STRONG TITLE, BUT IF YOU HAVE SEEN CLAPPER'S TESTIMONY, HE SHOWS ALL OF THE SIGNS OF LYING AND CANNOT KEEP A SECRET WHEN HIS JOB AS DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE SHOULD BE A JOB IN WHICH THE GATE KEEPER, THE KEEPER OF ALL OF THE SECRETS, SHOULD BE ABLE TO LIE AND DECEIVE WITH EASE. OF COURSE, HE IS AS SQUIRMY AS A MOUSE ABOUT TO BE EATEN BY A CAT. OBAMA CANNOT COVER IT UP ANY LONGER. TAKE A LOOK...
Clapper under fire for suggesting no knowledge of fed's massive phone, email collecting
Published June 11, 2013
FoxNews.com
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is under fire for statements he made before Congress that suggested he had no knowledge about federal government programs that collected data on millions of Americans’ phone calls and Internet activities.
In March, Clapper said at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing that he was not aware that the National Security Agency was involved in such large-scale efforts.
The questioning of Clapper’s statements follow blockbuster news last week that the federal government has since 9/11 been logging millions, perhaps billions, of calls and Internet activities and as the NSA’s top official goes before the same Senate committee for a closed-door briefing on the issue.
"Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Oregon Republican Sen. Ron Wyden asked Clapper at the March 12 hearing.
"No, sir," Clapper responded.
"It does not?" Wyden pressed.
Clapper recanted and said: "Not wittingly. There are cases where they could, inadvertently perhaps, collect -- but not wittingly."
Wyden, one of the staunchest critics of government surveillance programs, said Tuesday that Clapper did not give him a straight answer and called for hearings to discuss the two recently-revealed NSA programs that collect billions of telephone numbers and Internet usage daily.
Wyden was also among a group of senators who introduced legislation Tuesday to force the government to declassify opinions of a secret court that authorizes the surveillance.
"The American people have the right to expect straight answers from the intelligence leadership to the questions asked by their representatives," Wyden said in a statement.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/11/clapper-under-fire-for-hill-testimony-suggested-didnt-know-about-fed-massive/?intcmp=trending#ixzz2VvTToG7G
REGARDING THE FOLLOWING VIDEO...
Published on Jun 8, 2013
6/7/13 - By Michael Isikoff - National Investigative Correspondent, NBC News - The National Security Agency has at times mistakenly intercepted the private email messages and phone calls of Americans who had no link to terrorism, requiring Justice Department officials to report the errors to a secret national security court and destroy the data, according to two former U.S. intelligence officials. At least some of the phone calls and emails were pulled from among the hundreds of millions stored by telecommunications companies as part of an NSA surveillance program. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, Thursday night publicly acknowledged what he called "a sensitive intelligence collection program" after its existence was disclosed by the Guardian newspaper. Ret. Adm. Dennis Blair, who served as President Obama's DNI in 2009 and 2010, told NBC News that, in one instance in 2009, analysts entered a phone number into agency computers and "put one digit wrong," and mined a large volume of information about Americans with no connection to terror. The matter was reported to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, whose judges required that all the data be destroyed, he said.
Another former senior official, who asked not to be identified, confirmed Blair's recollection and said the incident created serious problems for the Justice Department, which represents the NSA before the federal judges on the secret court.
The judges "were really upset about this," said the former official. As a result, Attorney General Eric Holder pledged to the judges that the intelligence agencies would take steps to correct the problem as a condition of renewing the NSA's surveillance program.
The Justice Department publicly confirmed to the New York Times in April 2009 that Holder had taken "comprehensive steps" to correct a problem in NSA collection after it "detected issues that raised concerns." But department officials declined to discuss details about what was described at the time as the "over-collection" of information.
In another instance that was made public in July 2012, a U.S. intelligence official acknowledged in a letter to Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon that "on at least one occasion" the national security court found that "some collection" by the intellligence community "was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment" to the U.S. Constitution. The official also wrote that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence believed that the government's collection of information "has sometimes circumvented the spirit of the law" and that "on at least one occasion" the national security court had "reached this same conclusion."
