Dianne Feinstein: Emotions Didn't Motivate The CIA Torture Report; Michael Hayden's Coverup Did

from the oh-snap dept

Senator Dianne Feinstein has finally responded to former CIA and NSA boss Michael Hayden's misogynistic and ridiculous claims that the Senate Intelligence Committee's 6,300 page, $40 million research report into the CIA torture program (run, in part, while Hayden was boss) was motivated by her "emotions" rather than by an objective position. Hayden has also called out the staffers working on the report as sissies (though he'll claim he was just saying the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's acronym -- SSCI). She brushes off the whole "emotional" claim by noting quickly that's Hayden being "stereotypical" and "incorrect" and saying such a thing is "an old male fallback position."

However, as Marcy Wheeler points out, rather than spending her time addressing silly ad hominem attacks, Feinstein scores a lot more points in basically pointing out that the real motivation for the report was Hayden's own lies to Congress: What she notes is that the real inspiration for the report came after it was revealed to the Senate that a CIA staffer had ignored direct requests from Congress, the White House and others in the CIA and destroyed tapes showing the CIA torturing people. The destruction of the tapes was then hidden from Congress for some time as well. When it finally came to light, Hayden (then director of the CIA) told the Senate that it could review various cables and documents, which were "just as good" as the tapes. In looking into that claim from Hayden that the documents were just as useful as the deleted tapes, that the Senate decided to move forward on a full investigation. In other words, it wasn't emotions that motivated Feinstein, it was Hayden's lies to the Senate.

Let me give you how this began. It began in 12/6/07 when the NY Times reported that the CIA destroyed evidence -- namely videotapes. In December, the 11th, Director Hayden appeared before our Committee and said he would allow members and/or staff to review operational cables which he said were just as good. Jay Rockefeller was then the chairman of the Committee. He, on the 7th of February of '08, assigned staff. On February 27th, the staff presented an interim report to the Committee on the destruction of the tapes. The Committee agreed to do a full review of the tapes. On March 5, 2009, the Committee voted 14-1 to do a comprehensive review of the detention and interrogation [program].

Let's have the record crystal clear. I never gave any direction to the staff. I just said 'we want the facts -- and we want those facts footnoted.' The one place I did give some direction, was with respect to the CIA response to the report. I said, 'you will include their response, where appropriate, within the text of the report, and where not appropriate, you will note the response in a footnote to the report.' And that has been carried on.

.... I don't believe Director Hayden has seen the report. I don't believe most people talking about it have actually seen the report. But the genesis of the report was back with the videotapes and back under then Chairman Rockefeller, who assigned staff, staff studied the operational cables, came back, reported to us, we took a look at that and said -- both sides -- we should move ahead and do a full study.

As Wheeler notes: Michael Hayden has only himself to blame for this report. If he hadn't lied and tried to downplay the destruction of evidence of the CIA's torture program, perhaps there would be no torture report at all. No wonder he's so "emotional" and attacking everyone about it.

Filed Under: cia, dianne feinstein, michael hayden, senate, senate report, torture

Former NSA/CIA Boss' Anger Issues: Claims Senate Staffers Are 'Sissies' And Wyden Isn't 'Acting Like A Man'

from the should-we-take-this-outside dept

It would appear that former NSA and CIA boss Michael Hayden has some anger management issues to work out. We thought he was just a little nutty in the past -- calling Snowden's supporters internet shut-ins and insisting that Snowden himself (a non-drinker) was bound to end up an alcoholic. But in the past few days, he's gone somewhat ballistic in attacking various elected officials and government employees in a manner that sounds like he's literally asking to get into a fist fight.

Yesterday, we noted how odd it was that he decided to go the misogynistic route, by arguing that Senator Dianne Feinstein was too emotional to put out a credible report on the CIA's torture practices (while, at the same time admitting that he was defending the report despite not knowing what's in it). However, apparently that was just the latest in his round of weird ad hominem attacks. Trevor Timm points us to a couple of even more bizarre and outlandish quotes from Hayden from late last week. He was speaking at Johns Hopkins University, debating issues related to the NSA, when he was asked about James Clapper lying to Congress (something Clapper has flat out admitted to doing) concerning whether or not the NSA was collecting data on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans. Hayden used the opportunity to not just defend Clapper, but to say that Senator Ron Wyden wasn't "man enough" and to call Senate staffers a bunch of "sissies". He tries to play off the "sissies" comment as him just pronouncing the acronym of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence -- SSCI -- but having it coupled almost immediately with the "not man enough" comment, it's pretty obvious what Hayden is suggesting.

