The dangerous Mr Rogers
by digby
For those who might be laboring under the illusion that House Intelligence Committee Chairman is less insane than your average Breitbart wingnut, think again.
Rogers said Amash’s amendment, which stops the NSA from collecting data under the Patriot Act, was an attempt to take advantage of anger over recent scandals including the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups applying for tax exempt status and the Justice Department’s probe of Associated Press journalists in connection to a leak about a thwarted terrorist plot that originated in Yemen …
“It’s certainly inflammatory and certainly misleading,” Rogers said Wednesday in an interview on Michigan radio station WTKG 1230. “I think, he tried to take advantage at any rate of people’s anger of the IRS scandal, which is real, and the AP —Associated Press dragnet by the Attorney General, Benghazi —all of those things are very real and there’s no oversight function
“What they’re talking about doing is turning off a program that after 9/11 we realized we missed —we the intelligence community- missed a huge clue.”
That’s someone they trust with the most secret classified material? Ok, now I’m terrified too.
Emptywheel points out that he isn’t just a rabid partisan weirdo. He’s also a liar. (Perhaps that goes without saying.)
From there, Rogers declined into outright misinformation.
Rogers added that NSA’s telephone data collection program has helped thwart over 50 terrorist plots.
The Section 215 collection — the only thing that would be affected by the Amash-Conyers amendment — has had a role in (per Keith Alexander’s latest claims) 13 plots.
Not 50.
13.
I can’t think of a better way for Mike Rogers to demonstrate that these programs have insufficient oversight — in which the Intelligence Committees play a crucial role — than to open his yap and make such ludicrous statements.
Yeah, well, he’s going to have to join a long line of people who have made ludicrous statements about this issue. But then none of them are chairman of the House Intelligence Committee either.
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