advance what the saudis are trying to do. bill: let s talk about samantha power. former u.s. ambassador to the u.n. you were one as well. when this issue comes up in front of james comey on thursday, why is the question about why she requested the unmasking of american names potentially so important, if indeed it happened? it s rare to ask for a name to be unmasked in an intelligence report and you have to have a good reason for it. and if it is a good reason, it s normally approved. if it s for a political person that is completely illegitimate. she wouldn t ask nsa to unmask a name for a political purpose. it would be for something else. there are good records of these requests and what action was taken. if in her case or susan rice s case or anybody else s case there is a political pattern here it s a serious abuse of power. bill: did you ever ask for the unmasking of a name when you were in that position? not when i was u.n.
have to arm up to confront north korea. china doesn t want that. unstable north korea could push refugees over the border in china from north korea. they have an interest in improving stability. if president trump is the negotiator he says he is, he will sit down with the chinese leader and say we will condemn what north korea is doing and tell the world what we are going to do about it. i want to ask about the russian meddling into the election as well as the allegations of ties to mr. trump s campaign. you know, the trump white house says the real story here is about leaking and is about the unmasking of american names. it is about whatever national security adviser susan rice did. do think susan rice did something wrong? look, we should investigate it. there s an allegation that she was talking about names of people connected with the trump transition. i don t know if that is true or not. get to the bottom of it. alisyn, that does not obscure
the obama administration allowed sharing of all kinds of intel that had never been shared before so these people their names would have been all over the place. that s what i can deduce from this. right. and this presumably is what house intelligence chairman devin nunes was talking about or looking at. so there s anything here and the precise form we don t know. it s conceivable susan rice could have had legitimate intelligence purpose for unmasking the names. it would be very interesting to find out what that legitimate purpose was. it s also the case, bill, devin nunes said the information he saw that indicated the unmasking did not have to do with russia. so this is a bill: you would think an incoming administration would be talking to foreign leaders and talking to people trying to set
appropriately. bill: we ll never know. the current fbi director may know. bill: the senate and house will be all over this. this story is starting to explode dwarfing the russian thing because the russia thing s going on for a while and there s no evidence. even schiff the ranking democrat he didn t say that but came close. this means we ll have dual-track investigations in both houses at a minimum and the whole question of the gathering of intel surveillance and unmasking of american names will be a significant part.
president trump this morning tweeted the revelation was amazing but has not yet been confirmed as true. joining us now is bret hume. you may tell everybody the fox news report is based on anonymous sources. that makes me uneasy but houseley is a good reporter and now john roberts is getting the same information. and eli lake at bloomberg has the story and susan rice has not responded. if this not the case the consensus is she d be quick to say so so we can t conclude it s real deal but there s real efforts and confirms of surveillance and unmasking is a