The White House is denying Director of National Intelligence James Clapper will be leading the intelligence review board ordered by President Obama on Monday.
Because Clapper is under fire for lying to Congress about whether the National Security Agency is collecting any kind of data on millions of Americans, anger erupted from privacy advocates on Monday after Obama announced that Clapper would establish the review board.
The review board, according to a Presidential Memorandum signed on Monday, would assess whether the technical capabilities of the U.S. intelligence community are employed in a manner that “optimally protects our national security and advances our foreign policy while appropriately accounting for other policy considerations, such as the risk of unauthorized disclosure and our need to maintain the public trust.”
The White House and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told The Hill on Tuesday that Clapper would not be involved with the review board, a group Obama first announced on Friday during a press conference on the NSA programs.
“Director Clapper will not be a part of the group, and is not leading or directing the group’s efforts,” said White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden to The Hill.
The members of the review board will be selected by the White House and announced “soon,” said Hayden.
Shawn Turner, ODNI spokesman, echoed Hayden’s remarks, stating that the members “will have access to classified information so they need to be administratively attached to a government element but the review process and findings will be their own.”