\nInfowars.com
\nJune 25, 2013<\/p>\n
Congress insisted it be kept in the dark on the NSA surveillance programs recently revealed by Edward Snowden, according to Dick Cheney, who approached lawmakers with an invitation for them to provide more oversight back in 2004 but was told, \u201cabsolutely not\u201d.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\nImage: Wikimedia Commons.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Speaking at a Washington think tank on U.S.-Korean affairs, the former Vice-President bragged about his involvement in setting up NSA programs shortly after 9\/11 that snooped on email and phone records.<\/p>\n
Cheney also revealed that when he approached Congressional leaders about whether they wished to provide oversight for the program three years after it began, they were \u201cunanimous\u201d that it should continue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018Do you think we ought to come back to the Congress in order to get more formal authorization?\u2019 and they said, \u2018Absolutely not.\u2019 Everybody, Republican and Democrat, said, \u2018Don\u2019t come back up here, it will leak\u2019,\u201d\u00a0Cheney said<\/a>.<\/p>\n Cheney\u2019s claim that Snowden\u2019s revelations have caused significant damage to US national security has been\u00a0rejected by other top security experts<\/a>, who assert that terrorists already assume their communications are under surveillance and are therefore unaffected by the information released by the whistleblower.<\/p>\n \u201cThe argument that this sweeping search must be kept secret from the terrorists is laughable. Terrorists already assume this sort of thing is being done. Only law-abiding American citizens were blissfully ignorant of what their government was doing,\u201d said top counter-terrorism czar under Presidents Clinton and Bush \u2014 Richard Clarke.<\/p>\n The former head of the NSA\u2019s global digital data gathering program, William Binney, also highlighted how mass NSA surveillance\u00a0did nothing to prevent terrorism.<\/a><\/p>\n In addition, the claim that the program prevented terror attacks on targets such as Wall Street and the New York subway\u00a0has also been debunked.<\/a><\/p>\n Cheney\u2019s revelation that Congress was completely uninterested in learning about the PRISM program and other NSA snooping initiatives nine years before they caused a global scandal underscores how lawmakers are continually willing to give the federal government a blank check to abuse Constitutional rights.<\/p>\n Given the fact that Congress is not only failing to perform its duty of acting as a check and balance in providing oversight of federal government activity, but actually demanding its role be the opposite \u2014 a green light for unrestrained spying \u2014 is it any wonder that the Congressional job approval has\u00a0been on a continual slide<\/a>\u00a0since 9\/11?<\/p>\n