“The White House has moved to dampen controversy over the role of the director of national intelligence James Clapper in a panel reviewing NSA surveillance, insisting that he would neither lead it nor choose the members. Statements by Barack Obama and Clapper were widely interpreted as the director of national intelligence being placed in charge of the inquiry, which the president had announced on Friday would be ‘independent’. The apparent involvement of Clapper, who has admitted lying to Congress over NSA surveillance of US citizens, provoked a backlash, with critics accusing the president of putting a fox in charge of the hen house.”
