A double standard exists when it comes to violating federal laws on classified intelligence, according to a leading Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“I particularly focus on when members of the intelligence community go out in public and say stuff that is palpably untrue,” Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden told the Washington Examiner on Thursday. “For example … you can see it on YouTube, the former head of the [National Security Agency], Gen. Keith Alexander, said we don’t hold data on U.S. citizens.
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“When I heard that, I said, ‘That’s one of the most false statements ever made about American intelligence,'” Wyden said. “So that began the months-long odyssey that led to asking Gen. Keith Alexander in public whether the government collected any kind of data at all on hundreds of millions of people, and he lied.”
Alexander said in 2012 the NSA did not hold data on U.S. citizens. Gen. James Clapper, who succeeded Alexander as the agency’s chief, similarly told Wyden during a 2013 congressional hearing that the NSA did not “wittingly” collect information on Americans. Revelations leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden later in the year contradicted the agency’s claims.
Snowden now faces felony charges under the Espionage Act and Federal Records Act, the same statutes that retired Gen. David Petraeus was charged with violating after he leaked classified intelligence to his mistress and to reporters. However, Petraeus accepted a plea deal that included just two years of probation.
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Wyden declined to defend Snowden’s actions, but said something needs to change. “I don’t believe I’m in the prosecution business. I don’t sit in judgment of pending criminal charges,” Wyden said. “I do think there is a double standard. I get the sense that there is a double standard where defenders of particular programs can disclose classified information and get off scot-free, while critics of the programs go to prison.
“So what I’m going to be doing is advancing policies that I think will promote both security and liberty, and I think you can do that without throwing the constitutional rights of Americans in a trash can.”
