Comment on Former CIA Director: 'Now we know' why Trump officials talking to the Russians may have been 'unmasked'

REUTERS/Kevin LamarqueMichael Hayden, the former director of the NSA and the CIA, told CNN on Saturday that the reported content of Jared Kushner's conversations with Russia's ambassador in December may have motivated former national security adviser Susan Rice to request his name to be unmasked in intelligence reports. Most of the controversy surrounding Rice's reported attempts to "unmask" Trump officials has centered on former national security adviser Michael Flynn's communications with Russian officials. But Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a top White House adviser, floated the possibility of setting up a secure line of communication between the Trump transition team and Russia when he met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak late last year, The Washington Post reported Friday. Those talks would take place in Russian diplomatic facilities in the US, the Post said, creating a secure line that would essentially conceal the administration's interactions with Russian officials from US government scrutiny. Kislyak reportedly passed along that request to Moscow, in a phone call that was promptly intercepted by US intelligence agencies during their routine eavesdropping of foreign agents on US soil.