Oh good, more oversight

Only 47 of 100 senators attended the 2:30 briefing, leaving dozens of chairs in the secure meeting room empty as Clapper, Alexander and other senior officials told lawmakers about classified programs to monitor millions of telephone calls and broad swaths of Internet activity. The room on the lower level of the Capitol Visitor Center is large enough to fit the entire Senate membership, according to a Senate aide.

The Hill was not provided the names of who did, and who didn't, attend the briefing.

“We were given some very specific and helpful information about how these programs have helped keep the American people safe,” he said.

“I can’t imagine any United States senator sitting through a briefing like we just had and not feeling thankful for the efforts that NSA and others put forth,” Corker added.

“We have not yet seen any evidence showing that the NSA’s dragnet collection of Americans’ phone records has produced any uniquely valuable intelligence. Gen. Alexander’s testimony yesterday suggested that the NSA’s bulk phone records collection program helped thwart ‘dozens’ of terrorist attacks, but all of the plots that he mentioned appear to have been identified using other collection methods. The public deserves a clear explanation.”

Disputes between senior intelligence officials and members of Congress over who was told what, when, have been going on for years.

During the Reagan administration there was a fierce debate between administration officials and senators about whether Congress was informed about the mining of Nicaragua’s harbors.

Gary Schmitt, an AEI scholar who served as Democratic staff director on the Senate Intelligence Committee from 1982 to 1984, said then-CIA director William Casey had told members of the committee about the covert action but couched it in such a way as to minimize notice.

“The mining was mentioned but it was mentioned in the context of a very long briefing that Casey was giving and it was done in passive voice and in such a way as to make it sound like an ongoing program,” he recalled. “It was a case of writing it in such a way as to obscure the fact that the agency was directly involved in the mining.”