Krauthammer’s Take: DNI Clapper, ‘Give Me A Break’

Charles Krauthammer responded bluntly to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s nuanced response about whether he lied to Congress: “The only answer to that is, give me a break. If you have a shelf of books on astronomy in your home, and you say, ‘No, I haven’t collected the books until I’ve actually opened them,’ you are deliberately misusing the word collect.”

Krauthammer says he understands why Clapper gave such an evasive answer — “He was afraid that if he said yes to [Oregon senator Ron Wyden], he would have said, ‘We collect the information, but we don’t look inside,’ but that would have sort of revealed what the program is: We collect the data on the telephones, but we don’t listen in.” — “But for him [ie., Clapper] to pretend that it was the truth . . .”