Does he think this is high school? If you can't watch it, here's what he says:

Jim's a good friend and an honest man. But, frankly, it was a horrible answer to -- and here's the new news -- a really horrible question. Ron Wyden knew the answer to that question. Everyone on that dais, every member of that Committee, knew the answer to that question. Everyone sitting behind every member of that committee -- all those sissies -- the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence staffers, knew the answer to that question. That question had been briefed to them multiple times in closed sessions.

What Jim should have said is, "we'll take it to closed session." He didn't. But Senator Wyden doesn't get a free pass either. If he wanted Jim Clapper to commit a felony, and reveal something that was appropriately classified, Senator Wyden should have acted like a man and revealed it himself, rather than trying to "trap" a career public servant into what for him would be a criminal act. This thing cuts two ways.

There's so much crap here to unpack. Over the last few months we've noticed this line of argument appearing from one (anonymous) individual in particular in our comments -- that Senator Wyden was somehow to blame for, in his role on the Senate Intelligence Committee, asking a basic question to the Director of the Office of National Intelligence. Of course, even as Hayden himself admits above, if the answer to that question went too far, there was an easy response to that, to just note that to give a full answer to that question, it would require a closed session. Clapper had said exactly that in the past, and has done it again since then. None of that required lying.

Second, just because the person asking the question -- or any of the "sissies" -- knows the answer is pure misdirection by Hayden. In many Congressional hearings, the people asking the questions know the answers ahead of time. These are efforts to get that information into the public record from those responsible. And, it is Clapper who is the responsible party here, so it was perfectly reasonable for Senator Wyden to ask Clapper that question in a hearing. Besides, the point -- as Wyden had been clear about for years before that session, and ever since then -- was that this was an issue that needed public debate, and he was asking those responsible to provide the information for the public debate.

Even the NSA's main defender, Senator Dianne Feinstein noted that she was shocked by Clapper's answer to Wyden's question, since she knew it was a lie. Furthermore, Senator Wyden made it clear that if the Office of the Director of National Intelligence had asked him beforehand not to ask that question (which he'd sent to them the day before), he wouldn't have asked it. But the situation gets worse. After Clapper lied, Senator Wyden's office wrote his office, asking if he'd like to correct the false statement, and Clapper's office refused to do so, even though the knew it was a false statement.

As for Hayden's claim that Clapper would be "committing a felony," that's also erroneous. Revealing the details of a classified program is a felony, but simply stating, without context or explanation, that the NSA is collecting data on millions of Americans (a factual statement) is not revealing a classified program at all. Furthermore, you know what is a felony? Lying to Congress.

Either way, the entire point of the Senate Intelligence Committee is that it's in charge of oversight to make sure that the intelligence community isn't overreaching its limits, including doing things like collecting data on millions of Americans. Thus it seems flat out crazy to suggest that Senator Wyden should be tarred and feathered for doing his job on the committee.

Worse, to attack Senator Wyden's "manhood" for not revealing the information himself, rather than asking Clapper is another rhetorical attack from someone who clearly has an axe to grind. After all, it was Hayden who kicked off the clearly unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping program that these more recent efforts were cooked up to try to "make legal." And it was Hayden who, back when he was CIA director, did everything possible to stop Senator Wyden from revealing CIA wrongdoing. At that time, seven years ago, Wyden questioned why Hayden was so scared over a little basic oversight by the Senate. Apparently Hayden's way of getting back at Wyden is to toss out schoolyard insults at him.

Senator Wyden seems man enough to actually respect the Constitution, to stand up against a powerful intelligence community and his own party, and to try to initiate public review of warrantless surveillance on Americans. How about Hayden? He's the guy who kicked off that warrantless spying on Americans which he's worked very hard to keep in the shadows ever since. Wyden himself has ignored Hayden's schoolyard taunts directed at himself, but has called out Hayden for his "outrageous" attack on Feinstein's motives, while also pointing out:

General Hayden unfortunately has a long history of misleading the American public – he did it on domestic surveillance when he was the head of the NSA, and he did it on torture when he was the CIA Director. The best way to correct this culture of misinformation is to give the American people a chance to review the facts for themselves, and I’ll be working with my colleagues and the administration to ensure that happens quickly.

