James Clapper Defends ‘Routine’ Unmasking After Appearing in Flynn List: It Was ‘Appropriate and Legitimate’

Former Director for National Intelligence James Clapper defended himself on Thursday after his name appeared on the list of Obama administration officials who “unmasked” Michael Flynn.

The unmasking of President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser has been wielded as proof that his predecessor’s administration conspired against him. Flynn drew the attention of U.S. intelligence because of his contacts with Russian officials, and plead guilty to lying to to investigators about those contacts — though the case has now been dropped by the Justice Department.

Clapper currently works as a national security analyst for CNN. When John Berman brought him onto New Day for an interview, the CNN host led the discussion by condemning the “fundamentally dishonest” phraseology from critics accusing Obama officials of deliberately going after Flynn.

As Clapper explained the process of unmasking, he insisted that he did not know Flynn would be the one who would be identified as the U.S. person on the other end of the conversation with a “known, validated target.” Clapper acknowledged “it’s possible that the context may have suggested that,” but “if I had known that, there wouldn’t have been a need to ask. But no, you don’t know that in advance.”

The interview continued with Clapper calling the unmasking process “a routine thing. It’s appropriate and legitimate.”

“When you have a valid foreign intelligence target engaging with a U.S. person, is it — for example — an insider, someone in the government engaging with that foreign adversary. It’s important from the point of potential jeopardy to national security that you understand what’s going on.”

Clapper noted “the general concern about the number of engagements with Russians that we were seeing happening,” especially from people connected to Trump. When asked if no requests for unmasking should have happened without evidence of collusion, Clapper said there could have been “other reasons why you would unmask.”

“Whether it was collusion or what, what you’re trying to determine, does this pose a threat to national security,” he said.

Watch above, via CNN.