Rep. Rogers Insists CIA Oversight Is Great... Just As We Learn CIA Hid Thousands Of Documents From Congress
from the congressional-oversight! dept
Since the Senate spying scandal story came out last week, and then went into overdrive this week with Dianne Feinstein's public statement on the details, her counterpart in the House, Rep. Mike Rogers (a staunch defender of the intelligence community) had remained mostly quiet. He finally did an interview in which he actually admits that if the CIA broke the law, "that would be a pretty horrific situation and would destroy that legislative-CIA relationship." Relationship? Then there's this nugget, where he suggests that the CIA isn't out of control and Congressional oversight is working great:"We shouldn't taint the whole agency. The agency is well-overseen, lots of oversight, and they're doing some really incredible work to protect the United States of America."Well-overseen? Lots of oversight? Right. So, soon after he does this interview, McClatchy releases a story about how the CIA (with support from the White House) has been withholding thousands of documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee who is investigating the CIA's torture program. This is in relation to the report that created this scandal, the supposedly scathing report that condemns the CIA for going even further in torturing people than previously reported and revealing that the torture produced no useful intelligence. And that's without knowing what's in these other documents.
The White House has been withholding for five years more than 9,000 top-secret documents sought by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for its investigation into the now-defunct CIA detention and interrogation program, even though President Barack Obama hasn't exercised a claim of executive privilege.How's that "oversight" looking now? When the CIA can just hang onto the really embarrassing stuff just because it wants to, you no longer have "oversight." You have an agency that is free to coverup whatever it would like.
In contrast to public assertions that it supports the committee's work, the White House has ignored or rejected offers in multiple meetings and in letters to find ways for the committee to review the records, a McClatchy investigation has found.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: cia, congress, house intelligence committee, mike rogers, oversight, spying scandal, withholding documents
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sad
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Sad
The NSA-only scandal is becoming an intelligence community scandal. And not a moment too soon.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Sad
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Sad
After all, it's to 'fight terrorism' and 'for national security' why would anyone object to that?
Now though, now they're finding out that their data is being scooped up as well, that they can also be put under the microscope, and suddenly they have an interest in it.
Put simply, before this came around, they weren't affected, so they weren't able to understand just why the NSA's spying was so objectionable. Now that it's become quite clear that they aren't immune to being spied on as well, they're much more likely to actually care enough to deal with the spying programs.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Sad
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sad
If they do put something together to limit the extent of the spying, it'll likely be just as you said, something to exempt government employees from the spying programs, but leaves the rest of it untouched.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Must have been an oversight
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Response to: Anonymous Coward on Mar 13th, 2014 @ 12:29pm
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Unless he's acting like this because he already he knows he was spied upon by them and are now blackmailing him into this. But he is just so eager to defend them every time, it doesn't seem like he's forced into doing it. He seems to want to do it himself.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
There are too many politicians quite willing to support them for it to sound otherwise. Especially when you consider that one of the early whistle blowers said he had the files on Obama in his hand, when Obama was considering running for the Senate.
This data isn't just collected and then forgotten it exists. There is just too much temptation in doing the blackmail thing to ever ignore. More and more it looks like the statement that Gen. Alexander from the NSA gets what he wants has a reason.
Linkages such as the article here show it can't be isolated to just one security branch. They are the shadow government that never faces election.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
New leak standards
1) Start w/ a relatively small leak.
2) Wait for the wrong-doer to take the bait & lie to cover their butt.
3) Leak only what's needed to disprove the lie
4) Leak a little more
5) repeat 2-5 until change occurs
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Over-Sight - the process of pulling wool over eyes
[ link to this | view in chronology ]