Why me? Obama aide Susan Rice hints she's the victim of sexism and racism for being at center of 'unmasking' storm
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4648898/Susan-Rice-talks-unmasking-blame.html#ixzz4lOyKqZkg
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Susan Rice, the Obama administration official blamed for the 'unmasking' of Michael Flynn and others on intelligence reports, aired out some theories to New York Magazine as to why she became the one to blame.
'Let me put it this way,' she said. 'I do not leap to the simple explanation that it's only about race and gender. I'm trying to keep theories to myself until I'm ready to come out with them. It's not because I don't have any.'
But she does hint that her race and gender played a role.
'I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. What do you think?' she asked the magazine reporter.
Scribe Michael Tomasky mentions Benghazi, the embassy attack that haunted Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, though not as much as the former secretary of state's emails, where Rice started becoming a household name.
'And why me? Why not Jay Carney, for example, who was then our press secretary, who stood up more?' Rice mused.
Tomasky points out in the piece that Carney isn't an African-American woman and asks Rice, President Obama's national security adviser, if she credits that for the 'disproportionate amount of scrutiny she’s gotten?'
'I don't know,' she replied. 'I'm not being a smartass when I say I've given this a lot of thought and I'm trying to understand it better.'
'All that stuff happened while I was a sitting public servant. I perhaps mistakenly assumed that once I was no longer a sitting public servant, and a private citizen minding my own business and trying to go to my daughter’s soccer games with more regularity, that I would not be of interest to these folks,' she continued.
'Um ... silly me,' she added. 'So this has prompted me to really try and get underneath that question.'
But that hasn't been the case.
In April, she was named as the Obama official who asked for names to be 'unmasked' in security reports, names that, because they belonged to American citizens, would normally be shielded.
Since Flynn's name leaked out to the media, those on the right jumped up and pointed to Rice suggesting she must have been the source.
Rice has denied the allegation.
'I leaked nothing, to nobody, and never have and never would,' she told NBC's Andrea Mitchell.
In her interview with New York, she pointed to women like Clinton and Condoleezza Rice, who have also had a rough time in the press.
The other Rice, she said, 'took a lot of stuff. Not, frankly, I don't think, to the same extend I have, but that was ad hominem.'
Never mind that Rice has lied at every turn and now her problems are a result of racism and sexism.