Eavesdropping Didn't Help Uncover Terrorist Plot

crymeph0 writes "Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell asserted that the 'Protect America Act,' which frees the intelligence community from pesky things like judicial oversight while they eavesdrop on international conversations, was used to good effect in exposing the recently foiled terrorist plot to bomb US military facilities in Germany. Not so, according to other, anonymous, intelligence community officials. McConnell was forced to admit his errors in a phone call to Sen. Joe Lieberman. Turns out the military got wise to the bad guys months before the law was passed, simply due to alert military guards noticing odd behavior by some passers-by, a.k.a. good old fashioned police work."

Comments

Re:Forced to admit his error? You mean his lie...

[Chris Burke]

Unless it's a pet project, executive types rarely know the intimate details of what's happening in the trenches.

And thus they don't comment on those details. I agree that it is possible that he had no idea what actually went on in the investigation. Yet if that's the case and he didn't know, then he must surely know he didn't know, therefore when he made the statement he was pretending that he knew and making up a story that supported his political agenda, and therefore he was lying.