‘People’s lives are at risk’: Intelligence chief blasts Snowden during Senate hearing
During a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act oversight hearing
in Washington early Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence
James Clapper had harsh words not just for the government
shutdown that started this week, but for the leaked top-secret
documents that have exposed the government’s vast surveillance
apparatus in recent months.
Both the shuttering of select federal operations and the
disclosures about program those departments oversee are having a
grave effect on national security, DNI Clapper told lawmakers in
the Senate.
At one point early on in the hearing, Sen. Chuck Grassley
(R-Iowa) asked the panel’s witnesses, “Does America remain
safe even with a shutdown?”
“I don’t feel that I can make such a guarantee to the American
people,” responded Clapper. “It would be much more
difficult to make such a guarantee as each day of this shutdown
goes by.”
Moments later, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) asked the
director, “You clearly see it as a risk to security?”
“Absolutely,” responded the director.
But also detrimental to national security, added Clapper, was the
recent unauthorized disclosure of top-secret documents detailing
the sensitive intelligence gathering programs operated by the NSA
and other government agencies. Leaked documents that have since
been attributed to former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden
have routinely made their way to the media since June, and before
the Senate on Tuesday, Clapper said that the impact has been
grave for the US.
“We are already seeing signs of changes in target behavior
because of their awareness as a result of the revelations in
these unauthorized leaks,” Clapper said. The disclosures, he
added, did “great damage to partners overseas.”
“People’s lives are at risk here because of data that Mr.
Snowden purloined,” Clapper said.
The hearing on the Hill Wednesday morning marked the second time
in two weeks that lawmakers in Washington grilled leaders of the
intelligence community about the counterterrorism programs put in
place after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. In recent
months, those programs have attracted immense criticism by the
American public after unauthorized leaks attributed to former
contractor Edward Snowden began disclosing those operations in
great detail.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California), chair of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, credited the intelligence gathering
operations since installed with thwarting another would-be 9/11,
and said, “I will do everything I can to prevent this program
from being cancelled out.”
Nevertheless, Gen. Keith Alexander, the director of the National
Security Agency and the morning panel’s second witness, told
senators that the government shutdown that started Monday morning
means that more than 70 percent of the NSA’s workforce has been
sent home.
Upon hearing how severely weakened the US intelligence community
has become due to the three-day-old shutdown, Sen. Grassley told
the witnesses, “If your lawyers have determined that 70
percent of your employees are nonessential to your mission, then
you either need bigger lawyers or to make big changes in your
workforce.”
In response to the small number of intelligence employees who
will remain on the job amid the shutdown, Sen. Lindsey Graham
told the witnesses, “You scared the hell out of all of
us!”
“I anticipate as this drags out that we will make adjustments
and probably recall more people,” Clapper later told the
panel.
When quizzed by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) later on about
how the intelligence community will operate efficiently if the
shutdown lingers much longer, Clapper said that agencies will
function “on a day-to-day basis” and that people will be
shuffled in and out of offices “depending on what we believe
the concern of the day is.”
US President Barack Obama is reportedly meeting with
Congressional lawmakers in Washington on Wednesday to discuss
what efforts it will take to have the federal government again
working in full-force. Meanwhile, Snowden is in Russia, where he
was granted temporary asylum.
In a statement read on his behalf before the European Parliament
this week, Snowden acknowledged that the disclosures he’s
responsible for have resulted in his own “persecution and exile,”
as well as the international debate that he had hoped for.
Copyright: RT
Source: http://rinf.com/alt-news/latest-news/peoples-lives-are-at-risk-intelligence-chief-blasts-snowden-during-senate-hearing/75346/
