The intelligence committees, not the Obama admin, withheld information from members of Congress
According to these statements, the administration provided key information to Congress that wasn't shared with all members.
Former Wyden staffer:
EK: All this would seem to make the intelligence committee very weak as an oversight vehicle.
JH: When things are public, you in the press can conduct oversight. But can you imagine if the administration said we won’t tell you how the Affordable Care Act is working? You just have to trust us? There’d be an uproar. But the intelligence committee is one of the only bodies in government with the authority to conduct oversight over the intelligence world. And since 9/11, there’s an understandable fear that terrorist attacks happen. Nobody wants to have done anything to be responsible for that. Every time TSA says they don’t want to look for knives anymore because it slows them down, no member of Congress wants to be on the record for voting for something that might someday help someone hijack a plane. Because of that fear members of Congress often abdicate their oversight role.
The Obama administration says any member of Congress could look at these documents. Yes, the intelligence committee knew, and members could go into the intelligence committee room and read the documents. But they couldn’t bring staff, they couldn’t take notes, they couldn’t consult outside legal scholars. They could only talk to the government which would, surprise, tell them it was great.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/07/the-intelligence-committee-cant-tell-you-what-theyre-not-telling-you/
On June 19, Grayson wrote to the House Intelligence Committee requesting several documents relating to media accounts about the NSA. Included among them were FISA court opinions directing the collection of telephone records for Americans, as well as documents relating to the PRISM program.
But just over four weeks later, the Chairman of the Committee, GOP Rep. Mike Rogers, wrote to Grayson informing him that his requests had been denied by a Committee "voice vote".
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/04/congress-nsa-denied-access
Intelligence committee withheld key file before critical NSA vote, Amash claims
Justin Amash, the Michigan Republican whose effort to defund the NSA's mass phone-records collection exposed deep congressional discomfort with domestic spying, said the House intelligence committee never allowed legislators outside the panel to see a 2011 document that described the surveillance in vague terms.
The document, a classified summary of the bulk phone records collection effort justified under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, was declassified by the Obama administration in late July.
The Justice Department and intelligence agencies prepared it for Congress before a 2011 vote to reauthorize the Patriot Act, and left it for the intelligence committees in Congress to make the document available to their colleagues.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/12/intelligence-committee-nsa-vote-justin-amash
= new reply since forum marked as read
Get'm Obama 
influencing the Intelligence Committees to withhold information as much as possible. It's just a coincidence that the Intel Committees and all of the administration (President, NSA, DoJ, FISA court, FBI, Homeland Security, DEA, etc.) all happen to be such big advocates of total secrecy and violating the 4th Amendment? Of course that didn't come from Obama setting policy, or anything, because we all know that he doesn't have the power to do anything at all. And of course his policies didn't come from humoring the very same big lobbying contractors that also payoff the members of the Intel Committees. Nah, couldn't happen. 
Got it. It's "the other guy is guilty too" defense. So what? They're both just as guilty.
Here's a thought. 
All three branches of government could right now declassify all the documents our Representatives and Senators and privacy advocates have been requesting and suing for, so that the public and Congress and the press can do the oversight which the Constitution requires. That oversight is part of the "checks and balances" which are necessary to our system of government.
We don't have a Constitution which mandates rule by a few in secrecy, in case you didn't notice. Yet that is what we have now and that must change. That is not optional.
