James Clapper Admits What Everyone's Been Saying For Months: Snowden Didn't Take 1.7 Million Documents
from the a-bit-slow dept
You know, you'd think that the "intelligence community" would be a bit more intelligent. As we've discussed many, many times, nearly all of the estimates of "harm" concerning Ed Snowden's actions were based on the faulty assumption that he "took" (and revealed) every document he ever "touched" while at NSA -- somewhere around 1.7 million (sometimes referred to as 1.5 million, but then upped to 1.7 million). Except that two of the reporters who got the documents, Glenn Greenwald and Ewan MacAskill, have both said from the very beginning that it was about 60,000.And yet, NSA defenders keep insisting that he's caused all of this harm because of what was in the 1.7 million documents... nearly all of which he did not take. Indeed, the much-hyped (by NSA defenders) Pentagon report on the "staggering harm" that Snowden has created doesn't actually say that. It says it's "staggering" how many documents he had access to, not that he took. Because the NSA, one year after the first Snowden revelation still has no idea how much he actually took (which certainly raises questions about their vaunted "auditing" of everything done at the agency).
In fact, James Clapper is now admitting that maybe Snowden didn't take so much, and maybe the "harm" wasn't as bad as he, himself, has been arguing:
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says it appears the impact may be less than once feared because "it doesn't look like he [Snowden] took as much" as first thought.In other words, exactly as pretty much all of us have been saying -- all of the frantic FUD-filled estimates of "harm" were actually massively over-hyped based on faulty assumptions. And yet that never stopped Clapper, Mike Rogers, Keith Alexander, Dianne Feinstein and others from continuing to trot out those bogus numbers, even though tons of people had debunked them. And now that Clapper is finally admitting that he himself over-hyped the supposed "harm" and the documents that Snowden took, he acts as if he's revealing some big news.
"We're still investigating, but we think that a lot of what he looked at, he couldn't pull down," Clapper said in a rare interview at his headquarters Tuesday. "Some things we thought he got, he apparently didn't." Although somewhat less than expected, the damage is still "profound," he said.
Amusingly, the report also claims that the DOD is also lowering its estimate of how much Snowden "touched" from 1.77 million (up from the 1.7 million they had been saying, actually) down to the 1.5 million which was the number they had been using back at the beginning of December anyway. It's almost as if they actually have no idea and are just pulling numbers out of thin air.
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Filed Under: documents, ed snowden, fud, james clapper, nsa, surveillance
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This just in!
In other news, the ocean has been found to be "at least" moist, scientists believe it is entirely possible that there is life on Earth, and smoking may have serious health risks.
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Re: This just in!
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Re: This just in!
Nice phrasing, that. The use of the work 'couldn't' implies that "if only he could, he would have", instead of a possible active choice by Snowden NOT to. The fact that he was viewing it seems to say he could, actually, 'pull it down'.
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Maybe the NSA has special monitors that cannot be photographed. Or maybe Clapper is an idiot. I think it has to be one of those.
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Almost?
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Accountants are the only people who can make 1+30+10+40 = 1.7m or 1.77m or 1.5m or any other number they want it to be.
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public consumption
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Re: public consumption
This is an "intelligence" agency that has been compromised and they cannot even determine the extent of the compromise. I'm sure if they really knew it was 1,202,432 documents, they would be telling everyone that number just so they looked like they could figure SOMETHING out.
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Statistical analysis at the RIAA, MPAA and NSA are all performed by Hollywood accountants.
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Something something
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IOW
"We were able to partially foil him."
And not, "He didn't feel the need to grab every possible thing."
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Re: IOW
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The danger *is* about the documents he had access to
The main harm Snowden has done is not that other nations got to see what the NSA is doing, but rather what the U.S. got to see.
The pattern of damage that he inflicted consisted in full-mouthed statements and denials and assurances of the NSA before the American people followed by publications of documents that showed the NSA to be a bunch of ruthless liars and perjurers.
The NSA has to regain the trust of the public, and it would not do so by telling the public the whole ugly truth.
So they desperately need to tell a reassuringly large sequence of lies that will not promptly be disproven by subsequent publications.
