CIA Director Brennan Admits He Was Lying: CIA Really Did Spy On Congress 266
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.)
Re:And no one will go to jail (Score:5, Informative)
It is. The next step would be for the Senate oversight committee to vote to refer the matter for prosecution. The question is whether they want to go down this road or not. Generally congress has been reluctant to have recorded votes because of the pr hit.
No one calling for resignations (Score:4, Informative)
Why hasn't John Brennan been fired yet? If this was any private company in the United States, he'd have been fired on the spot for lying to his superiors for months and trying to cover up his own incompetence.
Re:And no one will go to jail (Score:5, Informative)
It may sound like treason to you, but it's not.
Treason is specifically defined [usconstitution.net] in the Constitution.
While it's not treason, it sounds like multiple felonies to me.
Re:A senior administration official LIED?!?!?! (Score:5, Informative)
You haven't been paying attention, blinded by partisan slogan bullshit. This has been happening since before 9/11.
No, you haven't been paying attention.
Obama's DNI Clapper lied under oath [wikipedia.org] to Congress about mass surveillance programs.
Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder was held in Contempt of Congress [wikipedia.org]:
On June 28, 2012, Holder became the first U.S. Attorney General in history to be held in both criminal and civil contempt.
Obama's IRS political appointee and documented raging conservative hater [house.gov] Lois Lerner dog ate her hard drive, and she was also held in Contempt of Congress [wikipedia.org] for refusing to testify under oath about her politicization of the IRS.
So, "this has been happening since before 9/11?
Ummm, BULLSHIT.
So Cabinet-level officials such as the Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence have committed perjury during Congressional testimony or been held in Contempt of Congress before?
No, they haven't - every other time officials of that level have been about to be held in Contempt of Congress, the official caved and supplied Congress with what was being asked.
Holder still hasn't turned over the subpenaed documents that were the subject of his being held in Contempt of Congress.
NOTHING has happened to Clapper for committing PERJURY.
And how many more risible excuses is Lerner going to shit out?
Re:Beware the monster you abide (Score:3, Informative)
there were stories about this in the past weeks..
"As part of the American Civil Liberties Union's recent report on police militarization, the Massachusetts chapter of the organization sent open records requests to SWAT teams across that state. It received an interesting response. As it turns out, a number of SWAT teams in the Bay State are operated by what are called law enforcement councils, or LECs. These LECs are funded by several police agencies in a given geographic area and overseen by an executive board, which is usually made up of police chiefs from member police departments...Some of these LECs have also apparently incorporated as 501(c)(3) organizations. And it’s here that we run into problems. According to the ACLU, the LECs are claiming that the 501(c)(3) status means that they're private corporations, not government agencies. And therefore, they say they're immune from open records requests."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/... [dailykos.com]
also this link, which I think does a better (and more snarky) job in discussing the issue.
https://www.techdirt.com/artic... [techdirt.com]
Re:And no one will go to jail (Score:5, Informative)
Except there is a law on record for exactly this sort of behavior. The fact that it is not frequently/publicly followed up upon, is another matter (Clapper)
TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 47 > 1001
1001. Statements or entries generally
(a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully—
(1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact;
(2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or
(3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry;
shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or, if the offense involves international or domestic terrorism (as defined in section 2331), imprisoned not more than 8 years, or both.
-snip-
(c) With respect to any matter within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch, subsection (a) shall apply only to—
(1) administrative matters, including a claim for payment, a matter related to the procurement of property or services, personnel or employment practices, or support services, or a document required by law, rule, or regulation to be submitted to the Congress or any office or officer within the legislative branch; or
(2) any investigation or review, conducted pursuant to the authority of any committee, subcommittee, commission or office of the Congress, consistent with applicable rules of the House or Senate.
Re:And no one will go to jail - just like bankers! (Score:5, Informative)
9/11 was the most spectacular win for the authoritarians, because they more or less kicked the foundations out from Western society, and have helped to create the worst form of surveillance state you can imagine.
FTFY
9/11 was a very public strike against the West by the terrorists but it did little to benefit their own goals (in fact, given the increased US involvement and the general unrest in the Middle East it probably pushed back their goals somewhat). We got to the current state of affairs in this country by our own doing, thanks to our own home-grown corruption and power-hungry factions and an apathetic populace.
