The National Security Agency went behind Americans’ backs in enacting its domestic spying programs, but Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) is arguing the agency also duped Congress, bypassing lawmakers’ authority to put its surveillance programs in place.
Amash, appearing on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor,” spoke about the NSA’s surveillance programs, alleging the agency ‘pulled the wool over Congress’s eyes’ and ‘purposely misled’ lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
“I think there are members of the intelligence committee who — intelligence committees who are aware of it,” Amash said. “But I think rank and file members, yes. There was an effort to keep information from us.”
The Michigan congressman spoke with host Laura Ingraham about President Barack Obama’s denial of the NSA’s domestic spying program when he was on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.” Ingraham asked Amash, who believes famed NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden should be treated as such, if the President was being honest when he made this claim to viewers.
Amash said that though the President did admit to one surveillance program — which had been declassified — his statement was misleading.
“One [of] the things that [Snowden] did was reveal an unconstitutional program that Congress did not know about. The reason Congress did not know about [it was] because we did not get the briefings,” Amash said. “They allege that they put a stack of documents in front of you 200 pages long and they say go ahead and read it…”
Ingraham then asked Amash if maybe he just misunderstood Congressional briefings on the surveillance programs. Fellow Republicans like Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio), Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), Ingraham said, were all “up to speed” on the NSA’s data collection, but Amash alleged the NSA simply bypassed lawmakers in executing the programs.
“The problem is when you go to these briefings, you ask questions,” the congressman said. “Unless the phrase is in exactly the right way, you don’t get the answer you need. … If you don’t know what to ask, it’s hard to find out the information. If there are other secret programs going on, it’s impossible to ask the questions that gets the right information because you have to ask it in precisely the right way.”
“So, for several years, the NSA has been, in your estimation, pulling the wool over the eyes of members of Congress?” Ingraham asked. “On purposely misleading you?”
Amash went on to say there were backchannels and tactics members of the intelligence community use to put out information “in an invisible sort of way.”
Since Snowden revealed the NSA’s surveillance program to The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, some in Congress have alleged they were briefed on the metadata collections. Others though, like Amash, have argued they were unaware of the program and urge the domestic spying programs were an infringement on Americans’ civil liberties.
