How can there be oversight of the NSA if Congress is not allowed to see critical documents concerning NSA surveillance? Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) says that the House Intelligence Committee withheld a document vaguely describing the NSA's surveillance program before a vote reauthorizing the Patriot Act, believing that if Congress had been allowed to see it, it would have failed.
The Justice Department and intelligence agencies prepared it for Congress before a 2011 vote to reauthorize the Patriot Act, and left it for the intelligence committees in Congress to make the document available to their colleagues.
Justin Amash, the Michigan Republican whose effort to defund the NSA's mass phone-records collection exposed deep congressional discomfort with domestic spying, said the House intelligence committee never allowed legislators outside the panel to see a 2011 document that described the surveillance in vague terms.
The document does not go into great detail other than saying that the NSA is collecting bulk phone records of Americans.
The hundreds of members of Congress who did not serve on the intelligence committee were to be told they could read the document in a secured facility.
According to Amash's Facebook
page, that never happened.
I voted no on reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2011. Many of my colleagues who voted yes now regret their votes in light of the recent disclosures. It's not acceptable for the House Intelligence Committee, or any other committee, to withhold critically important information pertaining to a program prior to the vote.
"I can now confirm that the House permanent select committee on intelligence did not, in fact, make the 2011 document available to representatives in Congress," Amash wrote late Sunday, "meaning that the large class of representatives elected in 2010 did not receive either of the now declassified documents detailing these programs."
Rush Holt confirmed Amash's assertions:
"I was not aware of the document," Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat, told the Guardian.
"This is another example of the difficulty in Congress exerting any oversight of the intelligence community, because the information is frequently not made available to all members."
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Amash believe if members of the 2010 class of Congress, (many of them newly voted in on anti-government fervor) had seen the document that the vote would have failed.
Amash speculated that congressional leaders and intelligence committee leaders were "concerned the Patriot Act would not pass" if the newer class of legislators knew about the NSA's bulk phone records collection. "In fact, the first time it was brought up, it was brought up under suspension, and it did not pass," Amash said.
The vote was held to reauthorize
Section 215 of the Patriot Act.
The Obama administration and intelligence agencies have pointed to the availability of the document as an example of keeping Congress fully informed about controversial NSA surveillance.
The document was only recently declassified in late July (two years after the vote). So - a document that was not even available to Congress until July, is a document that is an example of how Congress is being kept fully informed about NSA surveillance.
How can we know the dishes are washed if you won't even show us the dishes, Mr. President?
Here are the members of the Majority Committee and the Minority Committee. Write to your Congressperson and complain if you are not happy about this.
2:02 PM PT: Rep. Amash will be holding Town Hallstomorrow and Friday in Lowell and Marshall.(unlike some Republicans he is not afraid of his constituents). If you are in the area you can suggest that he call for another vote on reauthorizing the Patriot Act Section 215 now that Congress knows what the NSA is doing (a little bit).
Or contact his office.