Corker: Congress in the dark on NSA

Congressional lawmakers remain largely in the dark about ongoing domestic intelligence operations, according to Sen. Bob Corker.

“The American people want to know that those of us who are elected … understand fully what’s happening here. I don’t think we do,” Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said Sunday on Fox News.

“I would imagine there are even members of the [congressional] intelligence committee themselves that don’t fully understand the gamut of things that are taking place,” he added.

{mosads}Corker this week fired off a scathing letter to the White House, arguing lawmakers learned more about National Security Agency surveillance programs on the front page of the newspaper than at closed-door security briefings with administration officials.

White House briefings on the NSA’s domestic operations have “generally been limited to simply discussing the facts underlying specific public disclosures” of domestic surveillance operations, he said.

“As a result, members of Congress regularly read new revelations on the front pages of various newspapers,” Corker wrote.

On Wednesday, intelligence officials admitted the NSA improperly spied on people in the United States with no connection to terrorism beginning in 2008.

The NSA collected as many as many as 56,000 emails from Americans before the mistake was identified.