Obama Administration Decides NSA Spying Is ‘Essential,’ But Oversight Of NSA Is Not

While the National Security Agency (NSA) has largely escaped the government shutdown, the panel investigating NSA spying practices has effectively been frozen. Politico reports that as of Friday, the five-member Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies lost its staff to the furlough associated with the government shutdown.

The group, which is largely comprised of intelligence community and White House insiders, was initially scheduled to remain running during the furlough. However, former acting CIA director Michael Morell declined to attend a scheduled meeting Tuesday, citing the shutdown: “While the work we're doing is important, it is no more important than — and quite frankly a lot less important — than a lot of the work being left undone by the government shutdown, both in the intelligence community and outside the intelligence community.”

By Friday, the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, which is facilitating the panel, reversed course and determined that panel members' staff should be furloughed, according to Politico's sources. While in theory the members are unpaid, so the panel could continue without support staff or payment for travel expenses, that seems unlikely.