Watch The Video Of Rep. Mike Rogers Attacking Fellow Reps For Saying They Had No Idea NSA Spied On Foreign Leaders

from the could-he-be-any-more-condescending? dept

Wed, Oct 30th 2013 10:54am — Mike Masnick

Yesterday, we wrote about the incredible exchange between Reps. Mike Rogers and Adam Schiff, after Rogers made a big production out of claiming that of course the House Intelligence Committee knew all about the NSA spying on foreign leaders. Schiff (and some others on the committee) made it clear that, contrary to Rogers' condescending claims earlier, they had no idea, despite being on the committee. However, to understand the level of dripping condescension from Rogers towards his colleagues who contradict him on the Committee, you really have to watch the video. If C-SPAN's video clipping service is working correctly (and it's crazy buggy), you should see the whole thing below (or at this link, starting with Schiff's questions to the panel, in which he makes it clear that he was not informed, and that he's not at all happy with James Clapper trying to tap dance around this by spewing a bunch of words that don't mean anything about how he tries to follow "the spirit" of the law.

The fun starts a little over five and a half minutes in when Rogers starts lecturing Schiff about not saying what Schiff knows is true, and making not-particularly-veiled claims that if only Schiff had done his homework, he'd know about it. Schiff shoots back to point out that dumping a ton of documents and insisting that he must know everything in them is quite different than directly informing him of this very serious activity, leading to a long and ridiculous lecture from Rogers that has to be watched to see the scolding father tone he adopts, all the while knowing he's full of crap, because Schiff clearly has him dead to rights. The information may have been buried somewhere, but the Committee clearly was not informed directly about these activities. If they had been, when Schiff asked his question of Clapper, Clapper wouldn't have tap danced like he did around the question. He would have just said, "We did inform you."

Here's a bit of the transcript, though you have to see the tone to believe it.

Rogers: I would argue that to say that we're in the dark is mystifying to me. Some members spend a lot more time based on their schedules, which are significant, in this Congress. But, it is disingenuous to imply that this Committee did not have a full and complete understanding of activities of the intelligence community, as was directed under the national intelligence priority framework, to include sources and methods.

Schiff: Will the Chairman yield?

Rogers: I would yield.

Schiff: Chairman, are you suggesting you and the Committee were informed of the wiretapping of foreign leaders if that report is correct?

Rogers: Well, I wouldn't confirm any specific activity by intelligence community. As the gentleman knows -- as I have highlighted -- that we have access to all sources and methods and there is lots of product to be reviewed by the Intelligence Committee, through the Intelligence Committee and through the members of the Committee. Any implication that through the reviews that this Committee would not be informed to the status that has been in question is not correct.

Schiff I'd be interested to know, Mr. Chairman --

Rogers: We would be happy to take you to the committee and spend a couple of hours going through mounds of product that would allow member to be as informed as a member wishes to be on sources and methods and all activities of the intelligence community under the national intelligence framework.

Schiff: I would just say --

Rogers: I think we need to be careful about what we talk about but I think it would be disingenuous to use the classification...

Schiff: ... I think it would be disingenuous, Mr. Chairman, to suggest we have information if we don't have it. I would like to find out just what we were informed by the intelligence community. I would also like to find out if this is in the posture that you sometimes see in litigation, where you're given a warehouse full of documents...

Rogers: Again, reclaiming my time. Reclaiming my time. This is a very unique Committee on Capitol Hill. It's the only committee on both sides of the chamber that has both military and civilian intelligence activities. That is an enormous responsibility for every member of this committee, enormous. We don't get to take personal staff from the office to assist in processing of information we may have to do as members of this committee. I think it is to the semantics of exactly who, what, when or why, if you're asking if intelligence community submits a selector to every engagement in their business to the intelligence committee, that would be ridiculous. And no one would receive information in that way, not even the Director of National Intelligence would receive it in that particular way. To know what the framework is and know what the guidelines are and know what the reporting is and go through the very significant oversight of this Committee and the review of the product, which is incredibly important to the end, and to say this Committee is somehow in the dark on intelligence activities simply is not accurate.

