Obama’s Intel Chief Says No Evidence of Trump-Russia Collusion

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in regards to collusion between Russia and the Trump Campaign ....  excerpt from McClatchyDC

Clapper, who served as director for more than six years before he departed in January, also said he knew of no evidence that members of Trump’s campaign had colluded with Russia during the election campaign and that no suggestion that they had was made in a January report on the subject. 

“We did not include anything in our report … that had any reflection of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “There was no evidence of that included in our report. We had no evidence of such collusion.”

The Obama administration's fishing expedition targeting the Trump campaign raises MANY questions ....  

FISA Court (FISC) - Oversight or Rubber Stamp?

 Excerpt from +Mother Jones
—By Erika Eichelberger

| Mon Jun. 10, 2013 10:30 AM PDT

After last week's revelations extensive National Security Agency surveillance of phone and internet communications, President Barack Obama made it a point to assure Americans that, not to worry, there is plenty of oversight of his administration's snooping programs. "We've got congressional oversight and judicial oversight," he said Friday, referring in part to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which was created in 1979 to oversee Department of Justice requests for surveillance warrants against foreign agents suspected of espionage or terrorism in the United States.

FISA Court (FISC) - Oversight or Rubber Stamp? 

 But the FISC has declined just 11 of the more than 33,900 surveillance requests made by the government in 33 years, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. That's a rate of .03 percent, which raises questions about just how much judicial oversight is actually being provided.
"The FISA system is broken," Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told the Journal. "At the point that a FISA judge can compel the disclosure of millions of phone records of US citizens engaged in only domestic communications, unrelated to the collection of foreign intelligence…there is no longer meaningful judicial review.  FISA Court Has Rejected .03 Percent Of All Government Surveillance Requests

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper Lied to Congress on Domestic Spying

Obama's Domestic Electronic Surveillance - Web of Deception

"Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" committee member Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Clapper during the March 12 hearing.
In response, Clapper replied quickly: "No, sir." 

All Ears

"There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect [intelligence on Americans], but not wittingly," the U.S. intelligence chief told Wyden and the rest of the committee.
That said, "particularly in the case of NSA and CIA, there are structures against tracking American citizens in the United States for foreign intelligence purposes," Clapper added.
Both agencies are focused on foreign intelligence collection, "and that's what those agencies are set up to do," he added.
Conducting surveillance on Americans inside U.S. borders is something "they do not engage in," the intelligence chief added. 

Read more at The Hill:

Clapper denied NSA surveillance before Senate panel

Director of National Intelligence Tells Congress the NSA Isn't Spying Domestically

NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily

Exclusive: Top secret court order requiring Verizon to hand over all call data shows scale of domestic surveillance under Obama

"The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.
The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.
The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.
The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19."

Read More at the Guardian:


Obama Administration's NSA Phone Record Sweep

President Obama’s Dragnet

Within hours of the disclosure that federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights.

Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability.

The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it

 Read more at the NYTimes:
 President Obama’s Dragnet