James Clapper’s ‘least untruthful’ answer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ruth-marcus-james-clappers-least-untruthful-answer/2013/06/13/decb0c56-d467-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html
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Did Clapper lie? I want to leave it at that, Wyden demurred. Then he added, pointedly: You cannot have strong oversight if intelligence officials dont give you straight answers.
And that is the paradox the fallacy, even of congressional oversight in the post-9/11 environment.
President Obama has assured the public that Congress had been fully briefed on these programs. Yet, for the most part, lawmakers must face down intelligence officials, and assess their urgent claims of national security, without the benefit of expert staff. In this way, Congress can serve more as useful cover for the executive branch than a true check on it.
Once briefed, lawmakers are captives of their classified knowledge: They cannot disclose what they have been told. Thus, Wyden found himself asking questions to which he surely knew the answer, and was reduced to warning obliquely, as he did in 2011, that when the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry.