Can We Give James Clapper The Roger Stone Treatment Yet?
28th January 2019
Let’s compare another prominent case of alleged lying to Congress with Stone’s treatment.
On March 12, 2013, Gen. James R. Clapper, Jr., President Obama’s director of the Office Of National Intelligence, testified under oath before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Responding to a question from Oregon Sen. Ron Wyder on whether the U.S. government was collecting “any type of data at all” from American citizens, Clapper paused and said, “No, sir. … Not wittingly.”
Three months later, when Edward Snowden dumped millions of stolen government documents into the public domain, it became abundantly clear that Clapper lied. The U.S. government was, in fact, vacuuming up details about virtually every electronic communication by every American citizen. When asked directly about his answer to Wyden, Clapper said that his response was “the least untruthful” answer he could give.
Parse Clapper’s response. “Least untruthful” means not truthful. Not truthful means a lie.