Lawmakers Question White House Account of an Internet Surveillance Program
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The issue underscored the criticism over the Obama administration’s inconsistent statements about N.S.A. surveillance operations, and also suggested growing restiveness within Congress about the scope of domestic spying programs.
Late Tuesday, Mr. Clapper released a letter of apology to the chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for what he said were “clearly erroneous” statements during public testimony before the panel in March. At that time Mr. Clapper denied that the N.S.A. collected private data on millions of American citizens, but his statements were proven wrong by the disclosures made by Mr. Snowden.
WASHINGTON — When the existence of a vast Internet surveillance program run by the National Security Agency was disclosed last month, Obama administration officials quickly took credit for having shuttered the effort in 2011. But two Democratic senators who have been longtime critics of the N.S.A.’s domestic surveillance operations are now challenging the administration’s version of events, and say the program was abandoned only after they repeatedly questioned its usefulness and criticized its impact on the privacy of American citizens.
Last week a spokesman for the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., issued a statement saying that the program was abandoned “by the executive branch as result of an interagency review.” The statement omitted any mention of a closed-door controversy in the Senate over the program in 2011, and seemed to be part of an administration effort to defuse yet another controversy stirred up by leaked documents from Edward J. Snowden, a former N.S.A. contractor.
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Even Obama’s political Allies are nudging him to do the right thing and the press is, so far, playing along.