On CNN Wednesday, national security analyst Carrie Cordero excoriated the Trump administration and the GOP for their release of a list of Obama administration officials possibly involved in the "unmasking" of ex-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
"My take on this is that this is a 100 percent contrived scandal," said Cordero. "From everything I've seen as far as the documents that have been released and the information that's been reported, all of the rules were followed. This was an individual who was captured and overheard on a lawful surveillance of a valid foreign intelligence target as far as we can surmise from the documents. The rules as far as requesting national security agency approval to unmask or reveal his name was done appropriately."
"In other words, procedures weren't bypassed, rules weren't broken, all of the rules were followed," said Cordero. "And now, the names of the individuals who requested that unmasking looked to me to be all individuals of senior national security stature who had responsibilities and would have had a valid reason for requesting access to this information. This is absolutely, 100 percent politics, and really in the current environment, given what's going on in the country, I think is really a disgraceful abuse of the declassification system and an unfair disparaging of the intelligence community process."
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