A new report from CNN, citing US congressional and law enforcement and US and European intelligence sources, suggests that some of what Napolitano claimed back in March was right.
Here’s what Napolitano claimed:
Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command. He didn’t use the NSA, he didn’t use the CIA, he didn’t use the FBI, and he didn’t use the Department of Justice.
He used GCHQ… They have 24/7 access to the NSA database. So by simply having two people go to them saying ‘President Obama needs transcripts of conversations involving candidate Trump, conversations involving President Elect Trump’, he’s able to get it.
And there’s no American fingerprints on this.
The CNN article affirms that intelligence on Trump did in fact come from the GCHQ:
British and other European intelligence agencies intercepted communications between associates of Donald Trump and Russian officials and other Russian individuals during the campaign and passed on those communications to their US counterparts, US congressional and law enforcement and US and European intelligence sources tell CNN.
The communications were captured during routine surveillance of Russian officials and other Russians known to western intelligence. British and European intelligence agencies, including GCHQ, the British intelligence agency responsible for communications surveillance, were not proactively targeting members of the Trump team but rather picked up these communications during what’s known as “incidental collection,” these sources tell CNN.
The European intelligence agencies detected multiple communications over several months between the Trump associates and Russian individuals — and passed on that intelligence to the US. The US and Britain are part of the so-called “Five Eyes” agreement (along with Canada, Australia and New Zealand), which calls for open sharing among member nations of a broad range of intelligence.
The communications are likely to be scrutinized as part of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russia’s efforts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.
What this report doesn’t validate is Napolitano’s claim that Obama actually asked for the intel in order to circumvent US intelligence agencies.
Napolitano could still be right about all of it, but we don’t know that yet. Either way, it looks like he’s at least partially vindicated.