9/11 may not have been engineered by us, but the people in power certainly took advantage of it when it happened.
Re:And no one will go to jail (Score:5, Informative)
Treason is much more than just not doing what congress tells you to do. I agree with you congress should prosecute for lying under oath and lying to congress. They also might want to restructure these agencies. The intelligence agencies are out of control. But treason, no.
The problem here is that its one thing to simply assume Brennan was lying, but its another thing to prove it. The fact that he now says an internal investigation shows members of the CIA did monitor systems operated by Congress doesn't mean he was lying when he testified they did not. It could mean that he simply didn't know, and if that's the case your prosecution would go nowhere.
You could argue he should have known, but there's two complications here. The first is that the conduct was uncovered as part of an internal CIA investigation, not an external investigator, so attempting to prosecute Brennan would be punishing him not for the misconduct, but the fact he was willing to uncover and admit it. All you would be doing is encouraging people to remain silent. The second thing is that the conduct he admitted to is not as clean-cut as the headline suggests. Apparently what happened was that the CIA created a special firewall within the actual CIA network that they configured to allow Senate investigators to gain access to CIA files. It was this firewall the CIA monitored, which had the net effect of monitoring the Senate's access to the CIA. Even that is basically illegal, but assuming you could monitor what other people did to your network sounds like the sort of mistake a lot of people would make. It would be legal in almost any other setting, but not specifically in this context.
The CIA personnel still should have known better, or rather should have known they were on questionable ground and sought very high level authorization to take that action, but I don't think this is the kind of smoking gun people think it is.
Re:When will we... (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously we're talking of an organization that is involved in covert military intelligence or worse and spies on the entire world, including US citizens, that is funded by the US government but lies to its elected officials and also spies on them. Really? Shut it down or massively cut down on its powers, and jail every leader involved. If you can't do that, then does the US government control the CIA, or does the CIA control the US government?...
Re:A senior administration official LIED?!?!?! (Score:4, Informative)
So Cabinet-level officials such as the Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence have committed perjury during Congressional testimony or been held in Contempt of Congress before?
No, they haven't - every other time officials of that level have been about to be held in Contempt of Congress, the official caved and supplied Congress with what was being asked.
Have you heard of Ollie North [youtube.com]?
Re:When will we... (Score:4, Informative)
"Neither Americans nor the rest of the world signed up for a fucking security agency which is no longer under anyone's control except people who feel they can do anything they want."
Uh, the CIA has been pretty much like this since its inception during World War II as the OSS and the CIA immediately after. It was reined in briefly by the Churck and Pike Committees in the 70's but that oversight and those reforms were pretty much rolled back by Reagan. Sure, they got to reach new lows after 9/11 with no hold barred torture, but the CIA has been torturing people through proxies for its entire history, so that wasn't exactly new either.
Not exactly sure why everyone is acting like this is some kind of revelation or anything new, other than its kind of amazing Brennan was foolish enough to admit to it. I predict his career at the CIA will soon come to an end, and he will be replaced with someone with larger brass balls.
The chances you all are gonna change any of this airing your indignation on /. are vanishingly small.
Re:And no one will go to jail (Score:5, Informative)
Well I checked. Here was the statement "We are not in any way trying to thwart the [Senate Intelligence Committee] report's progress [or] release. As far as the allegations of the CIA hacking into computers, nothing could be further from the truth. That's beyond the scope of reason.. tried to work as collaboratively as possible with the committee on its report, and we will continue to do so.". The statement wasn't under oath though so I was wrong there. He can't be charged with anything. Lying to a reporter is not a crime.
It doesn't appear so. It appears they didn't just monitor but tracked documents and then deleted them. They weren't just doing network monitoring they were doing ECM. The CIA has no right to anything that the Senate ultimately wants.
Re:Unfortunately, Congress will make itself exempt (Score:4, Informative)
They effectively still are. A key part of the STOCK act was rolled back after the election [techdirt.com].
Interestingly, the UK already has something like this, it's called the Wilson Doctrine [wikipedia.org] and is not a law but rather a promise the Prime Minister makes to MP's by tradition.