Clapper needs to spend some time in jail just like you or I would if we lied to Congress under oath. The same goes for Eric Holder. We can't have special privilege for government servants above ordinary citizens. An example needs to be set to stop these bozos from outright lies to Congress and the American people. ---- The most senior US intelligence official told a Senate oversight panel that he âsimply didnât thinkâ of the National Security Agencyâs efforts to collect the phone records of millions of Americans when he testified in March that it did ânot wittinglyâ 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 âclearly erroneousâ 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 âleast untruthfulâ one he could publicly provide. In the full letter, Clapper attempted to explain the false testimony by saying that his recollection failed him. âI simply didnât think of Section 215 of the Patriot Act,â he wrote to committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (Democrat, California) on 21 June, referring to the legal provision cited to justify the mass collection of Americansâ phone data, first disclosed by the Guardian. Clapper is under intense pressure from legislators displeased by his March testimony to the Senate intelligence committeeâs Ron Wyden (Democrat, Oregon) that the NSA did ânot wittinglyâ collect, as Wyden put it, âany type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.â In his newly released letter, Clapper told Feinstein that his remarks were âclearly erroneous,â and he issued them because he was thinking instead of a different aspect of surveillance, the internet content collection of persons NSA believes to be foreigners outside of the United States. âI apologize,â Clapper wrote. âWhile my staff acknowledged the error to Senator Wydenâs staff soon after the hearing, I can now openly correct it because the existence of the metadata program has been declassified.â In statements for the past month, Wyden and his staff have said they told Clapper before the fateful hearing that he would face the question, and contacted his staff afterward to correct the record. âThe ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] acknowledged that the statement was inaccurate but refused to correct the public record when given the opportunity. Senator Wyden's staff informed the ODNI that this was a serious concern,â Wyden spokesman Tom Caiazza said on Monday. Clapperâs letter does not acknowledge that he had earlier told Andrea Mitchell of NBC News that he provided Wyden with the âleast most untruthfulâ answer he could publicly offer, likening the question âin retrospectâ to a âstop beating your wife kind of question.â A spokesman for Clapper declined to comment on the discrepancy. Clapper has said in the past that public testimony on intelligence matters places spymasters in difficult positions. âAn open hearing on intelligence matters is something of a contradiction in terms,â Clapper told the Senate intelligence panel on March 12, while saying he believed it was âimportant to keep the American public informed.â Clapper is under fire from legislators critical of his truthfulness. On Friday, 26 senators â more than a quarter of the Senate â signed a letter to Clapper suggesting that the surveillance may go beyond phone records and online communications, extending under interpretations of the Patriot Act to âcredit card purchases, pharmacy records, library records, firearms sales recordsâ and more. But Clapper has his supporters as well. In addition to the White House, which is standing beside him, a former NSA lawyer and inspector general, Joel Brenner, wrote on Tuesday that Wyden engaged in a âvicious tacticâ that âsandbaggedâ Clapper. Wyden âlacked the courage of his conviction,â Brenner wrote on the influential national-security blog Lawfare, and placed Clapper âin the impossible position of answering a question that he could not address truthfully and fully without breaking his oath not to divulge classified information.â It is unclear when Clapper will publicly testify next. He sat out the House intelligence committeeâs June 19 hearing on the NSA surveillance. Aides to Feinstein said that no hearing with Clapper is currently scheduled, although Feinstein is open to one. The next opportunity for one might come as early as next week. Clapper told Mitchell on June 9 that Feinstein had asked him to look at âways where we can refine these [surveillance] processes and limit the exposure to Americansâ private communications,â adding that âwe owe her an answer in about a month.â A spokesman for Clapper had no comment on the directorâs progress in examining restrictions to the surveillance efforts. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/02/james-clapper-senate-erroneous