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It's unlikely they were feigning. Even the members of the house & senate intelligence committees do not get thorough and uniform access to intel. In the past,

It's unlikely they were feigning. Even the members of the house & senate intelligence committees do not get thorough and uniform access to intel. In the past, those members of the political party that is out of power have been routinely excluded from agency briefings and documents. In practice, the fraction of these two committees that is well informed about the agency's current activities is likely to be very small. And after the undeniable perjured testimony of Clapper before congress denying all NSA spying on civilians, and subsequent failure by Justice to prosecute or even investigate Clapper et al, the likelihood that anyone will know what NSA or CIA actually does (unless they live at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, that is) is effectively nil.

vibrio 9y ago
which is even more concerning considering reports of how the current resident of 1600 assesses intelligence.
cmurf 9y ago
This is silly. The DNI takes an oath to keep state secrets a secret. He then takes an oath to tell the truth to Congress in an open session, which is itself an oxymoron when discussing a huge bulk of the national intelligence apparatus because we demand so much secrecy around every damn thing. How do you have an open session and not pretty much immediately invite some sort oath violation? It's the dumbest fucking thing in the first place but we like to play pretend to be open while simultaneously having metric f tons of state secrets. There's a very long list of people who have appeared before Congress and lied under oath, and not referred for undeniable perjury charges. And they do not have the president of the United States giving them a defacto pass by saying Clapper was caught between a rock and a hard place. There is no f'n goddamn way Clapper was ever going to be charged with perjury. It's the dumbest line of logic, you need to go backwards in time to have this argument. It has nothing to do with Clapper. Go point a finger at people like Cheney and Feinstein if you want to whine about the massively neurotic security state. And the idea you're going to find out jack shit about what's going on at CIA or NSA by charging Clapper with perjury is pure stupidity. If you want to know what happens at NSA and CIA, you need a society, in large numbers, who aren't paranoid and servile, and won't elect paranoid and servile representatives, who then accept the creation of a paranoid control freak surveillance state. We have what we have as a reflection of who we are, in particular those who do not participate. That's exactly how you get this kind of result.
- randcraw 9y ago
  It's common practice for anyone called to testify before congress to request a closed session if they believe their testimony will violate their oath of secrecy. Clapper did not. Instead he testified before open congress and lied, which was unnecessary, unless he was guilty of the charges in question -- knowingly directing NSA staff to spy on Americans, which the NSA's charter explicitly disallows. Therefore Clapper deliberately misled authorities in order to escape prosecution for a crime. That is the very definition of perjury.
  - cmurf 9y ago
    Go kick rocks. You've contributed zero new information, you haven't progressed your argument beyond pettiness. And the idea someone can deliberately mislead authorities to escape prosecution is just stupid: you're insisting these are keystone cops if they can be so easily deliberately mislead, and yet you see through it. The hubris required to state what you've stated. You are way, way dumber than you think you are. Considering no one on the committee, in DOJ, nor the president at the time, considers it perjury - note that Wyden himself doesn't consider it perjury he considers it a lie to the American people, not a lie to the committee, and very clearly lays this problem of the surveillance state at the feet of many (on that committee including those who came before him who aren't even in office anymore) rather than being ignorant trying to pin this on one person. If you want to be serious, get serious, stop being silly. Do better, if you can. You have not bothered to think through how such a perjury trial, involving the discussion of classified programs and actions, witnesses who have taken oaths not to discuss it - could not be public. Had you bothered, you wouldn't say stupid things suggesting how a perjury trial would somehow gain us some introspection into our absurd surveillance state and hold it accountable, rather than making it far worse. It's so completely idiotic that you'd focus on one person and one event instead of the elephant in the room, which is a massively dysfunctional system over decades of far worse lies and failures, it almost qualifies as trolling, except it's too stupid even for that.
    - dang 9y ago
      This degree of incivility is a bannable offence on Hacker News regardless of how wrong someone else is. Please don't do this again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

vibrio 9y ago

which is even more concerning considering reports of how the current resident of 1600 assesses intelligence.

cmurf 9y ago

This is silly. The DNI takes an oath to keep state secrets a secret. He then takes an oath to tell the truth to Congress in an open session, which is itself an oxymoron when discussing a huge bulk of the national intelligence apparatus because we demand so much secrecy around every damn thing. How do you have an open session and not pretty much immediately invite some sort oath violation? It's the dumbest fucking thing in the first place but we like to play pretend to be open while simultaneously having metric f tons of state secrets. There's a very long list of people who have appeared before Congress and lied under oath, and not referred for undeniable perjury charges. And they do not have the president of the United States giving them a defacto pass by saying Clapper was caught between a rock and a hard place. There is no f'n goddamn way Clapper was ever going to be charged with perjury. It's the dumbest line of logic, you need to go backwards in time to have this argument. It has nothing to do with Clapper. Go point a finger at people like Cheney and Feinstein if you want to whine about the massively neurotic security state. And the idea you're going to find out jack shit about what's going on at CIA or NSA by charging Clapper with perjury is pure stupidity. If you want to know what happens at NSA and CIA, you need a society, in large numbers, who aren't paranoid and servile, and won't elect paranoid and servile representatives, who then accept the creation of a paranoid control freak surveillance state. We have what we have as a reflection of who we are, in particular those who do not participate. That's exactly how you get this kind of result.

randcraw 9y ago
It's common practice for anyone called to testify before congress to request a closed session if they believe their testimony will violate their oath of secrecy. Clapper did not. Instead he testified before open congress and lied, which was unnecessary, unless he was guilty of the charges in question -- knowingly directing NSA staff to spy on Americans, which the NSA's charter explicitly disallows. Therefore Clapper deliberately misled authorities in order to escape prosecution for a crime. That is the very definition of perjury.
- cmurf 9y ago
  Go kick rocks. You've contributed zero new information, you haven't progressed your argument beyond pettiness. And the idea someone can deliberately mislead authorities to escape prosecution is just stupid: you're insisting these are keystone cops if they can be so easily deliberately mislead, and yet you see through it. The hubris required to state what you've stated. You are way, way dumber than you think you are. Considering no one on the committee, in DOJ, nor the president at the time, considers it perjury - note that Wyden himself doesn't consider it perjury he considers it a lie to the American people, not a lie to the committee, and very clearly lays this problem of the surveillance state at the feet of many (on that committee including those who came before him who aren't even in office anymore) rather than being ignorant trying to pin this on one person. If you want to be serious, get serious, stop being silly. Do better, if you can. You have not bothered to think through how such a perjury trial, involving the discussion of classified programs and actions, witnesses who have taken oaths not to discuss it - could not be public. Had you bothered, you wouldn't say stupid things suggesting how a perjury trial would somehow gain us some introspection into our absurd surveillance state and hold it accountable, rather than making it far worse. It's so completely idiotic that you'd focus on one person and one event instead of the elephant in the room, which is a massively dysfunctional system over decades of far worse lies and failures, it almost qualifies as trolling, except it's too stupid even for that.
  - dang 9y ago
    This degree of incivility is a bannable offence on Hacker News regardless of how wrong someone else is. Please don't do this again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html