Thursday, June 13, 2013

Should Director Of National Intelligence James Clapper Be Fired?

James Clapper (Credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)

James Clapper Must Go -- David Sirota, Slate

His attempts to mislead the nation -- and absurd claims afterward -- should get him fired and prosecuted.

When introducing James Clapper as his director of national intelligence in 2010, President Obama specifically justified the appointment by saying Clapper is someone who “understands the importance of working with our partners in Congress (and) not merely to appear when summoned, but to keep Congress informed.” At the time, it seemed like a wholly uncontroversial statement; it was simply a president making a sacrosanct promise to keep the legislative branch informed, with the insinuation that previous administrations hadn’t.

Three years later, of course, James Clapper is now the embodiment of perjury before Congress. Indeed, when you couple Edward Snowden’s disclosures with this video of Clapper’s Senate testimony denying that the National Security Administration collects “any type of data on millions (of Americans),” Clapper has become American history’s most explicit and verifiable example of an executive branch deliberately lying to the legislative branch that is supposed to be overseeing it.

Read more ....

Previous Post #1: Should Director Of National Intelligence James Clapper Resign?
Previous Post #2: Is Now The Time For The Director Of National Intelligence To Joke About Reading People's Emails?

My Comment: When you are asked a sensitive question in a Senate committee hearing .... and it needs to be kept classified .... the standard response is that you will give the answer to the Senator in a private communique and/or in a closed session. This is what NSA Director Alexander did repeatedly on Wednesday. Why did James Clapper try to deliberately mislead the US Senate is beyond me .... but he has now lost his credibility and I am sure that the White House is aware that they have a problem even though President Obama has come out publicly to support him.

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