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CIA Director Brennan Admits He Was Lying: CIA Really Did Spy On Congress
Bruce66423 (1678196) writes with this story from the Guardian: The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, issued an extraordinary apology to leaders of the US Senate intelligence committee on Thursday, conceding that the
agency employees spied on committee staff and reversing months of furious and public denials. Brennan acknowledged that an internal investigation had found agency security personnel transgressed a firewall set up on a CIA network, called RDINet, which allowed Senate committee investigators to review agency documents for their landmark inquiry into CIA torture." (Sen. Diane Feinstein was one of those vocally accusing the CIA of spying on Congress; Sen. Bernie Sanders has raised a similar question about the NSA.)
It is. The next step would be for the Senate oversight committee to vote to refer the matter for prosecution. The question is whether they want to go down this road or not. Generally congress has been reluctant to have recorded votes because of the pr hit.
It may sound like treason to you, but it's not.
Treason is specifically defined in the Constitution.
While it's not treason, it sounds like multiple felonies to me.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
You haven't been paying attention, blinded by partisan slogan bullshit. This has been happening since before 9/11.
No, you haven't been paying attention.
Obama's DNI Clapper lied under oath to Congress about mass surveillance programs.
Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder was held in Contempt of Congress:
On June 28, 2012, Holder became the first U.S. Attorney General in history to be held in both criminal and civil contempt.
Obama's IRS political appointee and documented raging conservative hater Lois Lerner dog ate her hard drive, and she was also held in Contempt of Congress for refusing to testify under oath about her politicization of the IRS.
So, "this has been happening since before 9/11?
Ummm, BULLSHIT.
So Cabinet-level officials such as the Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence have committed perjury during Congressional testimony or been held in Contempt of Congress before?
No, they haven't - every other time officials of that level have been about to be held in Contempt of Congress, the official caved and supplied Congress with what was being asked.
Holder still hasn't turned over the subpenaed documents that were the subject of his being held in Contempt of Congress.
NOTHING has happened to Clapper for committing PERJURY.
And how many more risible excuses is Lerner going to shit out?
Except there is a law on record for exactly this sort of behavior. The fact that it is not frequently/publicly followed up upon, is another matter (Clapper)
TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 47 > 1001
1001. Statements or entries generally
(a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully—
(1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact;
(2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or
(3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry;
shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or, if the offense involves international or domestic terrorism (as defined in section 2331), imprisoned not more than 8 years, or both.
-snip-
(c) With respect to any matter within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch, subsection (a) shall apply only to—
(1) administrative matters, including a claim for payment, a matter related to the procurement of property or services, personnel or employment practices, or support services, or a document required by law, rule, or regulation to be submitted to the Congress or any office or officer within the legislative branch; or
(2) any investigation or review, conducted pursuant to the authority of any committee, subcommittee, commission or office of the Congress, consistent with applicable rules of the House or Senate.
9/11 was the most spectacular win for the authoritarians, because they more or less kicked the foundations out from Western society, and have helped to create the worst form of surveillance state you can imagine.
FTFY
9/11 was a very public strike against the West by the terrorists but it did little to benefit their own goals (in fact, given the increased US involvement and the general unrest in the Middle East it probably pushed back their goals somewhat). We got to the current state of affairs in this country by our own doing, thanks to our own home-grown corruption and power-hungry factions and an apathetic populace.
9/11 may not have been engineered by us, but the people in power certainly took advantage of it when it happened.
Treason is much more than just not doing what congress tells you to do. I agree with you congress should prosecute for lying under oath and lying to congress. They also might want to restructure these agencies. The intelligence agencies are out of control. But treason, no.
The problem here is that its one thing to simply assume Brennan was lying, but its another thing to prove it. The fact that he now says an internal investigation shows members of the CIA did monitor systems operated by Congress doesn't mean he was lying when he testified they did not. It could mean that he simply didn't know, and if that's the case your prosecution would go nowhere.
You could argue he should have known, but there's two complications here. The first is that the conduct was uncovered as part of an internal CIA investigation, not an external investigator, so attempting to prosecute Brennan would be punishing him not for the misconduct, but the fact he was willing to uncover and admit it. All you would be doing is encouraging people to remain silent. The second thing is that the conduct he admitted to is not as clean-cut as the headline suggests. Apparently what happened was that the CIA created a special firewall within the actual CIA network that they configured to allow Senate investigators to gain access to CIA files. It was this firewall the CIA monitored, which had the net effect of monitoring the Senate's access to the CIA. Even that is basically illegal, but assuming you could monitor what other people did to your network sounds like the sort of mistake a lot of people would make. It would be legal in almost any other setting, but not specifically in this context.
The CIA personnel still should have known better, or rather should have known they were on questionable ground and sought very high level authorization to take that action, but I don't think this is the kind of smoking gun people think it is.
Well I checked. Here was the statement "We are not in any way trying to thwart the [Senate Intelligence Committee] report's progress [or] release. As far as the allegations of the CIA hacking into computers, nothing could be further from the truth. That's beyond the scope of reason.. tried to work as collaboratively as possible with the committee on its report, and we will continue to do so.". The statement wasn't under oath though so I was wrong there. He can't be charged with anything. Lying to a reporter is not a crime.
It doesn't appear so. It appears they didn't just monitor but tracked documents and then deleted them. They weren't just doing network monitoring they were doing ECM. The CIA has no right to anything that the Senate ultimately wants.