Leave it to CIA director John Brennan to use terrorist attacks in France to prove that the U.S. Constitution, with its fussy concerns about general warrants, cruel and unusual punishments, and ex post facto laws—which all seem so 18th century these days—needs to be tossed out the window.
“In the past several years, because of a number of unauthorized disclosures, and a lot of hand-wringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to uncover these terrorists, there have been some policy and legal and other actions that have been taken that make our ability collectively, internationally, to find these terrorists much more challenging,” bellowed the belligerent Mr. Brennan, as reported by Scott Schane of the New York Times.
The thing is, John often talks too much. This is what John Brennan said about reports that, when he was CIA director, the CIA had been spying on Senate staffers working on a study of allegations of torture conducted by the CIA:
“As far as the allegations of the CIA hacking into computers [that belonged to staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee], nothing could be further from the truth. That’s beyond the scope of reason.”
Instead, it turned out that Brennan’s statement was beyond the scope of truth. The CIA had been hacking into the Senate staffers’ computers, and Brennan had been well briefed on it at the time.
This is what John Brennan, then senior White House security advisor, said about the assassination of Osama bin Laden:
“Thinking about that from a visual perspective, here is bin Laden, who has been calling for these attacks, living in this million dollar-plus compound, living in an area that is far removed from the front, hiding behind women who were put in front of him as a shield, I think it really just speaks to just how false his narrative has been over the years.
"The concern was that Bin Laden would oppose any type of capture operation. Indeed he did. It was a firefight. He, therefore, was killed in that firefight.”
Except that bin Laden was not living in a million-dollar home, he was not hiding behind any women, nor was he killed in a “firefight.” Instead, he was shot down in cold blood. Jay Carney, White House press secretary at the time, blamed the “confusion” on the “fog of war.” But there wasn’t any confusion. There was just the fog of bullshit provided by John “Lyin’ is my middle name” Brennan.
Over at Reason, Scott Shackford explains in more detail why Brennan’s “arguments” are entirely false.
