From the Department of you can't be serious. The top lawyer for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is making a novel argument as to why Clapper did not technically commit perjury despite saying something he knew to be untrue while testifying under oath before Congress - Clapper somehow "forgot" about a massive and highly controversial secret spying program he oversees.
Yes, you read that right. The general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Robert Litt, is trying to get his boss out of trouble by claiming that the DNI had some kind of epic brain fart while testifying before Congress. Litt's explanation is that Clapper "mistakenly" thought he was not running a global dragnet program that was vacuuming up private data from American citizens without a warrant when asked by Senator Wyden in a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee if he was doing just that.
Seriously, this is the current explanation.
Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper wasn’t lying when he wrongly told Congress in 2013 that the government does not “wittingly” collect information about millions of Americans, according to his top lawyer. He just forgot.
“This was not an untruth or a falsehood. This was just a mistake on his part,” Robert Litt, the general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said during a panel discussion hosted by the Advisory Committee on Transparency on Friday. “We all make mistakes.”Slow clap for Clapper and his intrepid legal team. But just when you thought it could not get any more absurd you remember that Clapper had a completely different explanation for why he lied to Congress just after the Snowden leaks came out. Clapper's first explanation for lying was not that he made a mistake but that he had strategically looked for the "least untruthful" answer to give without damaging intelligence operations.
So did he forget or did he lie to Congress under oath for what he believed was a good cause?
No comments:
Post a Comment