(para 1) Clapper’s statement prompted some lawmakers to allege what Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) called a “double standard” in which a top official could deliver false testimony without fear of penalty.
(para 2) “If the administration has a policy to lie to Congress about classified materials in unclassified hearings, then you have to ask yourself what value the hearings have and whether or not anyone else is doing it,” said Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.).
(para 3) Some are calling for a major overhaul of the current oversight system, including the intelligence committees and the surveillance court, which were created in the late 1970s amid growing concern about U.S. spy practices following Watergate, the Vietnam War and revelations about CIA efforts to overthrow foreign governments.
(para 4) Congress “tried to make agencies which have to operate in secret accountable nevertheless to the law,” said former vice president Walter F. Mondale, who as a senator was a member of the Church Committee, which led the efforts to overhaul the system.
(para 5) Now, Mondale said, “that system has totally collapsed.” He said Clapper’s willingness to mislead the public during Senate testimony “is what happens when there’s no accountability. . . . What is the consequence of fibbing to the American people?”
This seems to indicate to me that some congressmen are indeed interested in changing things around.
Not if the leadership and seniors have anything to do with it. Boehner called Snowden a traitor; he doesn't want to be told what Snowden knows. And Feinstein has defended the programs.
Wyden and Udall are in the minority. Everyone else on the Senate Intelligence Committee heard what those two heard, and there were no words of discontent or reform beyond what those two said. Indeed, most of you probably know their names only because of their faint opposition. They've been speaking as much as they dare for years, which means the rest of the committee has known for years. And yet, nothing.