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Senators Demand CIA Director Admit He Lied About Spying On Senate Computers
blottsie writes with a link to a story at The Daily Dot which begins: CIA Director John Brennan lied when he denied ordering agency employees to search Senate computers to trace a leak. Frustrated with his unwillingness to admit the obvious, three Senate Democrats on Friday called on Brennan to admit that his agency crossed the line. The Senate Intelligence Committee was preparing a report on the CIA's Bush-era torture programs when the spy agency discovered that the committee had somehow acquired an internal CIA report on the program. To determine how the report had leaked, Brennan ordered CIA officers to pry into the computers used by committee staffers. The heart of the story is in the letter in which the Senators call for Brennan to 'fess up, also linked from the story. Drawing from that letter: When you were asked publicly about the CIA's search in March 2014, you denied that any improper access had occurred, stating that "As fas the allegations of, you know, CIA hacking into, you know, Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, that's -- that's just beyond the -- you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we could do." The reports of both the Inspector General and your review board demonstrate that this denial was at odds with the facts.
In June 2014, senior officials from the FBI, NSA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence all testified that it would be inappropriate for their agencies to secretly search Senate files without external authorization. To date, however, there has been no public acknowledgement from you or any other CIA official (outside the Office of Inspector General) that this search was improper, nor even a commitment that the CIA will not conduct such searches in the future. This is entirely unacceptable.
In June 2014, senior officials from the FBI, NSA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence all testified that it would be inappropriate for their agencies to secretly search Senate files without external authorization. To date, however, there has been no public acknowledgement from you or any other CIA official (outside the Office of Inspector General) that this search was improper, nor even a commitment that the CIA will not conduct such searches in the future. This is entirely unacceptable.
You've got to realize though, that those congressmen are our constitutional representatives. They represent the power of the people in this democracy
I think the OP is referring to the fact that the NSA lied to Congress and the American people when asked about spying, not on Congress, but on the American people:
(watch for yourself)
Some Republicans have said He should be fired. Obama said he misspoke.
One might think he should have been arrested. Instead, they arrested the lawyer who asked him why he lied..
We've seen this double-standard applied recently-- no one arrested for torture except the CIA Whistleblower. Leakers getting huge sentences unless their rank is high enough.
If the CIA can get away with spying on Senate computers then that's it. They really are above the law.
They've gotten away with much much worse already. (I started adding links but there are hundreds of them...)
If he lied under oath and there's proof that he did then charge the bastard with perjury and put him on trial and make an example of him to show that you can not lie under oath to congress and get away with it.
There's a reason you almost never see anyone charged with perjury for testifying before a congressional committee, and not the one many here will offer. Legally, it isn't enough to show that what they said was wrong. To prove perjury you need to show beyond a reasonable doubt that they knew what they were saying was not true (plus a few more requirements). And since these people live in a world of constantly seeing and reviewing mounds of conflicting information, proving they knew what they were saying was wrong, and that it wasn't just a mistake, gets very hard. Even if there is evidence they were told one thing, there can easily be evidence they were also told the opposite by someone, and then the issue of reasonable doubt pops up. They may have lied, but reaching the legal requirement for a conviction of perjury can be almost impossible, so don't necessarily blame the officials for not bringing charges when they don't think they will get a guilty verdict.
But it goes so far even beyond your excellent comments which I fully agree with: the entire 9/11 script from start to finish was handled or coordinated by just several people with the CIA: and primarily Alfreda Bikowsky (Silverstein), who never disseminated the hijacker data to the FBI, and ordered others not to, then lied to Congress about the CIA's torture program, and knowingly tortured innocent men to elicit false confessions. And her husband over at Foundation in Defense of Democracies is involved with the publication of books attacking anyone who questions the official 9/11 conspiracy theory!