

Petition to prosecute James Clapper for lying to Congress - duggieawesome
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/prosecute-director-national-intelligence-james-clapper-lying-congress/HNfsgGlm

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Xanza
Although I fully support Clappers prosecution, his attorney is just going to
say that he was protecting ongoing classified Government secrets, and the
entire case will be dismissed.

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rgbrenner
_As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Wyden had been briefed on
the top-secret-plus programs that we now all know about. That is, he knew that
he was putting Clapper in a box; He knew that the true answer to his question
was “Yes,” but he also knew that Clapper would have a hard time saying so
without making headlines._ [0]

That makes it sound like Wyden was attempting to force Clapper to release
classified material so he wouldn't have to. Interesting that Wyden, despite
knowing that Clapper's statement was false and aware of the program, chose not
to dispute Clapper's statement, or release classified details of the program
himself.

0\.
[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2013/06/fire_dni_james_clapper_he_lied_to_congress_about_nsa_surveillance.html)

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Paul12345534
This is exactly it. Wyden purposely put him in an impossible situation so he
could hang him with it later. If Clapper has done his job well in other
respects then this incident is irrelevant.

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Paul12345534
Are you kidding? This was an open hearing. He was obligated to lie about
issues of national security. Wyden set him up with that question so he could
dump this on him later. Wyden already knew the answer since he was on the
Senate Intelligence Committee and had long been briefed on these issues.

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dominotw
Nice!!. Sheep complaining to the butcher. Who are the all these ppl wasting
their time on these,are ppl that naive.

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logn
It takes all of 30 seconds to do this and does at least catch the attention of
the press and the rest of us. But yes, I agree it's probably futile, exactly
because of how easy it is to sign these. Petitions are neat when they have the
force of law behind them, such as signing a petition to put something on the
ballot to be voted upon. But, yeah, people need to be out protesting and
organizing boycotts.

~~~
mistercow
In _Influence: Science and Practice_ , Robert Cialdini makes the compelling
case that (non-legally-binding) petitions have a primary effect on the people
_signing_ the petition, not the explicit targets of the petition. Signing your
name to a statement evokes consistency bias effects, which cause you to commit
to those statements.

So they are still a useful tool for effecting change; just not for the reasons
people might assume.

~~~
whimsy
Huh. That's an interesting discovery; thanks for sharing it. That's going on
my reading list.

