Wednesday 5 April 2017

and i would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids

Exactly one month after the addled accusation that the former US president was wire-tapping Dear Leader during the campaign, it is beginning to make sense—although it’s just another diversionary-tacit—how the baselessness was defended by characterising news as fake “but the leaks are real.”
When the intelligence service conduct surveillance on foreign agents—it being well established that America spies on friend and foe alike—sometimes, often American parties in on the conversation are intercepted in the process. In all cases the identities of the speakers of this collaterally collected conversation is duly redacted in the transcription and are anonymised. Requesting to reveal a name—with justification and truly on a need-to-know basis—is called unmasking. The then US national security director—and it’s impossible to find a reporting source that does not couch the interview with editorial—acknowledged the procedural jargon and protocols while denying any political motivation or leaking any of the intelligence over-reach to the press. This refutation seems perfectly plausible since Dear Leader’s paranoia and continuous fugue state had already confirmed everyone’s suspicions without the need for leaking anything.