Chris Hedges discusses suing the Obama administration over the NDAA Act which strips us of our civil liberties
The NSA's claim they've stopped 50 terrorist threats doesn't add up:
Two weeks after Edward Snowden's first revelations about sweeping government surveillance, President Obama shot back. "We know of at least 50 threats that have been averted because of this information not just in the United States, but, in some cases, threats here in Germany," Obama said during a visit to Berlin in June. "So lives have been saved."
In the months since, intelligence officials, media outlets, and members of Congress from both parties all repeated versions of the claim that NSA surveillance has stopped more than 50 terrorist attacks.
The figure has become a key talking point in the debate around the spying programs.
"Fifty-four times this and the other program stopped and thwarted terrorist attacks both here and in Europe — saving real lives," Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said on the House floor in July, referring to programs authorized by a pair of post-9/11 laws. "This isn't a game. This is real."
But there's no evidence that the oft-cited figure is accurate.
The NSA itself has been inconsistent on how many plots it has helped prevent and what role the surveillance programs played. The agency has often made hedged statements that avoid any sweeping assertions about attacks thwarted.
A chart declassified by the agency in July, for example, says that intelligence from the programs on 54 occasions "has contributed to the [U.S. government's] understanding of terrorism activities and, in many cases, has enabled the disruption of potential terrorist events at home and abroad" — a much different claim than asserting that the programs have been responsible for thwarting 54 attacks.
NSA officials have mostly repeated versions of this wording.
When NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander spoke at a Las Vegas security conference in July, for instance, he referred to "54 different terrorist-related activities," 42 of which were plots and 12 of which were cases in which individuals provided "material support" to terrorism.
But the NSA has not always been so careful.
During Alexander's speech in Las Vegas, a slide in an accompanying slideshow read simply "54 Attacks Thwarted."
And in a recent letter to NSA employees, Alexander and John Inglis, the NSA's deputy director, wrote that the agency has "contributed to keeping the U.S. and its allies safe from 54 terrorist plots." (The letter was obtained by reporter Kevin Gosztola from a source with ties to the intelligence community. The NSA did not respond when asked to authenticate it.)
Asked for clarification of the surveillance programs' record, the NSA declined to comment.
Earlier this month, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., pressed Alexander on the issue at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
"Would you agree that the 54 cases that keep getting cited by the administration were not all plots, and of the 54, only 13 had some nexus to the U.S.?" Leahy said at the hearing. "Would you agree with that, yes or no?"
"Yes," Alexander replied, without elaborating.
"We've heard over and over again the assertion that 54 terrorist plots were thwarted" by the two programs, Leahy told Alexander at the Judiciary Committee hearing this month. "That's plainly wrong, but we still get it in letters to members of Congress, we get it in statements. These weren't all plots and they weren't all thwarted. The American people are getting left with the inaccurate impression of the effectiveness of NSA programs."
It's impossible to assess the role NSA surveillance played in the 54 cases because, while the agency has provided a full list to Congress, it remains classified.
Officials have openly discussed only a few of the cases, and the agency has identified only one - involving a San Diego man convicted of sending $8,500 to Somalia to support the militant group Al Shabab — in which NSA surveillance played a dominant role.
Individual congressmen have frequently cited the B/S figures in debates around NSA surveillance:
Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., who is also on the House Intelligence Committee, released a statement in July referring to "54 terrorist plots that have been foiled by the NSA programs." Asked about the figure, Westmoreland spokeswoman Leslie Shedd told ProPublica that "he was citing declassified information directly from the National Security Agency."
Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, issued a statement in July saying "the programs in question have thwarted 54 specific plots, many targeting Americans on American soil."
Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev., issued his own statement the next day: "The Amash amendment would have eliminated Section 215 of the Patriot Act which we know has thwarted 54 terrorist plots against the US (and counting)." (The amendment, which aimed to bar collection of Americans' phone records, was narrowly defeated in the House.)
Mike Rogers, the Intelligence Committee chairman who credited the surveillance programs with thwarting 54 attacks on the House floor, repeated the claim to Bob Schieffer on CBS' "Face the Nation" in July."You just heard what he said, senator," Schieffer said, turning to Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., an NSA critic. "Fifty-six terror plots here and abroad have been thwarted by the NSA program. So what's wrong with it, then, if it's managed to stop 56 terrorist attacks? That sounds like a pretty good record." Asked about Rogers' remarks, House Intelligence Committee spokeswoman Susan Phalen said in a statement: "In 54 specific cases provided by the NSA, the programs stopped actual plots or put terrorists in jail before they could effectuate further terrorist plotting. These programs save lives by disrupting attacks. Sometimes the information is found early in the planning, and sometimes very late in the planning. But in all those cases these people intended to kill innocent men and women through the use of terror."
Rep. James Lankford, R-Okla., went even further in a town hall meeting in August. Responding to a question about the NSA vacuuming up Americans' phone records, he said the program had "been used 54 times to be able to interrupt 54 different terrorist plots here in the United States that had originated from overseas in the past eight years. That's documented."
The same day, Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., who sits on the Intelligence Committee, defended the NSA at a town hall meeting with constituents in Cranston, R.I. "I know that these programs have been directly effective in thwarting and derailing 54 terrorist attacks," he said. Asked about Langevin's comments, spokeswoman Meg Fraser said in an email, "The committee was given information from NSA on August 1 that clearly indicated they considered the programs in question to have been used to help disrupt 54 terrorist events. That is the information the Congressman relied on when characterizing the programs at his town hall."
Wenstrup, Heck and Lankford did not respond to requests for comment.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/23/nsa-attacks-thwarted_n_4148811.html
http://www.propublica.org/article/claim-on-attacks-thwarted-by-nsa-spreads-despite-lack-of-evidence