Clapper: I Am Not Aware Any Abuse of the Unmasking Process

Monday at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper denied any abuse of the “unmasking” process with regards to raw intelligence data.

After revealing that nearly 2,000 had been unmasked, Clapper denied making a request “for personal or political purposes or to voyeuristically look at raw intelligence” and also said he was aware of “any instance of such abuse by anyone else.”

Partial transcript as follows:

First, I want to address the meaning of quote, “unmasking,” which is an unofficial term that’s appeared frequently in the media in recent months and was often I think misused and misunderstand. So it frequently happens that in the course of conducting lawfully authorized electronic surveillance on validated foreign intelligence targets, the collecting agency picks up communications involving U.S. persons, either their direct interface with a validated foreign intelligence target or where there is discussion about those U.S. persons by validated foreign intelligence targets. Under intelligence community minimization procedures, the identities of these U.S. persons are typically masked in reports that go out to intelligence consumers and they’re referred to each report at a time as U.S. person one, U.S. person two, et cetera.

However, there are cases when, to fully understand the context of the communication that has been obtained or the threat that is posed, the consumer of that collected intelligence may ask the identity of the U.S. person be revealed. Such requests explain why the unmasking is necessary and that explanation is conveyed back to the agency that collected the information. It is then up to that agency whether to approve the request and to provide the identity. And if the U.S. person’s identity is revealed, that identity is provided only to the person who properly requested it, not to a broader audience. This process is subject to oversight and reporting, and in the interest of transparency, my former office publishes a report on the statistics of how many U.S. persons’ identities are unmasked based on collection that occurred under section 702 of the FISA Amendment Act, which I’ll speak to in a moment. And in 2016, that number was 1,934. On several occasions during my six and a half years as DNI, I requested the identity of U.S. persons to be revealed. In each such instance, I made these requests so I could fully understand the context of the communication and the potential threat being posed.

At no time did I ever submit a request for personal or political purposes or to voyeuristically look at raw intelligence nor am I aware of any instance of such abuse by anyone else.

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