James Clapper was Director of National Intelligence under President Obama. John Kiriakou recounts Clapper testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee near the end of Obama’s presidency, pressed repeatedly by Senator Rand Paul on whether the president could legally use a drone to kill someone in the United States who had never been formally accused of a crime; after “hemming and hawing,” the answer was “yes.”[1][2] Kiriakou uses it to argue that Barack Obama was “far, far deadlier” than George W. Bush, killing ten times as many people by drone.[3]
‘The least incorrect answer’ (American Conservative)
John Kiriakou recounts that when James Clapper told Ron Wyden “no,” the intelligence community was not spying on Americans, that one-word answer was later shown to be a false statement — a felony. Clapper defended it as “the least incorrect answer” he could think of at the time, and Ron Wyden simply accepted it; no one was charged.[4]