NSA Appears To Be Seducing Sen. John Cornyn With Personal Tours And One-On-One Meetings
from the 702-ways-to-leave-your-lover dept
One of the surveillance state’s biggest cheerleaders is seeing his years of support pay off.
Two congressional sources confirmed a May meeting, where Sen. John Cornyn, (R-Tex.), a vocal supporter of the intelligence community, got a private audience with the NSA Director Adm. Michael Rogers.
Cornyn also got a private tour of the signals intelligence facility at Fort Meade, Maryland at the same time as the May meeting.
Officials “familiar with the situation” (possibly read “jealous as hell”) expressed concern about Cornyn’s personal NSA tour. And for good reason. If Rogers and other NSA officials were feeding Cornyn information the rest of the NSA’s Congressional oversight isn’t privy to, that’s a problem. It’s more of a problem as the date for Section 702’s reauthorization approaches. And it seems even more problematic that Cornyn was given a personal walk-and-talk while oversight members were failing to get substantive answers from the DNI during a Senate hearing.
There’s a long history of the IC playing favorites with oversight members (and vice versa) and a long history of those favorites withholding information from other members of Congress. This visit/personal chat may have been innocuous but given its context — the Section 702 renewal — it looks shady as hell.
The additional context is the DNI’s office believes all is forgiven — or at least, no longer relevant. Reversing Clapper’s promise to hand in something on incidentally-collected US persons’ communications, the new Director is saying that’s just not going to happen.
The Foreign Policy article notes that it’s common for incoming reps and senators to be given a tour and that oversight members routinely visit the NSA as part of their oversight duties, but this Cornyn-only event definitely appears to be the agency making a play for unbridled support from a powerful Senator.
Filed Under: admiral mike rogers, john cornyn, mass surveillance, nsa, oversight, section 702, surveillance
Comments on “NSA Appears To Be Seducing Sen. John Cornyn With Personal Tours And One-On-One Meetings”
I wonder if they had a nice super cyber showcase room that had all the bells and whistles…. that was all just set dressing. Maybe a nice demonstration of how we can put a backdoor into encryption for only the good guys.
Re: Re:
Wow! a personalized trip to the “Bridge”. Wonder if he got to sit in the command chair and blurt out Star Trek lines?
Deep state gonna deep state.
Re: Re:
Now, we’re all in “deep st*te”…
May your confidential source would not be so jealous if they know what was really discussed ..
“We know where you live”. “You would not want those pictures of your meetings with your mistress leak out on the internet, would you?”. “The boys on those pictures you downloaded look awfully young, don’t you think”?
Re: May your confidential source would not be so jealous if they know what was really discussed ..
That was my first thought. Could just as easily be threatening him with blackmail as “seducing” him.
The force is strong with this one
Looks like they’re going to turn another one to the dark side.