Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton suggested that the Justice Department was behind a directive barring intelligence officials from being interviewed by the panel without the presence of agency colleagues.
"At the operational and strategic level," the directive adds, intelligence positions "should be exempted from private sector performance on the basis of risk to national security, adding, "Private contractors may be acquired by foreign interests, acquire and maintain interests in foreign countries and provide support to foreign customers".
Obama responded with a directive requiring intelligence agencies have rules to protect the privacy of everyone whose data is collected in mass surveillance programs.
He also issued a policy directive ordering intelligence agencies to provide limited new protections for the privacy rights of foreign people.
A new policy directive orders intelligence agencies to protect the privacy rights of foreign persons but does not restrict the government's ability to use information obtained overseas in its investigations.
The larger impact, over the long term, may come from a less obvious part of Obama's reforms: his directives that intelligence agencies, including the NSA, face more stringent oversight, and that the FISA court make public its decisions affecting privacy rights.
The lawyers may be aided by directives on intelligence-sharing issued by President Bush in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said.
Clinton continued to face awkward questions about an intelligence directive which went out under her name in 2009 aimed at the UN leadership, which was revealed in a separate "national human intelligence collection directive".
It was all a lot clearer back in 1993 when U.S. Signals Intelligence Directive 18, USSID 18 to the cognoscenti, was promulgated.
A parallel intelligence directive sent to diplomats in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi said biometric data included DNA, fingerprints and iris scans.
The procedures are set out in a document called "U.S. Signals Intelligence Directive 18". Though the document was originally secret, an edited version was released some years ago, along with documents interpreting the rules.