Blair declined to say how many times the NSA had had to report the improper collection of information to the court, but indicated it had happened more than once. A spokesman for current DNI Clapper declined comment.
The 2009 incident that Blair described may shed light on an exchange between Clapper and Sen. Ron Wyden, D.-Ore., at a March hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Asked by Wyden, "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Clapper replied, "Not wittingly. There are cases where they could, inadvertently perhaps collect-but not wittingly."
Related story
Obama: 'Nobody is listening to your telephone calls'
Blair drew a distinction between the "collection" or mining of data on specific U.S. citizens by NSA and the massive trove of phone call information that was turned over to the NSA under a negotiated agreement among intelligence officials, the telecommunications companies and the FISA judges. The purpose of the FISA order was to store information in the event that U.S. intelligence agencies need to access it after getting specific intelligence that somebody in the U.S. might be tied to terrorism. It is only at that point, he explained, that the NSA goes back to the court to get permission to mine or "collect" the data.
But the intelligence community's distinction between "storing" and "collecting" data does not satisfy privacy and civil liberties advocates. "They are playing games," said Cindy Cohn, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is suing U.S. phone companies over their cooperation with the NSA. Of the improper collection acknowledged by Blair, she said, "Who knows how many times this has happened?" Meanwhile, a newly empowered federal civil liberties board is asking for a classified briefing "as soon as possible' on U.S. intelligence surveillance programs that have collected hundreds of millions of phone records as well as emails and other content from Internet service providers.
Another former senior official, who asked not to be identified, confirmed Blair's recollection and said the incident created serious problems for the Justice Department, which represents the NSA before the federal judges on the secret court.
The judges "were really upset about this," said the former official. As a result, Attorney General Eric Holder pledged to the judges that the intelligence agencies would take steps to correct the problem as a condition of renewing the NSA's surveillance program.
The Justice Department publicly confirmed to the New York Times in April 2009 that Holder had taken "comprehensive steps" to correct a problem in NSA collection after it "detected issues that raised concerns." But department officials declined to discuss details about what was described at the time as the "over-collection" of information.
In another instance that was made public in July 2012, a U.S. intelligence official acknowledged in a letter to Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon that "on at least one occasion" the national security court found that "some collection" by the intellligence community "was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment" to the U.S. Constitution. The official also wrote that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence believed that the government's collection of information "has sometimes circumvented the spirit of the law" and that "on at least one occasion" the national security court had "reached this same conclusion."
Blair declined to say how many times the NSA had had to report the improper collection of information to the court, but indicated it had happened more than once. A spokesman for current DNI Clapper declined comment.
The 2009 incident that Blair described may shed light on an exchange between Clapper and Sen. Ron Wyden, D.-Ore., at a March hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Asked by Wyden, "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Clapper replied, "Not wittingly. There are cases where they could, inadvertently perhaps collect-but not wittingly."
Related story
Obama: 'Nobody is listening to your telephone calls'
Blair drew a distinction between the "collection" or mining of data on specific U.S. citizens by NSA and the massive trove of phone call information that was turned over to the NSA under a negotiated agreement among intelligence officials, the telecommunications companies and the FISA judges. The purpose of the FISA order was to store information in the event that U.S. intelligence agencies need to access it after getting specific intelligence that somebody in the U.S. might be tied to terrorism. It is only at that point, he explained, that the NSA goes back to the court to get permission to mine or "collect" the data.
But the intelligence community's distinction between "storing" and "collecting" data does not satisfy privacy and civil liberties advocates. "They are playing games," said Cindy Cohn, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is suing U.S. phone companies over their cooperation with the NSA. Of the improper collection acknowledged by Blair, she said, "Who knows how many times this has happened?" Meanwhile, a newly empowered federal civil liberties board is asking for a classified briefing "as soon as possible' on U.S. intelligence surveillance programs that have collected hundreds of millions of phone records as well as emails and other content from Internet service providers.
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