James Clapper’s ‘least untruthful’ answer

[xchrom]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ruth-marcus-james-clappers-least-untruthful-answer/2013/06/13/decb0c56-d467-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html

***SNIP

Did Clapper lie? “I want to leave it at that,” Wyden demurred. Then he added, pointedly: “You cannot have strong oversight if intelligence officials don’t give you straight answers.”

And that is the paradox — the fallacy, even — of congressional oversight in the post-9/11 environment.

President Obama has assured the public that Congress had been “fully briefed on these programs.” Yet, for the most part, lawmakers must face down intelligence officials, and assess their urgent claims of national security, without the benefit of expert staff. In this way, Congress can serve more as useful cover for the executive branch than a true check on it.

Once briefed, lawmakers are captives of their classified knowledge: They cannot disclose what they have been told. Thus, Wyden found himself asking questions to which he surely knew the answer, and was reduced to warning obliquely, as he did in 2011, that “when the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry.”

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. Remember that Clapper is linked to Booz Allen Hamilton

one of the largest military contractors in the world.

Tim Shorrock......

reported here is a sort of revolving-door conflict of interest between Booz Allen and the U.S. government, and between multiple other contractors and the U.S. government in general.
Regarding Booz Allen, Shorrock referred to such people as John M. McConnell, R. James Woolsey, Jr.,
and James R. Clapper, all of whom have gone back and forth between government and industry (Booz Allen in particular), and who may present the appearance that certain government contractors receive undue or unlawful business from the government, and that certain government contractors may exert undue or unlawful influence on government. Shorrock further relates that Booz Allen was a sub-contractor with two programs at the U.S. National Security Agency

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booz_Allen_Hamilton#Notable_members_and_alumni