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by couchand 4436 days ago
The legitimate response in such a situation is to officially dodge the question. It doesn't even have to be public since they're given the questions in advance and have veto power. But Clapper went before Congress explicitly allowing them to ask him about this program and knowingly lied about it.

What's unfortunate is that it's not controversial. It seems Clapper has the backing of a pretty big group in Congress.
2 comments
involute1344 4436 days ago
According to the article, ODNI's attorney was given the question in advance, but it wasn't passed on to Clapper, so he improvised. Maybe the attorney's just covering for him, but that's what it says.
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mpyne 4436 days ago
> The legitimate response in such a situation is to officially dodge the question.

That is absolutely, 100% not the case. Dodging the question, for this particular question is as much a leak of classified information as giving up the answer directly.

This is by the same principle used by hacktivists called the "warrant canary", which they think they invented: But the same thing happened to a CIA director (Helms?) in the 1970s and he did the same thing because the same principle applied back then too.

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