What if the President Lied to Us?

By David Sirota, Salon

20 August 13

So many of President Obama's statements about NSA have been wrong. But he's too smart not to understand the truth

ith the latest major revelation about National Security Agency surveillance, there's a huge taboo question that needs to be put out on the table: Has President Obama been deliberately lying about the NSA, or have his statements just been repeatedly "wrong"?

After Barton Gellman's blockbuster story today about the NSA breaking "privacy rules or overstepp(ing) its legal authority thousands of times each year," the Washington Post published an attendant commentary with a headline declaring the president was merely "wrong" in last week suggesting that the NSA wasn't "actually abusing" its legal authority. The implication is that when Obama made that comment - and then further insisted the surveillance programs "are not abused" - he may have been inaccurate, but he didn't necessarily deliberately lie because he may not have known he was not telling the truth.

This is not to single out the Post commentary because, of course, such a rhetorical dance is fairly standard for the official political discourse these days. Since at least the Iraq War if not before, the media and political class typically goes out of its way to avoid declaring a lie a lie. Simply put, from "we know where (the WMDs) are" to Obama's "actually abusing" declaration, seemingly deliberately inaccurate statements are rarely ever framed as outright lies. Even when such statements come from those with vested interests in hiding the truth, words and phrases like "misstated," "wrong," "least untruthful" and "misspoke" are trotted out.

These words and phrases now comprise a whole Washington vocabulary crafted specifically to avoid the L word. That's because once the L word comes out, it means the official in question is deliberately misleading the public - and that is rightly considered an abhorrent act in a democracy.

But just as it is utterly absurd to claim Director of National Intelligence James Clapper didn't lie before Congress (and some reporters thankfully admitted that truth in the open), it has now become almost silly to insinuate or assume that the president hasn't also been lying. Why? Because if that's true - if indeed he hasn't been deliberately lying - then it means he has been dangerously, irresponsibly and negligently ignorant of not only the government he runs, but also of the news breaking around him.

Think about three recent presidential declarations. A few weeks back, the president appeared on CBS to claim that the secret FISA court is "transparent." He then appeared on NBC to claim that "We don't have a domestic spying program." Then, as mentioned above, he held a press conference on Friday to suggest there was no evidence the NSA was "actually abusing" its power.

For these statements to just be inaccurate and not be deliberate, calculated lies it would mean that the president 1) made his declarative statement to CBS even though he didn't know the FISA court was secret (despite knowing all about the FISA court six years ago); 2) made his declarative statement to NBC but somehow didn't see any of the news coverage of the Snowden disclosures proving the existence of domestic spying and 3) made his sweeping "actually abusing" statement somehow not knowing that his own administration previously admitted the NSA had abused its power, and worse, made his statement without bothering to look at the NSA audit report that Gellman revealed today.

So sure, I guess it's possible Obama has merely been "wrong" but has not been lying. But the implications of that would be just as bad - albeit in a different way - as if he were deliberately lying. It would mean that he is making sweeping and wildly inaccurate statements without bothering to find out if they are actually true. Worse, for him merely to be wrong but not deliberately lying, it would mean that he didn't know the most basic facts about how his own administration runs. It would, in other words, mean he is so totally out of the loop on absolutely everything - even the public news cycle - that he has no idea what's going on.

I, of course, don't buy that at all. I don't buy that a constitutional lawyer and legal scholar didn't know that the FISA court is secret - aka the opposite of "transparent." I don't buy that he simply didn't see any of the news showing that spying is happening in the United States. And I don't buy that he didn't know that there is evidence - both public and inside his own administration - of the NSA "actually abusing" its power.

I don't buy any of that because, to say the least, it makes no sense. I just don't buy that he's so unaware of the world around him that he made such statements from a position of pure ignorance. On top of that, he has a motive. Yes, Obama has an obvious political interest in trying to hide as much of his administration's potentially illegal behavior as possible, which means he has an incentive to calculatedly lie. For all of these reasons, it seems safe to suggest that when it comes to the NSA situation, the president seems to be lying.

But hey, if Obama partisans and the Washington punditburo want to now forward the argument that the president has just been "wrong" or inaccurate or whatever other euphemism du jour avoids the L word, then fine: They should be asking why, by their own argument, the president is so completely unaware of what his government is doing. After all, if he's not lying, then something is still very, very wrong.