You really must not have understood the article, as it mentions testifying about top secret programs is not a simple task.
"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...
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?
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.
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.
> 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...
Yeah, because Wyden's motivation in asking the questions he asked was totally to buddy up to Obama.
Instead, what we had was an official lie while under oath for political expediency.