Posted on 07/02/2013 2:02:32 PM PDT by jazusamo
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has apologized for a “clearly erroneous” statement he made to Congress over the National Security Agency’s surveillance activity.
In a letter to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) released publicly on Tuesday, Clapper said he was mistaken when he told Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) that the United States did not collect data on millions of Americans.
“My response was clearly erroneous — for which I apologize,” Clapper wrote in the letter dated June 21.
“While my staff acknowledged the error to Senator Wyden’s staff soon after the hearing, I can now openly correct it because the existence of the metadata collection program has been declassified,” Clapper said.
Clapper's statements at the March 12 Senate hearing have received enormous scrutiny ever since news stories revealed the NSA's telephone and Internet surveillance programs last month.
Clapper directly contradicted those stories in his comments on March 12.
"Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Wyden asked the intelligence director at the hearing.
"No, sir,” Clapper replied.
"There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly," he added.
Members of Congress, particularly Wyden, had criticized Clapper since the NSA programs became public, and he has been under pressure to offer an apology. His letter was posted on the DNI website on Tuesday.
Clapper said he was writing in part because of the "charged rhetoric and heated controversy" over his response, so he could "set the record straight."
Clapper wrote to Feinstein that he has “thought long and hard to re-create what went through my mind at the time.”
He said that he was faced with the challenge of giving an unclassified answer about intelligence activities, and he said he “simply didn’t think of Section 215 of the Patriot Act,” which contains provisions on the metadata collection detailed in the Guardian stories.
”Instead, my answer focused on the collection of the content of communications,’ he wrote, saying he was thinking about Section 702 of the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows the NSA to collect information on people reasonably believed to be outside the United States.
“That is why I added a comment about ‘inadvertent’ collection of U.S. person information, because that is what happens under Section 702 even though it is targeted at foreigners.”
You bet.
Our Feral Federal Government is a CANCER that is EATING ALL THE HEALTHY GOOD CELLS!! It’s INFESTED with LYING LIBERALS!!
Did you KNOW he was as DUMB AS A BAG OF ROCKS??
“My response was clearly erroneous.”
Yeah. How was he to know Snowden was going to go squirrel?
Putin should hand us back that RESET button ‘looks like you guys are gonna need it’
IOW: We set up collection devices, we paid people to sit there and listen, we collected the data but we didn't really know it at the time.
He knows most of America is that stupid and won't care.
Quick! Someone call Scooter Libby!
The interesting dynamic with all the CIA/NSA revelations is that everything they did was copacetic to conservatives during the Cold War, but now that they are understood as subverting the democracy we love and cherish by the Marxist in Chief, we see how granting SECRET powers to government institutions can rear up and bite us on the ass.
As long as America was a vehicle for the unfettered machinations of Wall St. and it’s links to the global oligarchy/aristocracy, their invisible hand control of our financial and intel institutions was tolerable. Now that the latter day version of that oligarchy is going into left fascist/enviro mode, America is now expendable and we are seeing a full on frontal assault upon the ethical state of being. We better wake up pronto or it’s game over. The Zimmerman show trial will be small fry compared to the legalistic pogroms to come. Try to keep in mind that “republicanism” was a movement to rid this planet of its various aristocracies and their spinoffs in finance and political intrigue.
The following website could be a game changer if enough republicans, conservatives and constitutionalists study its contents and put the conclusions to be drawn from it to action. Did I mention the part about action? The freeway overpass initiatives are excellent, but will soon be outlawed as a highway danger. Get creative. Take a page from the left’s guerilla theater tactics. They are effective and there is no leftist patent on their instigation. How many graffiti artists we got? How many Libertarian hackers? Let’s party!
http://www.ecofascism.com/article3.html
Sadly, yes. And the quintessential “kiss the butts above you, kick the teeth below you” careerist.
Sadly, yes. And the quintessential “kiss the butts above you, kick the teeth below you” careerist.
They are never held accountable.
While you are at, please list every other time you stated something erroneous to the representatives of the people of this united states.
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