That was enough to ruffle the feathers of Rep. Mike Pompeo, a Republican from Kansas who serves on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence as well as Michael Hayden, former NSA Director and CIA director; Michael Mukasey, the former Attorney General; Michael Chertoff, the former Secretary of Homeland Security; and four other senior national security officials, all of whom served under President George W. Bush.

Their letter says: “The Republican National Committee plays a vital role in political campaigns, but it has relatively little expertise in national security.” In particular the letter takes issue with the resolution’s claim that the NSA’s PRISM program “monitors searching habits of virtually every American on the internet.”

“In fact, there is no program that monitors the searches of all Americans,” the letter says. “And what has become known as the PRISM program is not aimed at collecting the communications of Americans. It is targeted at the international communications of foreign persons located outside the United States and is precisely the type of foreign-targeted surveillance that Congress approved in 2008 and 2012 when it enacted and reauthorized amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.”