“blogger Mike Cernovich, best known for promoting the bogus story that a Washington, D.C. pizza parlor was a nest of pedophiles connected to Hillary Clinton, claimed she had sought to "unmask" Trump campaign aides.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/susan-rice-speaks-out-unmasking-accusations-i-leaked-nothing-nobody-n742486

”Long a favorite target of the Republicans, Rice was plunged into controversy after blogger Mike Cernovich, best known for promoting the bogus story that a Washington, D.C. pizza parlor was a nest of pedophiles connected to Hillary Clinton, claimed she had sought to "unmask" Trump campaign aides.

Later Bloomberg View columnist Eli Lake picked up the tale. Citing anonymous "U.S. officials familiar with the matter," Lake reported Monday that the former national security adviser "requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign."“

”"The pattern of Rice's requests was discovered in a National Security Council review of the government's policy on 'unmasking' the identities of individuals in the U.S. who are not targets of electronic eavesdropping, but whose communications are collected incidentally," Lake wrote.

Trump-friendly news outlets like Fox News and Breitbart quickly jumped on the story as possible evidence to back up the president's "wiretapping" claims.

In an interview with Fox News after the Rice interview, Lake said she "didn't really answer that question about whether she unmasked in many, in dozens of instances, the names of people who would be in the Trump transition." “

”NBC has learned that Rice didn't — and couldn't — "order" the unmasking of any American because only the agencies that gathered the surveillance (usually the NSA or FBI) can make that call and the process is subject to rules and reviewed by lawyers.

The bar is high too because there has to be a legitimate intelligence reason to justify identifying the person or persons“