Meanwhile, Marcy Wheeler notes that Senator Wyden is almost being far too kind to Hayden in not detailing Hayden's blatant lies to the very same Senate Intelligence Committee concerning the CIA's torture program. Fear not, though, because Wheeler details the list of Hayden's past lies.

That's not a schoolyard taunt about who is or who is not "man enough." It's a simple fact. All of this makes you wonder just how much there is about Hayden in his role as director of the CIA during the torture regime in the report. You almost have to ask if Hayden simply isn't "man enough" to stand up for whatever is in the report about him.

Filed Under: cia, dianne feinstein, james clapper, lies, michael hayden, ron wyden, senate, senate intelligence committee, torture

Former CIA, NSA Boss Says Senator Feinstein Is Too Emotional To Judge CIA Torture Fairly

from the shameful dept

We've written about former NSA and CIA boss Michael Hayden plenty of times around here, and the guy is practically a caricature of what you'd expect him to be. He defends the intelligence community at all costs, and is quick with baseless insults to anyone who disagrees with him, and also (laughably) seems ill-prepared to be a fortune teller. We've also written about California Senator, and head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, many times as well -- often watching her make similarly ridiculous claims in defense of the intelligence committee. However, as we've seen over the last few months, the one place where she seems to draw the line is with the CIA and its torture program. Feinstein, normally a staunch defender of the intelligence community, has been battling the CIA over the release of the $40 million, 6,300 page report that shows that the CIA's torture program (which she still refuses to call "torture") went way beyond what was authorized, produced no useful intelligence and resulted in the CIA lying to Congress about the program.

Since the two are normally in lock-step on various issues, it's interesting to see what happens when they differ. On Fox News over the weekend, Chris Wallace asked Hayden about the report, and Hayden pretty explicitly tossed out the ridiculous misogynistic argument that Feinstein was, effectively, too emotional to judge whether the report should be released. While he didn't make that claim exactly, he came about as close as possible to saying it without saying it:

WALLACE: But the report says that more prisoners were abused than we had previously known and that the enhanced interrogation produced little intelligence of significance.

HAYDEN: Yes. I read an article by David Ignatius earlier this week. And he said --

WALLACE: He's a columnist for The Washington Post.

HAYDEN: Right. He said that Senator Feinstein wanted a report so scathing that it would ensure that an un-American brutal program of detention interrogation would never again be considered or permitted.

Now, that sentence, that motivation for the report, Chris, may show deep emotional feeling on part of the senator. But I don't think it leads you to an objective report.

WALLACE: I mean, forgive me, because you and I both know Senator Feinstein. I have the highest regard for her. You're saying you think she was emotional in these conclusions?

HAYDEN: What I'm saying is -- first of all, Chris, you're asking me about a report. I have no idea of its content. No one responsible for that report has spoken a word of this to me, to George Tenet, to Porter Goss, to anyone else that is involved in these events. But it's very hard for me to make a judgment.

Of course, as Amy Davidson at the New Yorker notes, while the Ignatius report does suggest this as potential motivation for Feinstein, it's actually taking a Feinstein quote completely out of context. Rather than it being the motivating factor in creating the report, it was actually Feinstein's response to reading the completed report and arguing that its key findings should be made public. That is, rather than being emotionally motivated to create the report (as Hayden falsely claims), Feinstein realized that the report was so damning that it needed to be made public to stop future CIA torture and abuse.

And, really, can anyone explain what's wrong with suggesting that preventing an "un-American, brutal" torture program from happening again would be a beneficial result? Is Hayden honestly arguing that the US should continue with un-American torture efforts?

Either way, the choice of words by Hayden is deliberate and obnoxious. He's suggesting that a female Senator might be too emotionally driven and fragile to understand the "realities" of war, where people like him -- people who apparently sold out their morals long ago -- make important decisions like when and how to violate the Geneva conventions, torture people and to then lie to Congress about it. Call me crazy, but when it comes to stopping a "brutal" and "un-American" program of torturing people in violation of international law, a little emotion might be a good thing.

Filed Under: cia, dianne feinstein, emotions, michael hayden, senate, senate report, torture, torture report

Michael Hayden Thinks Snowden Revelations, Rather Than NSA Actions, May Splinter The Internet

from the yeah,-perhaps-you-shouldn't-have-done-the-spying-in-the-first-place dept

Former NSA and CIA boss Michael Hayden seems to be doing what Michael Hayden does best: spewing ridiculous fear-mongering statements in support of the intelligence community that assumes that anyone hearing/reading the quotes has a brain the size of a newt and is unable to put two and two together. The latest comes from an an interview he did with Der Spiegel, which kicks off with a bang, in which he talks up how the internet is all about freedom and love and how Snowden may have destroyed all that:

SPIEGEL: General Hayden, let's speak about the future of the Internet. Are you concerned?

