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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.
Funny how the spying is only bad when it's done against politicians. Against the plebes, it's perfectly fine. I'm shedding so many crocodile tears for them.
If you have nothing to hide, dear Senators...why worry about it?
That sentence is straight from the letter from the Senators. Why is it inappropriate to include the Senators' words?
Yeah, he lied. Why not? Congress is a bunch of spineless whores, there to grub up the money and do what they're told by whichever puppetmaster has his hand shoved up their ass at the moment.
Besides, what are they going to do about it? Make another speech? So what?
They can defund the CIA or particular CIA programs if they want. If there's one thing the CIA hates about Congress, it's the fact that they have to get a new budget from them every year--they can't plan multi-year operations without having contingencies for different funding levels, etc...
Most of Congress may be spineless, and all of it pretends to be spineless, but it is not powerless.
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The world is always changing and always will be. It will always be a power struggle between various groups and if you quit, you loose. Look at German culture in current times. Parliament has many glass windows to represent 'if you want know what we are doing, come and look inside' (as it was described to me when I did a tour of the city). The vast majority praise Snowden for doing the right thing.
There is corruption in all systems and a lot in America. You need to fight it and get behind this call for the truth because things can and will get worse if you dont. You need to chip away at the system and continually try to make it better. The more people who take an interest and talk about issues the better. This one may be a war of words but the outcome will renew an important precedant.
The Senators are a bunch of morons and are the last group that should ever complain about someone lying. They are experts at prevarication and give unambiguous answers that always leave room for them to back track. Only a very select committee of Senators are privy to anything relating to classified US intelligence matters and that committee is responsible for determining what information can be safely released to the entire Senate. Any Senator claiming they did not know about certain intelligence programs or operations should first go after their fellow Senators on the foreign intelligence committee and ask them what they know and then go after the particular intelligence agency. This investigation was not being conducted by this intelligence committee. The vast majority of Senators and staffers do not even have the necessary security clearances needed for access to certain classified information about US intelligence programs. In this particular case the CIA discovered the Senate had possession of an internal CIA report that had not been legally obtained through the proper channels. The CIA could attempt to justify it's actions by claiming there had been a security leak (which there was) and they were investigating how the Senate got a hold of the document in question. The first logical step in the investigation would be obtaining proof the document was actually on the Senate computer system. The Senate constantly wastes time on these types of conflicts while doing nothing that would actually help the country and the people who put them in office. The Senate is more dangerous to the US public than the CIA and NSA combined. And the feckless Senators will do nothing of consequence in this cat fight because they are just barely smart enough not to get into a full blown conflict with agencies capable of destroying their political careers. After all the CIA has had a lot of practice changing governments around the world using subtle and not to subtle means. The Senate and the CIA deserve each other.
This is relevant. In today's news:
Get that? The goddamn Director of National Intelligence just "forgot" that they're collecting information about millions of Americans. It takes balls to get up in front of a congressional committee and say that shit. "We all make mistakes". Yes, we all make mistakes. I accidentally left my keys in the back door once. But forgetting about data collection efforts on millions of Americans? "We all make mistakes" doesn't quite cover it. But the senators? They're made because they're just figured out that the NSA treats them just like the rest of us. So they're gonna get all up in John Brennan's grill but let the NSA get off with a warning, billions of dollars in increased black budget and maybe a little tug job in the basement of the Capital for the effort.
http://thehill.com/policy/tech...
You are welcome on my lawn.
The precedent that's being renewed here is that it's all well and good to fuck with the common people, but doing the same to VIPs is unacceptable. It's funny that you mention Germany, as this exact same scenario played out there when Merkel was completely fine with German citizens being spied on, but threw a shit fit when it surfaced that she was being spied on as well.
The only outcome of this is the further solidification of our two-tier society where different rights exist for the ruling class and the hoi polloi.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
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CIA: Hey, MI5.... Can you do me a favour? I'll owe you one.
MI5: Sure, what do you need?
CIA: Can you skim through these PCs and look for evidence of this thing I'd like to know about?
MI5: Sure, no problem.
I believe they would describe it as "Serving our country."
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
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.
Seems like an awfully close correspondence with"To serve Man"?
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
The CIA would not have a foreign power search US Senate computers even for plausible deniability.