The leaders of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have declined to testify publicly at a scheduled Senate hearing on global national security threats.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The leaders of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security declined to testify publicly at a scheduled Senate hearing Thursday on global national security threats, a break from precedent following years of open testimony before the panel.

“Their choice to not provide public testimony about their departments’ efforts to address wide-ranging national security threats robs the American people of critical information and the opportunity for public accountability of what the federal government is doing to keep Americans safe,” Sen. Gary Peters, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee, said in a statement.

The Michigan Democrat said it was the first time in more than 15 years that an FBI director and Homeland Security secretary had refused to offer public testimony at the annual committee hearing focused on threats to the homeland, calling it a “shocking departure” from tradition.

A separate hearing scheduled for Wednesday before the House Homeland Security committee also was postponed.

…

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that they and the FBI offered to speak to the committee in a classified setting and emphasized the amount of unclassified information they’ve already shared publicly

  • shoulderoforion@fedia.io
    61·
    1 month ago

    yeah, but not only are they coming from whithin the house, a majority of americans voted for the threats themselves, and the FBI and DHS don’t want to be compelled to say that publicly with the threats about to take power and wipe their agencies out from the ground up, the leaders of the FBI and DHS don’t posses that sort of courage (because it’s falling on deaf ears, the public, again having just voted for the bad guys knowing they were bad guys)