Rep. Amash: Congress Purposely Kept in Dark on Surveillance Efforts

photo credit: gage skidmoreIt’s “total nonsense” to say Congress was told about the NSA collecting communications data on Americans, and as a matter of fact, efforts are made to keep members of Congress in the dark, says Rep. Justin Amash, a Republican from Michigan.

Members would have a stack of documents hundreds of pages long stacked on a table in front of them and told to read it, Amash said Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “O’Reilly Factor.”

If congressional members don’t know the definitions of terms used by intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency, they have no way of knowing what the documents mean, he said. One example: There is a difference between the words “collect” and “acquire.”

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Former Obama Advisor: President’s Claim of No Domestic Spying Program ‘Ridiculous’

When President Barack Obama went on “The Tonight Show” Tuesday and said America has no domestic spying program, he didn’t convince one of his most ardent supporters — his own former green jobs adviser Van Jones.

“If we don’t have one now, I would hate to see us with one,” Jones said Wednesday on CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper.”

“Everybody knows I love this president,” Jones said, “but this is ridiculous. What we need to do is figure out how we’re going to balance these things, not pretend there’s no balancing to be done.”

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