I think we need to be incredibly careful about making any assertions that somehow we're in the dark because that information is available in robust amounts of material in our particular Committee. It is time consuming. I get it. It's a very time consuming committee. Again, this feeds into this flame of misreporting about lack of oversight or our intelligence community is running around doing what they want to do outside of the law or any oversight is wrong. Again, I just caution members before you might make any statement to the contrary, I would argue that a significant portion of your time should be spent in the committee reviewing the materials available and made available by the Intelligence Committee accordance with the law we are charged to do. With that, Miss Bachmann.

Schiff: Mr. Chairman, can I --

Rogers: Nope.

Schiff: -- will you yield?

Rogers: No. Reclaiming my time. I will not. Miss Bachmann.

And, just for fun, I've left Bachmann's questions in the video if you'd like to see what was so important that Rogers had to "reclaim his time" and not allow Schiff to speak. It's a bunch of questions about just how evil Ed Snowden is, complete with making the entire panel state that Snowden is a traitor, despite not actually fitting the classification under the law. The only one who refused to play that game was James Cole who says considering the legal proceedings, he really can't comment, which Bachmann refuses to accept as an answer.

So, rather than actually get to the heart of the matter on an important question of whether or not the intelligence community actually provided this important information to the Committee, we're treated to a game of bogus name calling. Ladies and gentleman, this is "Congressional oversight" under the leadership of Mike Rogers.

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Filed Under: adam schiff, michele bachmann, mike rogers, nsa, nsa surveillance

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Ninja (profile), 30 Oct 2013 @ 8:10am

This guy is dangerous. He should be removed from politics. He doesn't even respect his fellow senators can you imagine the level of respect he has to the people? None would be to high of an answer.
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silverscarcat (profile), 30 Oct 2013 @ 8:19am

I can't watch this tripe...
I watched a bit of Bachmann asking Alexander and when he said what Snowden did put American national security interest at risk, I had to stop cuz I was yelling "PROVE IT!"

Of course, he can't hear me, and even if he did, he wouldn't answer, cuz he knows that it's a lie.
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Arsik Vek (profile), 30 Oct 2013 @ 8:21am

You were absolutely given that information. Buried in this giant haystack of possibly tangentially related material. If you had a proper method to search through that haystack, and the inclination to do so, you would have the capabilities to know whatever you wanted.

This viewpoint seems oddly appropriate coming out of the NSA.
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Mark Harrill (profile), 30 Oct 2013 @ 8:47am

Can we hold the NSA to Rogers' Standard?
The NSA has been given all that information and they haven't been able to stop a terrorist attack that was actually going to happen. They have been given near unfettered access to the communications records of millions of people and have yet failed in their goal of stopping terrorism. They have been given adequate time and materials within the law and their inability to meet the stated goals says they should not be able to make statements to the contrary.
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Lonyo, 30 Oct 2013 @ 11:13am

Rogers makes a valid point. Who is going to select what information is "important"?
If the committee are expecting the NSA to provide them with the important information highlighted, who gets in trouble when something the committee thinks is important isn't highlighted?

I think he is right, there is insufficient oversight because most of the people on the committee aren't giving it enough attention. That's not his fault.

The problem is the structure of the committee, not what is provided to it. Providing information is fine if there is someone to make a call on how to decide what is important, but the NSA can't do that, and individual members can't do that, they need support in a manageable fashion.

If the NSA was selecting what was "important" for the committee to see, where is the oversight? There is none, because the committee get provided with what the NSA wants them to focus on, and potentially serious *other* issues are hidden, because the committee assumes the NSA is doing both what is right, and what the committee wants/expects. And if it's not, suddenly there's a black hole anyway.

I don't think Rogers is necessarily the best person for his role, but he SHOULD be condescending.
He can't decide what is important to other committee members, the NSA can't decide it either.
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Lonyo, 30 Oct 2013 @ 11:14am

Re:
He's implying they don't respect the role they have on the committee. He seems to be the one putting in time and effort, and everyone else is saying "hey, it's not my fault I didn't bother reading information", and laying blame on him.

