{"id":10052,"date":"2017-04-07T06:26:47","date_gmt":"2017-04-07T13:26:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=10052"},"modified":"2017-04-07T10:20:37","modified_gmt":"2017-04-07T17:20:37","slug":"the-millstones-of-the-gods-grind-late-but-they-grind-fine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-millstones-of-the-gods-grind-late-but-they-grind-fine\/","title":{"rendered":"The Millstones of the Gods Grind Late, but They Grind Fine . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

The Corner: The one and only.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review<\/em><\/p>\n

The latest disclosures that former Obama national-security adviser Susan Rice may have requested that intelligence agencies reveal or \u201cunmask\u201d those from the Trump team who were surveilled in purportedly normal intelligence gathering \u2014 and that such requests may have extended over an apparently considerable period of time \u2014 remind us that at some point there is always an accounting.<\/p>\n

Rice\u2019s past serial and shameless untruths about the tragic deaths at Benghazi (a 2012 Obama re-election \u201cal-Qaeda on the run\u201d narrative, with a supposedly spontaneous riot over a YouTube video as the cause of the attack) were contextualized by the media and eventually vaporized. Her sad \u201chonor and distinction\u201d narrative about the Bowe Bergdahl betrayal of his comrades \u2014 the infamous purported \u201cprisoner of war\u201d \u201ccaptured on the battlefield\u201d fabrication \u2014 was intended to mask what was otherwise a dishonest and terrible hostage swap for someone who had endangered the lives of his fellow soldiers. Recently, she has denied all knowledge of what House Intelligence chairman Devin Nunes had been fighting to uncover, and has even tweeted periodically to criticize the purported ethical lapses and unprofessionalism of the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

All that is a lot for even the gods to grind. If, as likely, she had access to, or requested, such raw data, and sent it, with names illegally unmasked, to primary players of the Obama administration (e.g., Clapper, Brennan, Rhodes, etc.), that fact would blow up some heretofore denials of any knowledge of such skullduggery and perhaps become the greatest presidential scandal of the last half century.<\/p>\n

The Rice revelation might also put into the proper landscape the following: a) the astounding self-confessionals of Hillary adviser Evelyn Farkas about her frantic efforts to convince Obama operatives to increase intelligence gathering and to leak the information to the press (what gave a former mid-level Department of Defense employee the presumption that she could influence the intelligence operations of the U.S. government?), b) the unprecedented eleventh-hour Obama effort to broaden access to classified data to spread and leak such unmasked individuals, c) the political and media landmines that Representative Nunes (facing \u201ckill the messenger\u201d efforts to kill the message) had to navigate around and the character assassination to which he has been subjected, d) why the Russian-collusion narrative, denied by intelligence chiefs, has become the necessary distraction \u2014 first, to steer attention away from the improper leaking and surveillance, and, second, to be used to offer pseudo-moral equivalence to stop further investigation: as if Russian collusion is the bookend to unmasking Trump; as if Nunes is the mirror-image of Representative Adam Schiff, to achieve an impasse of \u201cso let\u2019s just call it even and quit the entire mess and \u2018move on.\u2019\u201d e) the relative silence of former president and \u201cconstitutional law professor\u201d Barack Obama.<\/p>\n

What will be most interesting will be two corollary inquiries: 1) We need to know when, why, and how the White House put such unmasked data illegally into the hands of the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, etc. perhaps initially to smear the Trump campaign (will the same reporters who ran with the \u201cTrump frolicking in Moscow\u201d collusion narratives now reboot and run with the true story?), and later the Trump transition and presidency; and 2) were these unmasked individuals really incidentally picked up data from surveilled foreigners \u2014 or, in fact, were they the primary targets of monitoring all along, with supposedly preplanned surveillance of foreign operators acting as cover?<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/corner\/446417\/susan-rice-unmasking-trump-associates-allegations<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Corner: The one and only. By Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review The latest disclosures that former Obama national-security adviser Susan Rice may have requested that intelligence agencies reveal or \u201cunmask\u201d those from the Trump team who were surveilled in purportedly normal intelligence gathering \u2014 and that such requests may have extended over an apparently […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1092,375,145,846,116,285,187,46,185,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2C8","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9769,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/its-no-revelation-that-intelligence-agencies-are-politicized\/","url_meta":{"origin":10052,"position":0},"title":"It\u2019s No Revelation That Intelligence Agencies Are Politicized","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 19, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review Trump is acknowledging a fact that recent history has repeatedly demonstrated. Furor has arisen over President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s charges that our intelligence agencies are politicized. Spare us the outrage. For decades, directors of intelligence agencies have often quite inappropriately massaged their assessments to fit\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11713,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/learning-to-love-the-deep-state\/","url_meta":{"origin":10052,"position":1},"title":"Learning to Love the Deep State","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 9, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review In the 1970s, the military officer corps and the top ranks of the CIA, DOJ, and FBI were, in the eyes of the Left, synonymous with\u00a0Seven Days in May\u2014 and\u00a0Manchurian Candidate\u2013like conspiracies. Yet in 2016, these same institutions had been recalibrated by progressives as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Donald Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/donald-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10620,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-lying-quartet\/","url_meta":{"origin":10052,"position":2},"title":"A Lying Quartet","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 27, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness Rarely has an intelligence apparatus engaged in systematic lying\u2014and chronic deceit about its lying\u2014both during and even after its tenure. Yet the Obama Administration\u2019s four top security and intelligence officials time and again engaged in untruth, as if peddling lies was part of their\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Comey"","block_context":{"text":"Comey","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/comey\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9733,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-trump-rumors\/","url_meta":{"origin":10052,"position":3},"title":"The Trump Rumors","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 12, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"\"The Corner\" by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review The breaking intelligence disclosures about Trump are so bizarre and self-contradictory that it seems wise not to speculate about anything until the entire story is properly sourced, especially since the documents were for-hire hit-pieces and have been peddled around for some time,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10079,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/10079-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":10052,"position":4},"title":"04\/10\/17 From an Angry Reader:\u2026","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 10, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"04\/10\/17 From an Angry Reader: Mr. Hanson \u2013 In your truly myopic article about the Russian\/Trump connections you point out the Democrats\u2019 contacts with Russians but you fail to make an apples and apples comparison. You don\u2019t mention BUSINESS and MONEY. You don\u2019t mention Trump making $50 million on a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9674,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/has-trump-nominated-too-many-military-leaders-or-not-enough\/","url_meta":{"origin":10052,"position":5},"title":"Has Trump Nominated Too Many Military Leaders\u2014Or Not Enough?","author":"Megan Ring","date":"December 15, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0By Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review Choosing military men for top cabinet spots is not unprecedented, nor is it foolish given how Washington insiders have performed. President-elect Donald Trump is being faulted for supposedly appointing too many retired generals to cabinet-level jobs and \u201cmilitarizing\u201d the government. Former lieutenant general Michael\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Jim Mattis"","block_context":{"text":"Jim Mattis","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/jim-mattis\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10052"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10052"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10069,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10052\/revisions\/10069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}