The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald said Sunday one of the most “amazing” parts of the whole NSA-leak incident has been that top-level national security officials like Direction of National Intelligence James Clapper haven’t lost their jobs.
“One of the most amazing parts of this entire episode has been that top-level national security officials like James Clapper really did get caught red-handed lying to the American Congress, which everyone now acknowledges, about what the NSA is doing, and it’s amazing that he not only hasn’t been prosecuted but still has his job,” Greenwald said on ABC’s ‘This Week.’ “And what that does is it lets national security officials continue to lie to the public, which is what happened in that exchange you just referenced.”
Greenwald added that he will be publishing a story in a week that shows the access that low-level NSA analysts and contractors have to phone and email records.
“There are legal constraints for how you can spy on Americans,” Greenwald said. “You can’t target them without going to the FISA court, but these systems allow analysts to listen to whatever emails they want, whatever telephone calls, browsing histories, Microsoft Word documents. It’s an incredibly powerful and invasive tool, exactly of the type that Mr. Snowden described, and NSA officials are going to be testifying before the Senate on Wednesday, and I defy them to deny that these programs work exactly as I just said.”