It's not necessarily his fault the whole committee is dysfunctional. He shares some blame, but not all of it.
They are disrespecting him by saying "we didn't know because we didn't do any work, and it's your fault".
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out_of_the_blue, 30 Oct 2013 @ 11:15am

Distraction. -- Why worry your little head with HOW politicians are lying in committee?
"Rather than actually get to the heart of the matter on an important question of" WHO should be indicted with WHAT?
Even if Mike is absolutely right about problems, he has no solutions to even suggest.
Masnicking: daily spurts of short and trivial traffic-generating items.

07:14:52[i-197-7]
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Oct 2013 @ 11:21am

Re:
Actually it is his fault.

In any place of business, we specifically inform higher ups of ANY program going on, as well as provide periodic updates. We do not document dump. Each project has it's own name.

Anything else is obfuscating.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Oct 2013 @ 11:27am

Re: Re:
Let's look at contract law.

You get a contract, it's a big pile of papers you can't hope to read the entirety of.

It is the responsibility of the party who created the contract to summarize important clauses and explain what they mean, as well as point them out in the contract.

If an important clause is not highlighted and explained, then the contract can be voided.

The oversight committee has other duties, it is in fact, NSA's responsibility to inform them of items of importance, not the committee's job to wade through documents to find things to oversee. Once they know what's being done, then they can actually perform their duties.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Oct 2013 @ 11:44am

Re:
You know, if you think he's right, then try my little experiment and see how it goes...

In whatever business you work in, the next time management asks for a "status" of a certain project, just dump the entire pile of project information on their desk and say "here you go."

Don't offer anything other than that giant pile of paper.
Tell them that as management, it's their job to figure it out.

Report back as to how well that goes over, then ask yourself how you feel about the NSA doing the same thing to Congress.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Oct 2013 @ 11:46am

Re:
"Who is going to select what information is "important"?"

That's not exactly something difficult to do. They already have all these handy slides for internal use (that the media is currently going through), and it should not be difficult to figure out that things like "we collect records on millions of Americans" or "We've hacked Google and Yahoo", or "we did a test to make sure we can locate hundreds of thousands Amercians if we wish to. The test was successful." are things that the oversight committee really should be kept abreast of.

As for the committee not "giving it enough attention", maybe they'd be having an easier time of it if Rogers wasn't scheduling briefings at inconvenient times, or sending important memos to junk email addresses.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Oct 2013 @ 11:48am

MIKE ROGERS MUST GO!
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Oct 2013 @ 11:48am

Rogers: I would argue that to say that we're in the dark is mystifying to me.

So then he's just good with how the program is working?
No problems at all?

Sounds like he's making his stance on the NSA spying perfectly clear and unambiguous.

The only question at this point, is what kind of dirt they must have on him.
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Lonyo, 30 Oct 2013 @ 11:55am

Re: Re:
Actually, in my job I do give them a summary of what I've done/where I'm at.

And then before they sign things off, they go through all the work I've done and review it.

First, the senior person gets an understanding of what the business does, then sets out key risk areas and what we need to look at and focus on, and then tells me to go look at it and find relevant documents.
Then I do so, and then they review all the work I've done.

Key part is, I am told beforehand what is important, and before we start we obtain and understanding of the business both by asking the people there, and by our own experience of other companies and of the world at large and potential impacts from that.

Now, if we just relied on what was given to us as important by our client, and took their word for major issues, what might happen? We might miss things we would think are important, but don't know about.

This is an OVERSIGHT committee. You can't rely on the people you are overseeing to tell you everything you might want or need to know unless you develop your own understanding at some level.
My point is that a data dump is too much at the level it's given to, members of the house, but it's asinine to expect that the NSA is going to tell them all the important things they need to know and not forget or miss or hide anything.
The whole reason for the document dump is to hide things, so what makes you think that by getting the NSA themselves to tell the committee what's important that they won't just not tell them things?

