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.
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.
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.
Declining to answer is a sure giveaway of the answer in an open hearing ;) I suspect there's a number of situations where lying to Congress is not a crime. The "Gang of 8" and the "Gang of 4" are almost always aware of the truth, usually the entire intelligence committees. Members of Congress are not automatically trusted with the deepest national secrets just because they are elected.
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.
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.
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.
Even if it's "just" so they come together. I think that helps a great deal with the whole organizing, but also, and not unimportantly, s single person or a small group can motivate themselves through all snags only for so long.
So I think petitions are nice, but petition signing parties are nicer :) "came for the frustration, stayed for the resilience and creativity of the human spirit", that sort of thing.
