Jane Harman Reveals All: Ask No Questions, Tell No Lies.
by leveymg
Sat Jul 25, 2009 at 10:04:13 AM PDT
Rep. Jane Harman posts a revealing Op-ed in today's LA Times. It reveals a great deal about
the questions that weren't asked by the so-called Gang of Eight intelligence overseers in Congress during the Bush-Cheney years. Read her account, and think of how and why it is that the NSA, CIA and White House managed to get away with running a universal surveillance and profiling system for eight years, seemingly under the noses of those on Capitol Hill appointed to monitor them.
It's what isn't said that's often the most revealing. What the CIA hid from Congress
Were members of congressional intelligence committees told everything about the Bush administration's surveillance programs? Not even close, reveals Jane Harman.
By Jane Harman
July 25, 2009
.......................
In virtually every meeting, Hayden would present PowerPoint "slides," walking us through the operational details of the TSP. The program has since been described, in part, as one that intercepted communications to and from the U.S. in an effort to uncover terrorist networks and prevent or disrupt attacks. We were told that the program was the centerpiece of our counter-terrorism efforts, legal and yielding impressive results.
Often present were CIA officials (including then-Director George Tenet) and then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales. Missing was any Justice Department presence -- a tipoff, in retrospect, to the legal limbo under which the program operated.
Fast-forward to the jaw-dropping inspectors general report released this month, which makes clear that the TSP's legal underpinnings were fatally flawed and its results minimal. Those topics consumed scant time at our briefings. Why?
It is now
clear to me that we learned only what the briefers wanted to tell us -- even though they were required by law to keep us "fully and currently informed." Absent the ability to do any independent research,
it did not occur to me then that the program was operated wholly outside of the framework Congress created as the exclusive means to conduct such surveillance: the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
http://www.latimes.com/...What a curious lack of curiosity, Jane.
Ask no questions. Tell no lies.
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