Lying to Congress again

This little gem was buried at the bottom left hand corner of page 8 in today's NY Times.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 (AP) — Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, on Wednesday recanted his claim that the new surveillance powers recently given to the government helped foil a terrorist plot in Germany.

“Information contributing to the recent arrests was not collected under authorities provided by the Protect America Act,” Mr. McConnell said in a statement issued late in the day.

Mr. McConnell had told the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Monday that powers granted by the act, hastily approved by Congress in early August before a monthlong break, helped stop the planned attacks. The law, which amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, had been pushed strongly by Mr. McConnell and the White House.

Mr. McConnell’s assertion that the new powers helped foil the plot in Germany had been disputed by Representative Silvestre Reyes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Mr. Reyes, Democrat of Texas, said on Tuesday that the intelligence used to capture the would-be terrorists was collected under the old version of the surveillance law, not the new one.

“In fact, F.I.S.A., which you repeatedly claim is ‘outdated,’ was precisely the tool that helped disrupt this plot,” Mr. Reyes said. “The new law did not lead to the arrests of the three terrorist plotters, as you claimed.”

Of course, no one will see it, and the Faux News crowd will go on telling us how marvellous it is that we can be spied upon by our government.