As long as they don't know which of the documents Snowden had access to are in the hands of the journalists, they cannot cook up a suitably consistent net of lies they can manage to stick to.
There is a saying something like "telling the truth is a poor copout from those with a bad memory", and the NSA prouds itself of having perfect memory.
But it is much harder creating a new truth given 1.7�million unknowns than 60000.
If they knew exactly what was in the 60000, they could lie much more confidently and assertively.
So the damage is actually those 1.7�millions, because the most dangerous enemy are not other states, or terrorists, but the American public and Congress.
Without being secure against the American public and Congress, the NSA will not be able to provide help against external foes. And they still hope to bat better eventually than the flat zero they have to show so far.
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When you get to looking at what was revealed something else jumps up at you. Pretty much all I've seen looks like in house training documents. Not actual work files and data gathering raw files. Stuff that the NSA in house uses to inform and train their own people.
This should tell you a couple of things. One is there is no data there to expose life endangering events. The NSA itself has already vetted the data before it went into training materials. The second is that if it is deemed good enough for training materiel, one also has to assume it is fairly dead accurate as to what it exposes. Meaning that the government and the NSA has known all along just how damaging it really is in terms of agent endangerment and in terms of secret data exposed. They've just been lying as they go along hoping to find something... anything... to use as evidence of spying that could be used as traitor and not as whistle blower. That pretty much looks to be the whole purpose of denying and lying.
When one man has more creditability than the entire US government, that too should be speaking volumes. Just like pre-nazi Germany should have been able to see where they were headed just before it all happened.
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stop looking for the old America in a system that is broken, perhaps beyond repair...
there is NO FAIRNESS, that is a memory...
there is NO JUSTICE, that is an illusion...
there is NO MORALITY, that is a for fools...
there is ONLY GREED, there is ONLY MIGHT, there is ONLY CRUELTY, there is ONLY WINNING, and ONLY 1% are WINNNERS, the rest are jealous whiners...
THAT is the matrix we live in, neo, no matter how much you wish it otherwise...
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Semantics
I expect Clapper's choice of words that he "took" documents, and expect the MSM to repeat that.
My expectation of writers on this site is that they would choose the more accurate term, "copied".
It's not like he deleted the originals (then they might know how many).
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Re: Semantics
At 10 years and $250k per, he is on the hook for 15 million years in prison and $375,000,000,000.
THAT should keep him away from this country.
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Re: Semantics
My expectation of writers on this site is that they would choose the more accurate term, "copied".
"Took" is not inaccurate though. He took a copy of a document with him, and left a copy behind. I won't argue with your assertion that "copied" is more accurate, but in this case it doesn't strike me as important distinction.
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Re: Semantics
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just some notions
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Re: just some notions
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Surprised no one else has pointed out...
1: James Clapper is a frequent liar, an acknowledged liar, and a perjurer.
2: James Clapper says Snowden did not take copies of 1.7 million documents.
3: By (1), statements from James Clapper should be assumed untrue until proven otherwise.
4: By (2) and (3), Snowden must have taken copies of 1.7 million documents or James Clapper would not have said the opposite.
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That's too bad
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Classic NSA move. You are failures.
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So what's the true number? 42?
But that doesn't mean they won't pursue the original charges..only that they've lost any impact with this admission.
And the way they got the numbers? Love that "fundamental orifice" comment above-but I'd say it blunter: out of their half-baked asses.
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snowden is a hero
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It would last a week at most, but while it survived...
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Or else these "traitors to the USA!!!" would have published them already.
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While Clapper, as criminal liar, makes poor spokesperson, he is actually right. You never prove risk. Thus, you MUST assume 1.7m docs are in hands of enemy (and public too). Trick is, there may be some 50k only which Snowden copied (not stole!), but nobody knows which one. PBS Frontline piece had docs list shown scrolling fast, and seems from names and sequence of initial letters, that there are even fewer the 50k.
It gets worse: since he was working out of Geneva (world hotspot of spy activity) he was monitored by Russians, and likely Chinese ever since. So when he booked that flight to Hong Kong and checked in under his own name, his name popped on their monitors right away. On NSA' too, but they created too fat and clumsy a system to notice on time.
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