Over at Slate, Emily Bazelon, speaking of le affaire Snowden, minces a few mots while remarking that “Snowden’s revelations seem to catch Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in misleading testimony.” Here’s the testimony that, to Bazelon, “seems” to be “misleading.”
“Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Oregon Republican* Sen. Ron Wyden asked Clapper at the March 12 hearing.
“No, sir,” Clapper responded.
“It does not?” Wyden pressed.
Clapper recanted and said: “Not wittingly. There are cases where they could, inadvertently perhaps, collect – but not wittingly.”
A few people on the web, like Jeffery Rosen at the New Republic, and Jack Shafer at Reuters, have a little more courage than Emily, although she does take a malicious poke at über windbag David Brooks, noting that he “dings Snowden for being a lone wolf, which is hilariously at odds with his adulation of other solo radicals” (Henry David Thoreau, Harriet Tubman, et al., all of them being conveniently dead).
Update
Fred Kaplan, also at Slate, is less inclined to mince than Emily, giving Big Jim a thorough dressing down under the heading “Fire James Clapper: The Director of National Intelligence lied to Congress about NSA surveillance. What else will he lie about?” Emily, why can’t you write like Fred?
*I’m quoting Fox News here. Actually, Wyden is a Democrat.