The whole point is:
THE NSA CANNOT BE TRUSTED AND IS TRYING TO HIDE OR OBFUSCATE THINGS.

YOU CANNOT EXPECT THAT THE NSA WILL APPROPRIATELY SUMMARISE ALL IMPORTANT INFORMATION THEMSELVES AND PROVIDE IT TO THE COMMITTEE.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Oct 2013 @ 12:00pm

Re: Re: Re:
The whole point is:
THE NSA CANNOT BE TRUSTED AND IS TRYING TO HIDE OR OBFUSCATE THINGS.

YOU CANNOT EXPECT THAT THE NSA WILL APPROPRIATELY SUMMARISE ALL IMPORTANT INFORMATION THEMSELVES AND PROVIDE IT TO THE COMMITTEE.

If they are EXPECTED to lie, then I guess what's the point of ANY oversight committee, competent or not?

If you lied/obfuscated to your management, what would happen to you?

The last I knew, lying to Congress under oath was called perjury.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Oct 2013 @ 12:04pm

Re: Re:
Following this line of logic it would be impossible for any committee in congress to oversee anything as long as they're given more paper than they can possibly read between meetings. That sounds more like obfuscation than transparency to me...
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Oct 2013 @ 12:06pm

Re:
Which state does he represent?
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Oct 2013 @ 12:13pm

Re:
You know who dumps piles of documents trying to make it hard for others to find anything?

Your enemy.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Oct 2013 @ 12:13pm

Re: Re:
Given his recent comments, I'd say "none" to be a wiseass.

But in reality, we can thank Michigan for this asshat.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Oct 2013 @ 12:16pm

Re: Re: Re:
Well that problem gets compounded when you get the chairman supporting the obfuscation efforts of the agency that he is supposed to be watching.

Anywhere else that would be called criminal negligence.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Oct 2013 @ 12:17pm

Bachmann got James Clapper to confess that the White House, receive daily briefings about foreign spy operations. Implying that Obama knew about spying on heads of states.

So right there she throws Clapper under the bus, by forcing him to snitch on Obama. Clapper didn't look too happy towards the end of that video.

She then proceeds to demonize Snowden. Saying that his actions were unconstitutional and that he violated his oath of office. Look in the mirror lady!

Misrepresentative Rogers, looked like he was having some kind of mental breakdown towards the end. He himself describes reading intelligence briefings as "extremely time consuming".

If it's so time consuming, use some of your 1.5 billion dollar budged to streamline the way members on Congress are briefed.

Let's face it, Misrepresentative Rogers, wants to keep the intelligence briefings as obscure and "time consuming" as possible.

That way only people who spend all day sifting through "Piles of product", as Misrep Rogers likes to refer to our personal data, know what the hells going on in the Spy Community.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Oct 2013 @ 12:23pm

Re: Re:
Mr. Roger if not under protection of his office would be found guilty for criminal negligence at the very least.

His acts are of someone with intent to hide things, his every step was not to make it easy or to help others do their jobs but to make it hard to do it.

How a man like that gets appointed to chair anything is beyond belief.
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Zangetsu (profile), 30 Oct 2013 @ 12:25pm

Slander
If I remember correctly, you cannot sue a member of Congress for slander based upon what they say in the House. Can you sue the participants in the senate hearing for slander? As you stated, Mike, Snowden doesn't fall under the category of "traitor" so is he able to sue the members of the senate hearing who did call him a traitor? I must admit that if I were a lawyer I'm not sure I would take up that challenge but it would be interesting to understand the legal aspects of such a lawsuit.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Oct 2013 @ 12:30pm

Re: Re:
Michigan and his wife works for Manatt

http://www.manatt.com/KristiRogers.aspx

She benefits greatly from her husbands unique position.

One has to wonder if that is why he is so sensitive about anything that could compromise his position in that committee.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Oct 2013 @ 12:32pm

Re: I can't watch this tripe...
I was confused when they answered Bachmann's question by saying Yes, Snowden did violate the constitution. I don't see in what way he could have violated the constitution, even if he wanted to. Now Congress, the President, the NSA and possibly the FIS court on the other hand ....

