On March 12, James Clapper, director of national intelligence, testified at an open congressional hearing. Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, asked him whether the National Security Agency collects “any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.”

His answer: “No sir.” Then he added: “Not wittingly.”

It was a lie, as everyone now knows from the articles about the N.S.A.’s data-mining program.

Mr. Wyden knew it wasn’t true at the time, since he is on the Senate Intelligence Committee and is privy to secret briefings from people like, well, Mr. Clapper.

On Sunday, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell asked Mr. Clapper about the exchange.

“First, I have great respect for Senator Wyden,” Mr. Clapper said, using a Washington code phrase to indicate that he has no respect for the senator. “I thought, though in retrospect, I was asked ‘when are you going to start–stop beating your wife’ kind of question, which is, meaning not answerable necessarily, by a simple yes or no. So I responded in what I thought was the most truthful or least untruthful manner, by saying, ‘No.’”

Mr. Clapper further explained his least-untruthiness by saying he thought Mr. Wyden was asking whether the N.S.A. was actually listening to phone conversations (which Mr. Wyden clearly was not). “Going back to my metaphor, what I was thinking of is looking at the Dewey Decimal numbers of those books in the metaphorical library,” he said. “To me collection of U.S. persons data would mean taking the books off the shelf, opening it up and reading it.”

Sassenach wrote:Just out of interest, if Sen Wyden already knew the answer to that question then why did he bother to ask it in the first place ?

Sassenach wrote:Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with the question being asked or it being on record of course. I do find it a little odd though. Presumably Sen Wyman would never have called him on the lie were it not for the fact that this leak happened because to do so he'd have to become personally responsible for releasing classified information that had been provided to him under the auspices of Senatorial privilige. As such it's a pretty odd little game the two of them were playing, one asking a question that couldn't possibly be answered truthfully (although it could of course have been evaded) and the other giving an answer that both of them knew to be a lie. Chances are that most people in the room knew about this stuff already and therefore knew they were all party to a charade.

I'm not saying this as a defence of Clapper or anything, I just find it a little odd. Makes me wonder how much more Congressional business takes place on this basis.