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Comment by jgg | Hacker News Reader

Clapper said, "No" and "not wittingly." That mind-rotting article you linked to is one guy speculating that he was put on the spot and had to say something in order to not confirm that they were openly spying on people...WHAT?

Everything we have seen makes it clear that they are spying on Americans and they obviously know they are doing it. Clapper's answer was thus a LIE. He was asked a question and gave an answer he knew was wrong. HE LIED. THIS IS THE DEFINITION OF LYING.

I wish someone around here would ante up and starting banning the shills.

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Stop saying shills, this isn't Reddit. Critical thinking about issues here is appreciated. Everything unfortunately related to the NSA isn't cut and dry, black or white.

You really must not have understood the article, as it mentions testifying about top secret programs is not a simple task.

Reddit didn't invent the word "shill."

I understood the article just fine! Did you? I don't care what his job is - he still lied! The internal logic of that piece is, "if he didn't deny it, people would think it was true!" The NSA was doing it anyway, so that makes fuck-all difference, now doesn't it?

I find it perfectly acceptable to lie during an open session hearing about top secret programs if those doing the questioning are doing it to be politically motivated, ie to embarrass the President.

If your hearing is actually looking for the truth and not looking to out top secret programs because you have an ideological reason against that, then fine do it in a closed door hearing, where I would think something like this should be done in the first place as to not harm national intelligence.

> I find it perfectly acceptable to lie during an open session hearing about top secret programs if those doing the questioning are doing it to be politically motivated

As opposed to what other kind of motivation? The only kind of questions they ever get are political so it seems like you think that people at the NSA can just lie about just about anything and it's just fine.

The issue is here:

> There is an added wrinkle here, however, is that it is not clear to me whether Clapper could have given a direct (and truthful) answer in a public hearing, as such an answer would have required him to disclose the existence of a then-classified government program. Even a non-answer or evasion could have revealed the existence of operations the NSA was trying to keep secret.

http://www.volokh.com/2013/06/11/did-james-clapper-lie-to-co...

...ie to embrace the President.

Yeah, because Wyden's motivation in asking the questions he asked was totally to buddy up to Obama.

Oops typo. That was supposed to be embarrass. Fixed.

We are then going down the rabbit hole of who gets to decide when it's appropriate to lie, and when not. IMHO, the only appropriate action to take in a case like this is to stop the open hearing as soon as possible, or refuse to answer any questions on the grounds that answering some and not others could be used to determine top secret information. At least then the public can decide whether they feel that is acceptable and lawmakers can decide what that means for them.

Instead, what we had was an official lie while under oath for political expediency.

It may not be simple but it helps when you have the questions in advance.

"So that he would be prepared to answer, I sent the question to Director Clapper’s office a day in advance. After the hearing was over, my staff and I gave his office a chance to amend his answer," Wyden said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/06...

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