Maybe the NSA has a secret version of the constitution with alot more amendments.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Oct 2013 @ 12:50pm

People should be asking why is Mr Rogers so sensitive about it, could it because his wife makes lots of money because of his position?
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art guerrilla (profile), 30 Oct 2013 @ 1:02pm

Re: Re:
(@ lonyo)

...*and* *another* authoritarian lackey is outed ! ! !

into the People's Database of Authoritarian Traitors to America with you ! ! !

dick
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Kevin H (profile), 30 Oct 2013 @ 1:22pm

Re: I can't watch this tripe...
"I watched a bit of Bachmann asking Alexander and when he said what Snowden did put American national security interest at risk, I had to stop cuz I was yelling "PROVE IT!"

What he put at risk was the system they have built for gathering intelligence. Whether or not he did something that will lead to direct harm to the US has yet to be determined, but he did endanger the machine.
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Beech, 30 Oct 2013 @ 1:41pm

The Bachman shit pissed me off more. This shit is like, 2 kids getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar, then lil' Eddie seeing them and telling mommy...then mommy backs up the kids stealing cookies and tried to blame lil' Eddie somehow.

My fondest wish is to get one of these assholes in front of an ACTUAL reporter asking REALLY HARD questions.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Oct 2013 @ 1:57pm

Re: Slander
That is a kind of weak premise. She was clearly asking for their opinion of whether they thought he was a traitor or not which they have a protected right to express. They would have to state something false and claim as a fact for it to be slander.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Oct 2013 @ 3:07pm

Look at all this spin against Rogers. No one is even considering that the other representatives are just playing dumb to avoid having to look like they knew this was going on the whole time (and Rogers is calling them on it).
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Rich Fiscus (profile), 30 Oct 2013 @ 3:08pm

The more Rogers opens his mouth, the more convinced I am he has a lot more to hide than just bad behavior as committee chairman. Let's look at the facts.

He has close personal ties to the intelligence contracting industry.
His wife is a former intelligence contractor executive who is now among the most powerful lobbyists in Washington for that industry. She also serves on the board of directors for Qualys Inc, which appears to be the world's largest provider of cloud security services whose partnerships read like a who's who of telecom and application service providers. According to Wikipedia that list includes both Verizon and British Telecom.

Qualys and Booz Allen Hamilton are both influential members of the Cloud Security Alliance. After a few minutes of (extremely incomplete) research it looks like the CSA is the industry group primarily responsible for identifying and responding to security vulnerabilities.

Mike Rogers is the leading fear monger for the so-called cyberwar threat which extends from the contractors all the way up to the Director of National Intelligence.
After the Supreme Court unceremoniously shut down the NSA's illegal nationwide wiretapping program and ordered them to shut down their listening stations on telco premises there were suddenly thousands of intelligence operatives and a mission. That was in 2006.

In 2007 Mike McConnell took over as DNI and started whispering in the president's ear about the insidious threat of cyberwar. In short order he had arranged for a $200 billion cyberdefense contract for Booz Allen Hamilton where he became Vice Chairman upon his retirement. Before retiring, though, he organized a fear mongering campaign with the assistance of military leaders, most notably Keith Alexander, who became the head of the newly created US Cyber Command.

James Clapper succeeded McConnell after Obama took office and cranked the fear mongering up to 11 with a widespread PR campaign providing nebulous details about attacks which had supposedly already resulted in major breaches of government systems. The level of rhetoric inside the administration got so bad that the one actual security professional Obama selected as an advisor opted to leave at the beginning of his second term because nobody was listening to him.

Clapper, on the other hand, pushed Obama into letting him draft a new policy for US cyberdefense which neatly sums up the real end game of the growing surveillance industrial complex. In a nutshell it says:

1. The Internet is not a secure communications system.
2. Government systems keep getting hacked.
3. Therefore Internet infrastructure is the problem and the NSA needs to be put in charge of it.

