Ahem....
I'm minded of an episode of 'Law & Order' where the prosecutor asks: "Were you lying then or are you lying now?" I'd add, "or both?" It doesn't matter who the disclaimers (excuses), they are surrounded by lawyerese weasel words and that's doing offense to the weasels of the world.
The saddest and sorriest part of all this is that I *knew* what we could do, hell did do, to the rest of the world. I was called in as a last resort when things were broken and they couldn't figure it out how to fix it. You see things but you don't talk about them. Hell, I signed a piece of paper that said I didn't remember anything since just after my 17th birthday. Just like I was ordered to do when it was Americans I overheard or saw an intercept from. It'd have to be a major threat before we'd even repeat it to our chain of command. Not to somebody's spouse, a business rival, whatever. An honest to God threat to the Constitution or my Command, or real personal like. (My Command might like to know that I'm on somebody's list ;).
Now I find out that that rule got lost somewhere in all this and we were doing unto our own. Shit.