Was Susan Rice alluding to keeping unlawful surveillance of Trump campaign a secret during transition?

Sharyl Attkisson:
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“From a national security perspective, however, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia,” writes Rice.

The next part of the email is classified. Yet, taken by itself, Rice appears to be saying that Obama suggested the outgoing administration withhold information from the lawfully elected incoming administration — for national security reasons. Could that mean they were devising rationales to keep Trump officials from learning about the controversial surveillance practices they had used against Trump associates?

It’s unclear why Rice would have decided to record her version of events weeks later, in an email to herself, moments after Trump became president. Republican Sens. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) sent a letter to Rice’s attorney yesterday asking for an explanation of the “odd” email.

Last fall, it was discovered that Rice was one Obama official involved in the controversial practice of “unmasking” names of political figures whose communications were captured “incidentally” during government surveillance. Rice has insisted she had legitimate reasons for doing so.

Government surveillance of U.S. citizens is strictly regulated because it’s such an invasive privacy intrusion. Even when their communications are “incidentally” captured as part of a legal wiretap on a legitimate national security target, the U.S. citizens’ names are supposed to be hidden or “masked” from others inside the intelligence agencies. “Unmaskings” are supposed to be rare and legally justified through a carefully vetted processes. The surveillance and unmasking of political figures or journalists was normally considered especially sensitive by intelligence analysts and something usually avoided so they wouldn’t appear to be improperly spying on Americans for political reasons.
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The unmaskings led to Mike Flynn's losing his job for engaging in normal transition activities by communicating with teh Russian ambassador.  But that was no a one-off deal.  We still do not know why Samatha Posers was doing wholesale unmaskings from her job at the UN.

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