to Americans’ telephone calls and Internet traffic, possibly as a means of circumventing the Fourth Amendment and other legal prohibitions against domestic warrantless surveillance. British intelligence confirmed October 28 that it does receive raw intelligence data on American citizens and that it does not need warrants to search intelligence from foreign countries.

    The National Journal reported October 27:

    British authorities are capable of

  19. I believe it. Look at this from 2013. They pretty much admit spying on Americans for the purpose of feeding the NSA to get around the 4th Amendment

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/01/nsa-paid-gchq-spying-edward-snowden

    Exclusive: NSA pays £100m in secret funding for GCHQ

    • Secret payments revealed in leaks by Edward Snowden
    • GCHQ expected to ‘pull its weight’ for Americans
    • Weaker regulation of British spies ‘a selling point’ for NSA

    In one review, GCHQ boasted that it had supplied “unique contributions” to the NSA during its investigation of the American citizen responsible for an attempted car bomb attack in Times Square, New York City, in 2010.

    No other detail is provided – but it raises the possibility that GCHQ might have been spying on an American living in the US. The NSA is prohibited from doing this by US law.

    2. Thankyou for the info.

      If you think the British intelligence and Israeli intelligence are not working with the USA Intelligence sister groups, I have some lovely swamps in Florida to sell you people.
      Even the FBI opened up a office in Moscow during the Clinton years.
      “Ah what a fine Web we weave…..”

    1. If you are talking about Obama, the Democrats and Media, I completely agree. Democrats are a menace at this point.

Comments are closed.