An American journalist believes President Barack Obama allowed NSA Director General Keith Alexander and National Intelligence Director James Clapper to “lie” to Congress about the government’s surveillance programs.
“My opinion is he (Gen. Alexander) and Clapper are two liars who have officially lied before Congress”, Rob Kall, executive editor of OpEdNews.com, told Press TV on Sunday.
“They should be fired, they should be prosecuted and they should be jailed for the serious offence of lying to Congress. Now since that has not happened, Congress should be blamed and Obama should be blamed,” he added.
“Obama should not be trusted, he has basically, by allowing them to lie, and perhaps even encouraging them to lie, he has shown that lying is part of the practice of the Obama administration,” he stated.
During an open congressional hearing on March 12, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Clapper, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Clapper replied, “No sir … not wittingly.”
Later, Clapper said that that the testimony he gave before Congress was “clearly erroneous.”
In October, Alexander admitted before a congressional committee that he lied in June when he claimed the agency’s phone tapping program had thwarted 54 terrorist “plots or events.”
Alexander is now calling on governments around the world to stop journalists from public disclosure of his agency’s secret documents.
“I think it’s wrong that that newspaper reporters have all these documents, the 50,000-whatever they have and are selling them and giving them out as if these-you know it just doesn’t make sense,” Alexander said in an interview with the Defense Department’s “Armed With Science” blog.
The NSA’s massive data collection was revealed by its former contractor Edward Snowden, who released confidential documents showing that the agency is collecting phone and email data of both American and foreign nationals.
AT/HJ
Source: Press TV