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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.)
So why is lying to Congress not a punishable offense?
I hope this caused some synapses to fire.
Charged with Treason ?
He violated his departments charter and law...
So Toss his ass into Gitmo and wait 15 years to bring him to trial ..
UPS Sucks
Fuck the apology. Put him in jail.
At this point there is no choice but to assume that when the CIA and NSA say they're in compliance with the law, they're bloody well lying.
When they're outright lying to the people who oversee them, they've become a criminal organization.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
"lying bastard" is more or less their job description.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Feinstein is only against spying when it happens to her. You're on your own.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
It's a disease that needs to be stomped out, mercilessly. Allowing the NSA, DHS and CIA (hell, even the IRS, for that matter) to continue to operate as they are allowed to will swallow up the last vestiges of America and its dream.
The dystopia exists now but it's not too late to turn back.
Jail isn't going to do any good unless you put the whole agency in jail.
The solution is a massive budget cut and laws that make specific conduct not only illegal but automatically appoint special prosecutors to act on. Then you put into law and fund an agency who's entire job is to spy on the CIA and report every time they break the law. The biggest problem with the post 9/11 revisions was we gave all these people basically immunity to do whatever they want in the name of national security. It's obscene.
Given the Snowden leaks, it *is* the most transparent administration ever. It's too bad that it took leaks to become transparent, but we may as well take what we can get.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Jail isn't going to do any good unless you put the whole agency in jail.
Fine by me.
That's not treason. Treason is specifically defined in the Constitution.
However, why isn't he being charged with multiple felonies, including perjury, etc...?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
So Toss his ass into Gitmo and wait 15 years to bring him to trial ..
What?!?!?! The people in Gitmo actually gets chance to go to trial???? /sarcasm
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I'm a moderate, who leans a but left, but I can say without equivocation that this administration has really let people down. Little knownn is that our current Attorney General, Eric Holder, was a lawyer who defended banks prior to coming to Washington. That not ONE of the banking CEO's or their very senior staffers is in jail for what was done several years ago, is an outrage! Unless we start JAILING people who otherwise think they can scoff at the law due to wealth or political connections, we are going down a road that violates the very tenets of our nation's forming.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
While I agree that it was more than just Berman doing illegal things, I think that by throwing him (and a selection of others) into prison it would send a message to the rest that this sort of activity is not condoned. This will make the rest reconsider taking the same actions.
Right now most people are "just following orders" because there are consequences to not doing so (losing their jobs) and no consequences to disobeying. We need to change that.
So yeah, throw him and his cronies in jail.
There is a difference between making a false statement to congress and lying to congress.
The difference is intent. You can unknowingly make a false statement based on lack of information.
There is nothing in any article about this about attempt to cover up or lie. It seems like he been misinformed by his own subordinates
and after Brennan was briefed by the inspector general he went to congress and told them the truth.
"“Recognizing the importance of this matter and the need to resolve it in a way that preserved the crucial equities of both branches,
Director Brennan asked the CIA Office of Inspector General to examine the actions of CIA personnel,” Boyd said."
Jail isn't going to do any good unless you put the whole agency in jail.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
We asked for this. You voted for this.
You wanted smaller government, you got it.
You wanted an ineffective gridlocked, the less legislation the better congress? You got it.
Oh, and somehow it landed you with an ever inflated DHS, CIA, and NSA with zero oversight? Didn't work out how you thought it would?
Maybe you should have listened to us all along when we told you the people peddling "small government" are completely full of shit. They don't want small government. They just want money. Your money. The pubic's money.
They have it, and you helped them remove the things that prevented them from getting it before.
How exactly is a massive government agency massively overstepping its already questionable legal bounds a result of "you wanted smaller government"? That sounds exactly like a prime example of bigger government and why someone might want a smaller one.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
I do not exactly see how an all powerful and intrusive spying regime is less government.
This story is the epitome of big government through and through. But not, the small government politicians do not seem to want to cut this down just like the big government politicians. Your argument seems frivolous on it's head.
I know not RTFA is a badge of honor here, but you could at least have read the article summery. No one removed anything legally. Employees ignored a separation of limits or a firewall as the summery put it and even knowing they were not supposed to, they did anyways. No politician or political ideology allowed or helped in this. If anything, it would be the leading from behind and phoning it in that our leadership in government seems to be doing any more.
CIA is just one TLA out of many more that are part of the same problem. This mentality, that they can do whatever the hell they want, and fuck law, due process and constitution, so long as they catch the arbitrarily defined bad guys of the day, is pervasive throughout all government agencies that have anything even remotely to do with law enforcement or military. NSA and CIA spying are links of the same chain that includes DEA no-knock warrants, police departments buying MRAPs for bragging rights etc.
And yes, there are some agencies that should literally go to jail wholesale. For example, I don't see how you can be working for DEA and not be complicit in activities that, 50 years ago, would be decried as stereotypical police state jackboot thug activity - and all that violence for the sake of suppressing non-violent, consensual activity (well, at least nominally - in practice, these days, it's more often an excuse, and the actual goal is cashing in on asset forfeiture).
Agencies that large might as well have other means of funding these days which are not in the books. Think about it.