Thread: WATCH, PERJURY: Intelligence Director Denied Surveillance In Senate Testimony - Vid

WATCH, PERJURY: Intelligence Director Denied Surveillance In Senate Testimony



WATCH, PERJURY: INTELLIGENCE DIRECTOR DENIED SURVEILLANCE IN SENATE TESTIMONY

Jun 6, 2013 2 Comments Spit Stixx

Video at the Page Link:

Excerpted from NY Mag: at a hearing in March 2013, he asked James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, a straightforward question: “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”

Clapper’s answer? “No, sir … not wittingly.”

Update, 5:13 p.m., June 6 2013: Clapper tells the National Journal, “What I said was, the NSA does not voyeuristically pore through U.S. citizens’ e-mails. I stand by that.” Except … that’s not what he said.

Excerpted from The Hill: Weeks before the National Security Agency (NSA) began a massive phone sweeping operation on U.S. cellular provider Verizon, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress the agency does not conduct intelligence on American citizens.

Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Clapper denied allegations by panel members the NSA conducted electronic surveillance of Americans on U.S. soil.

“Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” committee member Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Clapper during the March 12 hearing.

In response, Clapper replied quickly: “No, sir.”

“There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect [intelligence on Americans], but not wittingly,” the U.S. intelligence chief told Wyden and the rest of the committee.

That said, “particularly in the case of NSA and CIA, there are structures against tracking American citizens in the United States for foreign intelligence purposes,” Clapper added.
Both agencies are focused on foreign intelligence collection, “and that’s what those agencies are set up to do,” he added.

Conducting surveillance on Americans inside U.S. borders is something “they do not engage in,” the intelligence chief added.

Intelligence collection by the CIA, the NSA or other agencies can be done inside the United States, but only if a special court created under the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA) approves the operation.
FISA established the special federal court to approve surveillance on suspected foreign spies working inside the United States.

However, the FISA court reportedly issued a secret ruling in April, allowing the NSA to conduct phone sweeps of all cellphones running on the Verizon network.
The ruling came weeks after Clapper testified before the Senate intelligence panel.

On Thursday, Clapper clarified his remarks during the March hearing, telling the National Journal his comments were referring to NSA or other intelligence agencies intentionally reviewing e-mails and other electronic communications.

“What I said was, ‘the NSA does not voyeuristically pore through U.S. citizens’ e-mails.’ I stand by that,” Clapper said.

But the April FISA ruling allowed the NSA and the FBI to collect the Verizon data from a three-month period between May and July, according to The Guardian newspaper.

The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday said senators were informed of the administration’s sweeping surveillance practices, which they said have been going on since 2007.

Those programs were conducted under the authority granted by the Patriot Act and the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004.

“Everyone’s been aware of it for years, every member of the Senate,” said Sen. Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“There have been approximately 100 plots and also arrests made since 2009 by the FBI,” committee chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Thursday.

“I do not know to what extent metadata was used or if it was used, but I do know this, gentlemen, that terrorists will come after us if they can, and the only thing we have to deter this is good intelligence,” she added.

In a statement released on Thursday, Feinstein clarified the FISA ruling only allowed NSA to track the length of a particular call and the number of who the call was made to.

“This law does not allow the government to listen in on the content of a phone call,” Feinstein said in the statement.

“The intelligence community has successfully used FISA authorities to identify terrorists and those with whom they communicate, and this intelligence has helped protect the nation,” according to Feinstein.

“The threat from terrorism remains very real and these lawful intelligence activities must continue, with the careful oversight of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government,” she added.


Keep reading…


http://patdollard.com/2013/06/watch-...ate-testimony/

Gen. Michael Hayden: Surveillance 'Very Effective,' Not Abusive



Sunday, 09 Jun 2013 12:28 PM
By Greg Richter

The former head of the National Security Agency defended on Sunday the government's program of saving metadata of all telephone calls for future searches.

Gen. Michael Hayden, former head of the NSA and CIA, said the programs that have come under scrutiny in the past week are "very effective."

"We've had two very different presidents pretty much doing the same thing with regard to electronic surveillance. That seems to me to suggest that these things do work," Hayden said on Fox News Sunday.

The administration has sought to fend off criticism of the program which combed through the phone and Internet records of millions of Americans, saying it was needed for national security reasons. On Saturday, the National Security Agency filed a report requesting a criminal investigation to find who leaked details of the surveillance activities to the Guardian and The Washington Post.

Hayden served as head of the NSA from 1999 to 2005, and explained that the records are not used to search indiscriminately. He gave an example of a cell phone being found in Waziristan -- a mountainous region in the northwest of Pakistan -- then the number being plugged into the records to see which other phones had made or received calls from the phone.

He admitted that all other records are kept, but are never looked at unless they are linked to terrorism.

"If you don't have any link to that original predicate, terrorism, your phone records are never touched," Hayden said.

The disclosure of the surveillance program has set off a political firestorm in Washington, with libertarian-leaning Republicans joining liberal Democrats in condemning the program, while national security advocates in both parties supported the monitoring of phone calls.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who chairs the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, agreed on Sunday to hold hearings that examine the secret surveillance program.

But Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky said on Fox News that Americans should join a class-action lawsuit to force the issue to the Supreme Court.

After the recent hearings on the IRS targeting groups because they had conservative sounding names, many Americans feel the NSA's data mining could lead to similar abuse of political enemies.

But Hayden said there are no records of abuse of the system under President George W. Bush, under whom he served, or under President Barack Obama.

"I was criticized because I theoretically didn't have enough oversight mechanisms," Hayden said. "But no one accused us of abuse."

As a senator, Obama voted against Hayden's nomination to head the CIA because of his NSA background. But as president, Obama has expanded the surveillance program, adding to the volume to what is collected, Hayden said. Obama also added oversight mechanisms and put the program under congressional authorization rather than under the president.

"NSA is actually empowered to do more things than I was empowered to do under President Bush's special authorization," he said, adding that there has been "incredible continuity between the two presidents."

© 2013 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/hay...o_code=13C53-1

“Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” committee member Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Clapper during the March 12 hearing.
In response, Clapper replied quickly: “No, sir.” he continues " not wittingly".

Plausible deniability is a term coined by the CIA during the Kennedy administration to describe the withholding of information from senior officials in order to protect them from repercussions in the event that illegal or unpopular activities by the CIA became public knowledge.