U.S. intelligence agencies picked up communications involving members of the Trump transition team late last year and reports of the conversations were circulated within the government, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said Wednesday.

"I recently confirmed that on numerous occasions, the intelligence community collected information on U.S. individuals involved in the Trump transition," Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare) told reporters.

The eavesdropping appears to have been legal and inadvertently picked up Trump associates because they were communicating with individuals under government surveillance, Nunes suggested.

The surveillance was apparently unrelated to an ongoing FBI counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump campaign aides coordinated with Russian intelligence agencies that sought to interfere in the 2016 presidential race, Nunes said.

"Details about U.S. persons involved in the incoming administration with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value were widely disseminated in intelligence community reports," he said.

Under the law, identities of Americans whose communications are picked up by intelligence eavesdropping of foreign targets are supposed to be kept confidential unless the conversations relate to espionage or some other potential crime that warrants further investigation.

FBI Director James B. Comey and National Security Agency Director Adm. Michael Rogers testified to Nunes' committee on Monday that they had "no information" to back up President Trump's claims in several tweets this month that President Obama had ordered wiretaps against him.

Nunes and other Republicans used the five-hour hearing to argue that leaks of classified information, especially those involving U.S. surveillance, were a threat to national security and should be prosecuted.

They repeatedly cited the case of Michael Flynn, who was ousted as Trump's national security advisor last month after news reports disclosed that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about phone conversations with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.

The calls were picked up by U.S. surveillance targeting the Russian envoy, and a description of the contents were leaked to the Washington Post after the Justice Department warned the White House that Flynn could be subject to blackmail.

Nunes said "sources," whom he did not identify, provided him the information about communications intercepts involving Trump transition members.

Copyright © 2017, Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-nunes-surveillance-htmlstory.html