President Trump orders new guidance on ‘unmasking’ requests

President Donald Trump is ordering the top US intelligence official to come up with a new policy for responding to requests from officials to “unmask” Americans in intelligence reports. President Trump signed a memorandum to Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats on Jan 9 directing him to develop and publicly release a policy that requires elements of the intelligence community to develop procedures for responding to such requests from government officials.  Specifically, the memo instructs Coats to within 30 days “issue and release publicly a policy requiring that each element of the Intelligence Community (IC) develop and maintain procedures for responding to requests from Federal, State, local, tribal, or territorial government officials for non-public identity information concerning known unconsenting United States persons that was originally omitted from disseminated intelligence reports.”