The Obama administration issued misleading figures about terrorist
plots foiled by the National Security Agency’s warrantless
mass-collection of records of Americans’ every phone call, NSA chief
Gen. Keith Alexander admitted to lawmakers Wednesday.
“There is no
evidence that [bulk] phone records collection helped to thwart dozens
or even several terrorist plots,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman
Patrick Leahy, told Gen. Alexander of the 54 cases that administration
officials have cited as the fruit of the NSA’s controversial domestic
snooping.
“These weren’t all plots, and they weren’t all foiled,” he said.
The
Vermont Democrat asked the general to admit that only 13 of the 54
cases had any connection at all to the United States, “Would you agree
with that, yes or no?”
“Yes,” replied Gen. Alexander, who is both
director of NSA and commander of the U.S. military’s Cyber Command. In
response to a follow-up question, Mr. Alexander also acknowledged that
only one or two of the cases cited by senior officials at previous
hearings had actually been foiled by the NSA’s vast database.
“The American people are getting left with an inaccurate impression of the effectiveness of NSA programs,” Mr. Leahy said.
He added that details of the 54 cases, even those provided to lawmakers in special classified briefings, were “unconvincing.”
“We get more from the newspapers than we do in the classified briefings that you give us,” he told Gen. Alexander.
“And we get a crossword puzzle, too,” he added.
“The
government has not made its case that bulk collection of domestic
phone records is an effective counterterrorism tool, especially in
light of the intrusion on Americans’ privacy,” the senator concluded.
The
NSA’s bulk collection program uses a provision of the USA Patriot Act
to acquire telephone company records of the time, duration and numbers
calling and called of every single phone call made in the United
States. It was exposed in documents leaked by former NSA contract
computer technician Edward J. Snowden.
Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper, who testified alongside Gen. Alexander,
told the hearing that the number of plots foiled should not be the only
metric by which the success of the program is measured. “I think
there’s another metric here that’s very important. … I would call it
the peace-of-mind metric.”
He explained that they could also use
the database to satisfy themselves that global terrorists abroad did
not have connections or associates in the United States.
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