Susan Rice: Allegations that Obama administration politicized intelligence 'absolutely false'

Former national security adviser Susan Rice on Tuesday denied accusations from critics that she sought for political purposes the identities of officials on Donald Trump's transition team who were swept up in intelligence reports.

“The allegation is that somehow Obama administration officials utilized intelligence for political purposes,” Rice told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “That’s absolutely false.”


Several news outlets reported Monday that while Rice was in the White House, she requested that the names of Trump transition team officials be "unmasked" in some intelligence reports. Americans whose communications are incidentally captured in surveillance of others are generally not named unless their identities are specifically requested, which is referred to as unmasking.

Conservative critics questioned whether she did so for political reasons, such as to spy on the Trump team, allegations that Rice flatly denied on Tuesday.

The reports came after Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the communications of some Trump transition officials appeared to have been incidentally picked up by U.S. intelligence officials last year. Nunes said it seemed to be legal surveillance, which suggests the transition officials may have been speaking to foreigners who were under surveillance by the United States.

Nunes said, however, that the Trump officials had been identified, or unmasked, in the intelligence reports he saw.

Rice said it was normal for national security officials to at times request that some identities be unmasked in order to fully understand intelligence reports. She said requesting a person's identity be unmasked is not the same as making it public.

“The notion that ... some people are trying to suggest, that by asking for the identity of an American person, that is the same as leaking it, is completely false,” she added. “There's no equivalence between so-called unmasking and leaking. The effort to ask for the identity of the American citizen is necessary to understand the importance of an intelligence report in some instances.”