Sciutto Continues to Defend Rice: ‘Unmasking Is Not Unusual; It’s Not Illegal’

EXCERPT:

SCIUTTO: "One, unmasking is not unusual. Senior national security officials do that to better understand the information behind intelligence reports they receive every day. It is not illegal. There are protocols put in place, particularly since 9/11 to allow this to happen. And it can’t happen on the orders of one official. You have to ask the intelligence communities, specifically the NSA in this case for permission to unmask those names and it is the intelligence committee that makes a judgment as to whether that is appropriate. And these requests are meticulously logged so it can't happen in the dark. And finally, unmasking does not mean revealing or leaking. That information is shared between the briefer and the national security intelligence official. What we don’t know is were those identities unmasked and then leaked by Rice or others. We don’t know that. It is possible. But with the information we have now, we don’t know that to be true."