Ajit Pai knew DDoS claim was false in January, says he couldn’t tell Congress

Personally I think the guy is liar. He kept pushing his lie and didn’t come clean until he was caught.

Ajit Pai knew DDoS claim was false in January, says he couldn’t tell Congress

The Federal Communications Commission chairman has known that his agency's claims about being hit by DDoS attacks were false for more than six months, but he says he could not correct the record publicly because of an internal investigation that didn't wrap up until this month.

The FCC Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued its report on the matter last week, finding that the FCC lied to Congress when it claimed that DDoS attacks caused a May 2017 outage that temporarily prevented net neutrality supporters from filing comments opposing Pai's plan to kill net neutrality rules. The false claims were made primarily by former Chief Information Officer David Bray, and Bray's false statements were sent to Congress in attachments to letters that Pai wrote to lawmakers.

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The position I was in was, "Do we breach the Office of Inspector General's request for confidentiality," in which case the accusation perhaps from members of this committee would be, "He's jeopardizing an independent OIG investigation including potential criminal prosecution," or do I adhere to the independent inspector general's request? It's a difficult position to be in; I made the judgment that we had to adhere to the OIG's request even though I knew we would be falsely attacked for having done something inappropriate.

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Pai has also faced criticism from House Democrats who want him to respond, in writing, to a series of questions by August 28. Last week, Pai blamed the spreading of false information on Bray and other employees hired by the Obama administration and said that he isn't to blame because he "inherited... a culture" from "the prior Administration" that led to the spreading of false information.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/ajit-pai-knew-ddos-claim-was...

So he couldn’t go to the OIG and ‘correct’ his and Bray’s stories? Telling the truth about what really happened to cause an ‘investigation’ is now wrong? Silly me, I would have thought that would be the right action to take.

And as for it being Obama’s fault, yeah Obama’s administration was chock full of liars. (He could rattle off lie upon lie better than any politician I’ve ever seen.) But that is NO reason for this particular ‘public servant’ to continue to promote his lie and allow people to think the FEC crashed because of a DDoS attack when the website simply was overwhelmed by people expressing their opposition to Pai’s plan to kill net neutrality. I would think telling the truth regardless of the circumstances would actually be a job requirement. But now it seems that the government is full of people who have no qualms about lying to the American people, from the president on down. This guy lied because he wanted to kill net neutrality and massive public opposition could interfere with his plans. So he kept on lying for as long as he could.

I think any politician or political appointee caught intentionally lying to the American public should be barred from ever again ‘working’ In any government position. But that might turn DC into a ghost town. Which might not be all that bad.

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admitted that to Congress and all of America, with zero consequences (and we're nonetheless supposed to treat our intel agencies like the Oracle at Delphi?); the Secretary of State lied about emails and servers; the head of the IRS lied; etc. All with zero consequences so far. And now, the head of the FCC lied. Damned Trump nominees!

Oh, wait....

Oh, well. Now, back wall to wall coverage of that really matters, like Amorosa's book.

Establishment media may or may not be the enemy of the people, but it sure hasn't been doing us any favors, either.

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I agree with what you’re saying too. It’s a damn shame we expect and accept this from those in the government. Though there was always the stereotypical “lying politician”, it felt to me during the W Bush years when this battle was lost because no one ever lied, they “misspoke”. Maybe it started earlier, but it sure felt to me like Clinton got called on it, but Bush just “misspoke”. Sigh. Drives me nuts.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

Raggedy Ann's picture

How can that even come into question? Diablo

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

Amanda Matthews's picture

@Raggedy Ann

a difference.

We need a Citizen’s Panel to investigate ALL these bastids. Leaving it to them to police themselves is never going to happen.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa