Forget G. Gordon Liddy and the White House plumbers of Watergate days. If you're looking for a my-president-right-or-wrong apparatchik in the grand tradition of the Soviet Union, willing to do anything for her leader, look no further than former national security adviser
Susan Elizabeth Rice.
Rice, who evidently
exploited the world's most technically advanced intelligence agency, the NSA, for similar purposes (spying on the opposition), has made Liddy
et al seem like primitives. Apparently, the former Obama adviser was the one who "requested to unmask the names of Trump transition officials caught up in surveillance." The final unmaskings took place in January, days before Trump's inauguration. (
Eli Lake at Bloomberg,
Adam Housley and John Roberts at Fox, and Sara Carter and John Solomon at
Circa have reported this story in only slightly varying ways.)
Failing some extraordinary explanation (so far Rice isn't talking), the onetime national security adviser exhibited an arrogance that once again proves
Lord Acton's famous apothegm: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Rice undoubtedly believed she was undertaking her sub rosa, possibly felonious, activities for a greater good, but in reality she has been undermining the very basis of our democratic republic in a manner calling forth another quote from the
19th century British lord: “End justifies the means. This is still the most widespread of all the opinions inimical to liberty.” That Rice was able to prevaricate so casually during a recent PBS interview, claiming she
"knew nothing" about the unmaskings of Trump officials when she had instigated them, proves Acton right yet again and exposes the "ends justify the means" mentality as Rice's default position.
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