Spy chief's disclosures stun Congress
McConnell is criticized for offering
once-classified details about the wiretapping program in an interview.
By Greg Miller
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 24, 2007
WASHINGTON — The nation's top intelligence
official drew sharp criticism from Capitol Hill
and government watchdog groups Thursday for
disclosing previously classified details about
the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program.
In a newspaper interview last week, Director of
National Intelligence J. Michael McConnell
provided new details on the scope of the
espionage program, saying that fewer than 100
people in the United States were under
surveillance by the National Security Agency at
any time, compared with thousands overseas.
He also disclosed details about a previously
secret decision by a special intelligence court
that ruled that the program was in violation of
U.S. law. The deliberations of the court are generally classified.
The disclosures stunned members of Congress. They
were not allowed to discuss those details
publicly during an intense debate this month on
legislation sought by McConnell that granted the
government significant new powers to eavesdrop on
e-mails and phone calls that pass into or through
data networks in the United States.
"I'm shocked," said Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice),
chairwoman of an intelligence panel on the House
Committee on Homeland Security. "It is stunning
to me to read that he has decided to share these
details with a small-town newspaper."
Harman said the numbers that McConnell disclosed
regarding the number of people inside the United
States who were targets of NSA's electronic
eavesdropping "were so far as I knew as highly
classified as any aspect of that program."
McConnell's comments came during an interview
with the El Paso Times while he was in that city
last week to appear at a conference on border
security. His remarks also drew criticism from
the American Civil Liberties Union, which has
challenged the legality of the spying program and
fought in court to compel the Bush administration
to disclose more details about it.
"If this ostensibly sensitive information can be
released now, why could it not be released two
months ago, when the public and Congress
desperately needed it?" asked Jameel Jaffer,
director of the ACLU's national security project.
"This administration has a history of selectively
releasing classified information in order to further its political goals."
A spokesman for McConnell declined to comment. As
the nation's top intelligence official, McConnell
has authority to declassify material and would
not face any legal consequence for the disclosures.
Nevertheless, other U.S. intelligence and
congressional officials said they were perplexed
by the director's decision to provide so much
detail about a program once held in such secrecy
that only a handful in Congress were briefed on it.
Officials said it was unclear whether McConnell's
disclosures were part of a deliberate attempt to
defend the program and his efforts to lobby
members of Congress to pass new legislation
expanding it. Democrats have complained that they
were pressured into a hasty rewrite of landmark
espionage laws, and the issue is expected to be
revisited when Congress reconvenes next month.
Describing the scope of the eavesdropping
program, McConnell said the number of targets
inside the United States was "100 or less. And
then the foreign side, it's in the thousands."
In disclosing its magnitude, McConnell may have
been aiming to counter critics who contend that
the government is engaged in widespread spying on
Americans. "We've got a lot of territory to make
up with people believing that we're doing things
we're not doing," McConnell said in the interview.
Other officials said McConnell might simply have
slipped in an interview with a local newspaper.
The Associated Press reported that after the
interview, McConnell asked the El Paso newspaper
to consider whether publishing the details he disclosed would be harmful.
In the interview, McConnell discussed in broad
terms how spy agencies access U.S.
telecommunications networks to pluck e-mails and
phone calls of suspected terrorists and other
international surveillance targets.
"There's a sense that we're doing massive data
mining," McConnell said, according to a
transcript released by the El Paso newspaper. "In
fact, what we're doing is surgical. A telephone
number is surgical. So, if you know what number, you can select it out."
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