David Axelrod: Democrat Senator Merkley Too Busy Doing MSNBC Interviews To Be Briefed On NSA

[Auburn85 438]

http://www.mediaite....briefed-on-nsa/

Noah Rothman

Last week, after President Barack Obamaaddressed the breaking revelations regarding the National Security Agency’s sweeping monitoring of Americans’ communications and said that all members of Congress had been briefed on those programs, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-CO) contradicted that claim. He told MSNBC hostAlex Wagneron June 7 that he had never been briefed on these programs and suspected those briefings were limited to congressional intelligence committees. On Friday, former White House advisor David Axelrod said that it turns out Merkley was too busy doing another MSNBC interview to attend the NSA briefing.

“So many members of Congress, and we’ve had them on this program, saying, ‘we weren’t fully briefed,” said Alex Wagner.

“One of them was a guest on your show and said he wasn’t briefed on the PRISM program, and it turned out that he was doing another fine program on MSNBC at the time that the administration was briefing senators on that program,” Axelrod said.

According to a report in BuzzFeed, a November briefing on NSA was scheduled but Merkely failed to attend.

According to a source close to the situation, the Nov. 27 briefing, arranged by Sens.

Ron Wyden

and

Mark Udall

, included then-Assistant Attorney General for National Security

Lisa Monaco

, Director of National Intelligence

James Clapper

, DNI General Counsel

Bob Litt

, and NSA General Counsel

Rajesh De

.

The source said that while attendees waited for Merkley before beginning the meeting, the liberal Democrat made only a brief appearance before excusing himself and then going on MSNBC’s

Hardball

.

[telling tiger 156]

He is hardly the only one missing in action, only 47 attended briefings this week. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/15/senators-skip-nsa-briefing_n_3446446.html

[homersapien 12,329]

He is hardly the only one missing in action, only 47 attended briefings this week. http://www.huffingto..._n_3446446.html

And that is the scandal that deserves our outrage. Congress is dysfunctional.