The following article by Emmarie Huetteman and Charlie Savage was posted on the New York Times website June 7, 2017:
WASHINGTON — Two top intelligence officials refused to answer senators’ questions on Wednesday about whether President Trump had asked them to intervene in the F.B.I. investigation into Russian election interference, saying only that they had never felt “pressured” by the White House to do anything improper.
The two officials — Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, and Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency — testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on the eve of a highly anticipated appearance before the panel by James B. Comey, who was fired as F.B.I. director by Mr. Trump last month. Mr. Comey, in prepared remarks released by the committee after the two officials testified, said Mr. Trump had asked him to drop an investigation into the president’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn.
The reticence by Mr. Coats and Admiral Rogers drew sharp criticism from many senators, including Republicans, who said during the sometimes testy hearing that they had no justification not to answer questions.
“At no time should you be in a position where you come to Congress without an answer,” said Senator Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina and the committee’s chairman. “The requirements of our oversight duties and your agencies demand it.”
Amid mounting evidence that Mr. Trump sought to interfere in the Russia investigation, senators often strayed far from the planned subject of the hearing: legislation to extend the FISA Amendments Act, which is the basis for the N.S.A.’s warrantless surveillance program and is set to expire at the end of the year.
Democrats seized the opportunity to set the stage for Mr. Comey’s testimony on Thursday. In his prepared remarks, Mr. Comey said that, in addition to asking him to drop the Flynn investigation, Mr. Trump had asked him for an expression of personal loyalty, as The New York Times reported last month. Mr. Comey also said that Mr. Trump had repeatedly pressed him to announce that the president was not personally under investigation in the Russia case.
Mr. Coats on Wednesday declined to comment publicly on a report in The Washington Post that Mr. Trump had asked him to intervene with Mr. Comey in the Flynn inquiry, which is looking in part at Mr. Flynn’s Russia connections. Admiral Rogers declined to comment on earlier reports that Mr. Trump had asked him to deny that there was evidence of collusion between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russian officials.
While he said that he would not discuss specific interactions with the president, Admiral Rogers broadly suggested that Mr. Trump had not asked him to do anything inappropriate.
“In the three-plus years that I have been the director of the National Security Agency, to the best of my recollection, I have never been directed to do anything I believe to be illegal, immoral, unethical or inappropriate,” he said. “And to the best of my recollection, during that same period of service, I do not recall ever feeling pressured.”
Lawmakers of both parties pressed both men to say more. Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, asked whether either had ever received a request — even if the men did not feel pressured — to influence any continuing investigation, expressing frustration at their refusal to give a clear answer.
“If what is being said to the media is untrue, then it is unfair to the president of the United States,” Mr. Rubio said. “And if it is true, then it is something the American people deserve to know, and we, as an oversight committee, need to know in order to conduct our job.”
Senator Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats, demanded to know whether Mr. Trump had invoked executive privilege to bar them from discussing their conversations. Both Mr. Coats and Admiral Rogers said that they had asked the White House about the issue and received no clear answer, but that they nevertheless did not think it was appropriate to talk.
“I’m not satisfied with ‘I do not believe it is appropriate’ or ‘I do not feel I should answer,’” Mr. King said. “I want to understand a legal basis. You swore that oath to tell us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And today, you are refusing to do so. What is the legal basis for your refusal to testify to this committee?”
Mr. Coats replied, “I’m not sure I have a legal basis.”
He suggested that he might be willing to answer the questions in a closed-door hearing. That statement was somewhat confusing, given that executive privilege is about shielding information from Congress, not from the public.
Mr. King and others also pressed two other administration witnesses — Andrew G. McCabe, the acting F.B.I. director, and Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general — to say more about Mr. Comey’s firing, and both demurred. They said that the special counsel leading the Russia investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, should decide what they can talk about to lawmakers and to the public. The Justice Department has not said whether Mr. Mueller is looking into whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice, though he has the authority to do so.
The hearing also included several notable disclosures related to the FISA Amendments Act, which the Trump administration said on Wednesday it wanted Congress to make permanent without changes.
That would mean turning back a proposal to require the government to get a warrant before intelligence analysts or F.B.I. agents may use Americans’ names to search the repository of messages the N.S.A. has gathered through the program. As part of that debate, lawmakers have been asking the executive branch to disclose an estimate of the volume of Americans’ communications that are incidentally swept in through the program.
But Mr. Coats said he had decided to drop the effort to come up with such an estimate. He argued that figuring out whether users of email accounts in contact with foreign targets were Americans would divert resources and intrude on privacy — and, for reasons he did not explain, could not result in an accurate number.
That provoked an angry response from Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat. He told Mr. Coats that the position he was taking was a mistake, and vowed: “We’re going to battle it out.”
Mr. Coats also unveiled a new example of an instance in which the FISA Amendments Act had been useful. He said that a March 2016 American Special Operations forces strike in Syria that killed an Islamic State leader known as Haji Imam had “primarily” stemmed from information gathered under the surveillance program, including identifying his location and confirming his death.
View the post here.