The junior Republican lawmaker who came narrowly close to defunding the National Security Agency with a recently proposed amendment says senior members of Congress kept other representatives in the dark about the NSA’s surveillance programs.
Rep. Justin Amash (R-Michigan) wrote on his Facebook fan page
this week that as many as dozens of newly elected members of
Congress were never briefed on the NSA surveillance programs that
were reauthorized multiple times on Capitol Hill but only
recently leaked to the public through former intelligence
contractor Edward Snowden.
Amash was elected to the House for the first time in 2010, and
served with a group of lawmakers who voted to reauthorize the
Patriot Act in May of the following year, in turn extending that
bill’s Section 215 provision that allows for the daily collection
of call records for millions of Americans.
Senior members of Congress and the executive branch alike have
touted supposed oversight in this program by insisting that
legislators have time and time again been briefed on the NSA’s
surveillance tactics. Just last week the White House released a
white paper in an effort to bring transparency to the spy
programs stating that “Information concerning the use of
Section 215 to collect telephony metadata in bulk was made
available to all members of Congress.” Rep. Amash, however,
said that details about the Patriot Act provision were never
provided to those outside of the House Permanent Select Committee
on Intelligence.
Amash has published a February 2, 2011 letter from Assistant
Attorney General Ronald Weich to Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Michigan),
the ranking minority member of the intelligence committee, in
which the Justice Department says information about Section 215,
though classified at the time, should be shared with all members
of Congress.
“We believe that making this document available to all members
of Congress, as we did with a similar document in December 2009,
is an effective way to inform the legislative debate about the
reauthorization of Section 215,” Weich wrote in a letter sent
both to Rogers and Rep. Ruppersberger, the leading democrat on
the intelligence committee.
Contrary to the Justice Department’s suggestion, though, Amash
said that the Section 215 report was never shared among the
majority of lawmakers who voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act in
May 2011.
“I can now confirm that the House permanent select committee
on intelligence did not, in fact, make the 2011 document
available to representatives in Congress,” Amash posted
Sunday evening to his Facebook page, “meaning that the large
class of representatives elected in 2010 did not receive either
of the now declassified documents detailing these programs.”
Speaking to the Guardian newspaper for an article published
Monday, Amash said, “It is not acceptable for the intelligence
committee, or any other committee, to withhold critically
important information pertaining to a program prior to the
vote.”
Rep. Rush Holt (D-New Jersey) told the Guardian he never saw the
materials referenced in Weich’s 2011 letter either.
“This is another example of the difficulty in Congress
exerting any oversight of the intelligence community, because the
information is frequently not made available to all members,”
he said.
“Nobody I’ve spoken to in my legislative class remembers
seeing any such document,” Amash explained to the Guardian.
“We checked back with the committee, and it was not offered to
members.”
House Intelligence Committee spokesperson Susan Phalen responded
to questions about Amash’s claims made by The Daily Caller by
saying the panel “makes it a top priority to inform Members
about the intelligence issues on which Members must vote.”
“This process is always conducted consistent with the
Committee’s legal obligation to carefully protect the sensitive
intelligence sources and methods our intelligence agencies use to
do their important work,” Phalen said.
“Prior to voting on the PATRIOT Act reauthorization and the
FAA reauthorization, Chairman Rogers hosted classified briefings
to which all Members were invited to have their questions about
these authorities answered,” she added.
“Regardless of who withheld particular #NSA doc,” Amash
responded on Twitter, “[the] bulk collection program is
unconstitutional; White House [and] both parties bear
responsibility.”
Two weeks ago, an amendment drafted by Reps. Amash and John
Conyers (D-Michigan) lost by a 12-vote margin in the US House. If approved,
it could have prevented the NSA from collecting telephony
metadata.
Republished from: RT