Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper has long been a leading proponent of keeping the NSA telephone surveillance scheme a secret, bragging about his lies to Congress about the matter and insisting that the leaks which revealed the truth caused “significant damage.”
Hindsight being what it is, Clapper now insists that the US should’ve told the American public they were being surveilled from the start, saying if they’d just announced it publicly after 9/11 “most Americans would probably have supported it.”
Clapper went on in his comments to engage in some more revision of history, reimagining his overt lies to Congress as the result of confusion about the question, despite has comments since then revealing he knew exactly what he was doing.
Clapper’s claim to have been surprised by the question isn’t credible, since he was given months of similar questions from the same senator about the same program. Clapper previous bragged that he simply said the “least untruthful” thing he could think of. For the record, Clapper said “no” when the truthful answer was “yes,” so the least untruthful thing would’ve at least been “maybe.”
Clapper needs to go.
He regrets not taking the Modified Limited Hangout route. If they'd leaked it, they'd have retained some message control.
Bad enough that this idiot keeps talking crap every time he opens his mouth. Worse that there is no interest whatsoever in DC to replace him.
I think he was right when he said “most Americans would probably have supported it” if they admitted it after 9/11. Not that the American people would have been right in accepting it but they would have mostly gone along willingly. But now, the people are more in tune with the USG's machinations and are unlikely to ever accept government surveillance…unless another 9/11 were to happen, unexpectedly, of course. Then I feel the American people would once more allow themselves to be manipulated into relinquishing more of our rights and freedom for that whimsical security the USG always promises.