26 Mar 2017 10:20 am
I managed to slip this by the Chief Censor. 
Did Obama Abuse Raw Intelligence?
I couldn’t have seen those transcripts when I led the House intel committee
By PETER HOEKSTRA
March 23, 2017 6:56 p.m. ET
555 COMMENTS
It was remarkable when Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, revealed Wednesday that Trump campaign officials were caught up in the inadvertent collection of intelligence. Read between the lines with a clear understanding of the intelligence community,
and it’s positively astonishing....
Things begin to get a little frightening when we learn that this inadvertent collection of Trump staff conversations was followed up with transcriptions of those conversations and the disclosure (or unmasking) of the persons involved in the conversation. These transcripts would be considered raw intelligence reports....according to Mr. Nunes, such information made its way to the Obama White House before Inauguration Day.
Few if any people working in the White House would ever need to see raw intelligence. Like intelligence committee members, they are typically consumers of intelligence products,
not raw intelligence.
The raw transcripts of masked persons—or unmasked persons, or U.S. persons who can be easily identified—making their way to the White House is very likely unprecedented.
One can only imagine who, at that point, might be reading these reports. Valerie Jarrett? Susan Rice? Ben Rhodes? The president himself? We don’t know, and the people who do aren’t talking at the moment....
Mr. Trump was a little inarticulate in the context of Twitter’s 140-character limit, but it seems he got the general picture right.
Then there’s Mr. Comey’s testimony that the FBI had been investigating Trump staff for eight months. It almost certainly included surveillance; an investigation without surveillance would approach farcical....
rather damningly, I believe that Mr. Comey and Adm. Rogers would have to have known that raw transcripts of captured conversations that included members of the Trump team were at the White House. It is inconceivable that people in those positions of power would not know. While this may not be criminal, it is at least a cause for them to be fired.
My greatest concern—the one that keeps me awake at night—is that the awesome powers of our intelligence community might have been corrupted for political purposes.
While we’re not witnessing broad, Stasi-style surveillance of citizens, it’s clear there have been serious errors of judgment and action among our otherwise professional intelligence community.
This is truly scary.
We have to learn the entire truth before anyone, in or out of Congress, can again have confidence in our intelligence community.
Mr. Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican, was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, 2004-07.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/did-obama- ... 1490309760