Congress to blame if NSA program lapses, Clapper warns

Lawmakers in Congress will be on the hook if they allow a spying program to expire, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned. If legislators aren’t able to reauthorize an expiring portion of the Patriot Act that authorizes a contested National Security Agency program, they should be held responsible, Clapper said. “If that tool is taken away from us ... and some untoward incident happens that could have been thwarted if we had had it, I hope that everyone involved in that decision assumes the responsibility and it not be blamed, if we have another failure, exclusively on the intelligence community,” he said.