Intelligence chief tries to explain false Senate testimony by saying he 'simply didn't think' of NSA efforts to collect phone data
James Clapper said he issued his remarks because he was thinking instead of a different aspect of surveillance. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA The most senior US intelligence official told a Senate oversight panel that he "simply didn't think" of the National Security Agency's efforts to collect the phone records of millions of Americans when he testified in March that it did "not wittingly" snoop on their communications.
James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, made the comments in a letter to the Senate intelligence committee, released in full for the first time on Tuesday.
Portions of the letter, in which Clapper apologised for giving "clearly erroneous" testimony at a March hearing of the committee, were first reported by the Washington Post on Monday. Clapper had previously said that his answer to the committee was the "least untruthful" one he could publicly provide.
In the full letter, Clapper attempted to explain the false testimony by saying that his recollection failed him. "I simply didn't think of Section 215 of the Patriot Act," he wrote to committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (Democrat, California) on 21 June, referring to the legal provision cited to justify the mass collection of Americans' phone data, first disclosed by the Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/02/james-clapper-senate-erroneous
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