Mike Rogers is the standard bearer for cyberwar propaganda, primarily through his advocacy for CISPA
Unlike the government, corporate America has a pretty good track record with respect to the security of their computer systems. It's not perfect, but compared to the government it might as well be. There is no real oversight or auditing of government system security. We do know they can't even protect themselves from the threat of thumb drives even though their own security protocols dictate USB ports be locked down.

It's no secret the real purpose for CISPA is immunity for granting the government access to any and all private data. So why would so many tech companies be supporting it? For many it's almost certainly fear. National Security Letters are impossible to fight. Even the handful of companies with the resources to go through the motions will be fighting with both hands tied behind their backs because the most important evidence is classified and therefore out of their reach.

But that doesn't explain why IBM decided to pay for 300 executives to fly to Washington and personally lobby for the bill. They didn't spend that kind of money for fireside chats with government IT drones. Either they were desperate for the immunity or they were anticipating a return on their investment of another kind.

Mike Rogers' psychotic break
Rogers looks just as desperate to keep the bodies buried as IBM. When Microsoft and Facebook bowed to public pressure over CISPA and withdrew their support Mike Rogers went off the rails and around the bend and he hasn't been back since. Keep in mind this was before the Snowden leaks surface so as far as he knew there was no risk of government secrets coming out.

He also remembered how the 2006 NSA wiretapping case eventually made it to the Supreme Court because an AT&T employee blew the whistle. He knew it would only be a matter of time before some conscientious private sector employee went public and the whole house of cards would fall. CISPA's immunity represented a shield against discovery in civil court and a way to keep NSA partners quiet.

Most people see his ongoing public temper tantrums as clueless bullying but that doesn't add up. When he was just talking down to all us commoners in the street that made sense. But you don't get to be chairman of the House Intelligence Committee without being a savvy politician and you certainly don't get their by telling the rest of Congress to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. This isn't arrogance - at least not anymore. It's panic and hysteria.

Ask yourself this. Why is a senior Republican Congressman desperately trying to protect a Democratic president's administration from the most embarrassing scandal since Watergate?

He could have convened a media circus of hearings, probably drowning out all the allegations against himself, and possibly even coming out of it the hero of his party for bringing down the hated opposition. Why is he falling on his sword for that president instead?

The only explanation that makes sense to me is he's more scared of whatever would come out of those hearings than he is of committing political suicide. These aren't the actions of somebody who just knows where the bodies are buried. He looks more like a guy with the shovel in his garage and fresh piles of dirt in his backyard.

As information continues to come out from the Snowden leaks I fully expect Mike Rogers to look less like a self centered, arrogant jerk and more like a co-conspirator. No matter how long he keeps digging that hole he won't be able to tunnel out of this.
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Travis, 30 Oct 2013 @ 5:17pm

Re: Re:
Did you miss where he said that they could come spend hours going over the mountains of data? Remember, we already know that they are not allowed to take notes or have any of their staff present. I can guarantee you that the pertinent information is spread through multiple documents to prevent congress persons from �Connecting the dots�. After all, they know first-hand how information overload prevents spotting the patterns.
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Travis, 30 Oct 2013 @ 5:23pm

Re: I can't watch this tripe...
Right with you. As a vet, I am outraged by that bit of Q&A. What Snowden did may have been illegal, but it was Constitutional, moral, and most certainly inline with the oath he took. It also did nothing to harm national security, just may have hurt national dignity and hypocrisy.
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Pragmatic, 31 Oct 2013 @ 6:52am

Re:
Rogers has been pulling every trick in the book to provide the appearance of giving Congress the documents it needs to perform its oversight duties while denying them the items they need.

Do keep up, AC.
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Jim Anderson, 1 Nov 2013 @ 7:47am

We better understand this
The NSA is not a rogue agency. This whole situation is fully authorized. If you don't like this situation then the way forward is clear. It doesn't make any of this right but it does suggest a large number of elected officials should not be re-elected and or be removed from office by impeachment. Rep Rogers is both honest and evil at the same time.
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