Director of National Intelligence Lies to Senate About NSA Spying
James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence under President Barack Obama, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on this day and lied about whether or not any of the intelligence agencies were engaged in spying on American citizens.
Three months later, news stories based on documents stolen and released by former NSA contract employee Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA had been conducting massive illegal spying on Americans (June 5, 2013).
Clapper’s false testimony to Congress constituted a felony, although he was not prosecuted for it.
Learn more: Dana Priest and William Arkin, Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State (2012)
And more about Edward Snowden: Luke Harding, The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man (2014)
Learn more; documents and analysis of the Snowden/NSA documents at the National Security Archive: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB436/
Read about President Obama’s national security policy: Charlie Savage, Power Wars: Inside Obama’s Post-9/11 Presidency (2015)