On radio this morning, Glenn played part of President Obama’s interview with Charlie Rose in which he defends his “transparent” administration and the intelligence gathering tactics of the NSA.
“Let me go to something you are going to see on Charlie Rose today, assuming anybody ever watches Charlie Rose,” Glenn said. “The president is going to be on, and the president wants to talk about wire tapping and the NSA and put it in perspective.”
ROSE: So I hear you saying, ‘I have no problem with what NSA has been doing.’
OBAMA: Well, let me — let me finish, because I don’t. So, what happens is that the FBI — if, in fact, it now wants to get content; if, in fact, it wants to start tapping that phone — it’s got to go to the FISA court with probable cause and ask for a warrant.
ROSE: But has FISA court turned down any request?
OBAMA: The — because — the — first of all, Charlie, the number of requests are surprisingly small… number one. Number two, folks don’t go with a query unless they’ve got a pretty good suspicion.
ROSE: Should this be transparent in some way?
OBAMA: It is transparent. That’s why we set up the FISA court…. The whole point of my concern, before I was president — because some people say, ‘Well, you know, Obama was this raving liberal before. Now he’s, you know, Dick Cheney.’ Dick Cheney sometimes says, ‘Yeah, you know? He took it all lock, stock, and barrel.’ My concern has always been not that we shouldn’t do intelligence gathering to prevent terrorism, but rather are we setting up a system of checks and balances? So, on this telephone program, you’ve got a federal court with independent federal judges overseeing the entire program. And you’ve got Congress overseeing the program, not just the intelligence committee and not just the judiciary committee — but all of Congress had available to it before the last reauthorization exactly how this program works.
Yes, President Obama made it through those answers with a straight face.
“You didn't set up the FISA court,” Glenn said exasperatedly. “He is the establishment, gang. For all you hoping things will change, he's taking credit for the FISA court, which he was against the FISA court.”
The hypocrisy from this president and his administration is nothing short of remarkable. He says he wants to have an open dialogue, and yet there was no attempts to make Americans aware of the scope of the government surveillance tactics until they were caught red handed.
“The American people would be stunned they knew the amount of surveillance we are doing,” Stu said.
“I'll tell you this,” Glenn said. “We have given information willingly to the government. They never even asked.”
