James Clapper: Americans Wouldn’t Haven’t Minded Super-Secret Surveillance if They Had Known About it All Along.

In an exclusive interview with
Eli Lake of The Daily Beast, Director of National Intelligence
James Clapper shows the great gulf between spooks and the rest of
us. You know that super-secret program, sanctioned by section 215
of The Patriot Act and exposed by Edward Snowden, through which the
National Security Agency (NSA) was collecting massive amounts of
information on U.S. citizens? The one he forgot about when being
questioned by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)? Well, Clapper says the
problem with it was its secrecy:

“I probably shouldn’t say this, but I will. Had we been
transparent about this from the outset right after 9/11—which is
the genesis of the 215 program—and said both to the American people
and to their elected representatives, we need to cover this gap, we
need to make sure this never happens to us again, so here is what
we are going to set up, here is how it’s going to work, and why we
have to do it, and here are the safeguards… We wouldn’t have had
the problem we had,” Clapper said.

That’s pretty curious, given that folks involved with it denied
the program’s existence until their hand was forced by events they
couldn’t control. And we’ll see just how committed to explanation
the NSA (and the Obama administration) is going forward.

There’s also this:

“What did us in here, what worked against us was this shocking
revelation,” he said, referring to the first disclosures from
Snowden. If the program had been publicly introduced in the wake of
the 9/11 attacks, most Americans would probably have supported it.
“I don’t think it would be of any greater concern to most Americans
than fingerprints. Well people kind of accept that because they
know about it. But had we been transparent about it and say here’s
one more thing we have to do as citizens for the common good, just
like we have to go to airports two hours early and take our shoes
off, all the other things we do for the common good, this is one
more thing.”

I’m not sure about any of that, but it does raise the obvious
question: Then why hasn’t the NSA or the FBI or the CIA or the
president (this one and past ones) ever been transparent about
anything? This is classic hand-in-the-cookie-jar
redemption-seeking, in which the malefactor swears to change his
behavior without any indication he will.

As important, Clapper should get outside of whatever
tinfoil-lined bunker he lives in on a regular basis. Americans
actually are kinda-sorta concerned about fingerprint databases,
genetic swabs, and ginormous databases held by the government. Not
because we’re nutjobs but because of the government’s proven track
record of abusing all sorts of information it holds.

Clapper addresses the misleading answer he gave to Wyden during
a Senate hearing back in 2013. Wyden, a staunch civil libertarian
and the only Democrat to join Sen. Rand Paul’s anti-drone
filibuster, asked Clapper,

“Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions
or hundreds of millions of Americans?” At the time Clapper
responded, “No sir.” Wyden then asked, “they do not?” Clapper
responded, “Not wittingly. There are cases where they could
inadvertently, perhaps collect, but not wittingly.”

Clapper
subsequently said that “responded in what I thought was the most
truthful or least untruthful manner, by saying, ‘No.’” He
elaborates to the Beast by claiming that he wasn’t even thinking
about the 215 program at the time (it was still classified, though
clearly Wyden knew about it) but about a different program. So,
don’t you see, Clapper wasn’t lying. Really. Believe him, because
he and the people he represents have always been so forthcoming.
Except when they’re not. Which is always. Unless they have to
spill.