Rep. Jane Harman posts a revealing Op-ed in today's LA Times. It reveals a great deal about the questions that weren't asked by the so-called Gang of Eight intelligence overseers in Congress during the Bush-Cheney years. Read her account, and think of how and why it is that the NSA, CIA and White House managed to get away with running a universal surveillance and profiling system for eight years, seemingly under the noses of those on Capitol Hill appointed to monitor them.
It's what isn't said that's often the most revealing.
What the CIA hid from Congress
Were members of congressional intelligence committees told everything about the Bush administration's surveillance programs? Not even close, reveals Jane Harman.By Jane Harman
July 25, 2009
As ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee from 2003 to 2006, I was part of the so-called Gang of Eight -- a group made up of the House and Senate leaders plus the chairs and ranking members of the two chambers' intelligence committees that is required by law to be briefed on the CIA's "covert" action programs.
Those briefings were conducted roughly quarterly at the White House -- either in the vice president's office or the Situation Room. Most of the ones I attended concerned a code-named program now known as the Terrorist Surveillance Program. Respectful of the double oath I signed to protect highly classified material, I did not take notes or speak to anyone about the meetings. However, comments by Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency and the CIA, that the Gang of Eight was "fully" briefed on the TSP prompt me to disclose, for the first time, what they were like.
In virtually every meeting, Hayden would present PowerPoint "slides," walking us through the operational details of the TSP. The program has since been described, in part, as one that intercepted communications to and from the U.S. in an effort to uncover terrorist networks and prevent or disrupt attacks. We were told that the program was the centerpiece of our counter-terrorism efforts, legal and yielding impressive results.
Often present were CIA officials (including then-Director George Tenet) and then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales. Missing was any Justice Department presence -- a tipoff, in retrospect, to the legal limbo under which the program operated.
Fast-forward to the jaw-dropping inspectors general report released this month, which makes clear that the TSP's legal underpinnings were fatally flawed and its results minimal. Those topics consumed scant time at our briefings. Why?
It is now clear to me that we learned only what the briefers wanted to tell us -- even though they were required by law to keep us "fully and currently informed." Absent the ability to do any independent research, it did not occur to me then that the program was operated wholly outside of the framework Congress created as the exclusive means to conduct such surveillance: the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
more...
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-harman25-2009jul25,0,6575602.story Sounds like Jane and the Other Gang of 8 simply didn't bother to ask the right questions:
1) Were domestic U.S. person to U.S. person calls also being collected without warrants?
2) What were the criteria for minimization of U.S. person data?
3) What was being done with the data collected?
4) Was U.S. person communications being data-mined, and for what purposes?
5) Were U.S. persons being profiled as potential terrorists?
6) What was the criteria for such labeling?
7) What were the consequences of such labeling?
8) Was this data and analysis being shared with other intelligence agencies?
9) Was this data being shared with political offices in the White House?
10) What safeguards were in place to protect innocent Americans from ending up in dozens of distributed databanks around the world?
What a curious lack of curiosity, Jane.
Ask no questions. Tell no lies.
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