Hayden: I am very concerned. This may be the single greatest, most destructive effect from the last 10 months of what Mr. Snowden has revealed. The Internet was begun in the United States and it is based on American technology, but it's a global activity. We in the United States feel it reflects free people, free ideas and free trade. There are countries that do not want the Internet as we know it. Russia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia. The Snowden revelations will now allow them to argue that we Americans want to keep a single, unitary Internet, because it just helps us spy. My fear is that the disclosures may have set a motion in progress that ends up really threatening the Internet as we know it.

Of course, that is the purest form of "blaming the messenger" as you might find. The whole line about how the internet "reflects free people, free ideas and free trade" would be a lot stronger of a point if the NSA hadn't undermined basically all of that with its spying activity. The problem isn't that Snowden revealed all that. It's that the NSA was doing everything it was doing in the first place. If doing these things undermine the idea that the internet is about "free people, free ideas and free trade," perhaps it shouldn't have been doing them. To blame Snowden for that seems... ridiculous.

SPIEGEL: It is not only the Russians and Chinese who use this argument, but also Americans like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. He recently described the US government as a threat to the Internet.

Hayden: The more people like him say that, the more it indirectly strengthens these other arguments. The Russians and the Chinese aren't saying this to protect themselves against alleged American espionage. They are saying this because they don't like the Internet's freedom of speech. Their goal is to divide the Internet up into national domains and create barriers in cyberspace. That's the last thing Zuckerberg would want to have happen.

Hayden is pretending that it's the Russians and the Chinese who kicked this off and made such statements. It is not. It was American technologists and entrepreneurs who recognize that when the NSA undermines their own products and purposely weakens key encryption standards that, yes, the NSA itself is a threat. Sure, the Russians and the Chinese have their own motives for slamming the US, but that's just Hayden trying to misdirect attention. The idea that Americans shouldn't accurately state that the NSA is a threat to the internet is bullshit. For someone who -- just seconds earlier -- was talking about our "freedoms" to then try to stifle Americans speaking out against the NSA by arguing that to do so "helps the enemy" is a level of depressing irony that only someone as tone deaf as Hayden can pull off.

SPIEGEL: On the one hand, the United States promotes the Internet as a tool of freedom. On the other hand, it now appears to many people to be a tool of surveillance.

Hayden: I am quite willing to have a discussion about what my country has or has not done, but it has to be based on facts. Let me first point out that the NSA doesn't monitor what every American is doing on the Internet. The NSA doesn't check who goes to what websites. But you've got these beliefs out there now.

Ha! Right after telling Zuckerberg and other good Americans to shut the hell up or it's helping our the Chinese and the Russians, he now says that he's willing to have a discussion about what the US has done? Really? Then there's the nice strawman, in which he pretends that what people are upset about is spying on what websites Americans visit (ignoring that he's talking to a German publication). He conveniently says nothing about tracking what non-Americans visit, nor the fact that it's not the website tracking that has people concerned, but rather hacking into various websites, tracking all kinds of confidential information.

SPIEGEL: It has been almost a year since Snowden left Hawaii. What has he changed?

Hayden: There are three or four effects. We do this, like other countries, for legitimate reasons, and it's harder to do this now with what has been made public, legitimate intelligence targets. It has become harder for American services to cooperate with friendly services with common goals. What foreign service would want to cooperate with us, given our absolute seeming inability to keep anything secret? And then it really harmed American industry, and that's why you have the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world and the Eric Schmidts of the world expressing great outrage. They aren't doing anything for the American government that other companies do not do for their host governments when they receive a lawful request, but they've been singled out, and they have been unfairly harmed by this. And finally, it has poisoned relationships between people who really are friends.

More bogus misdirection from Hayden. Schmidt and Zuckerberg are not upset about the situations in which they complied with lawful requests. They're upset about hacking into datacenters without permission. They're upset about doing "QUANTUM" inserts via bogus Facebook attacks. They're upset about weakening basic encryption. None of that has to do with lawful requests.

And, where they are upset about lawful requests, it's because of the NSA's bogus secrecy in which it refuses to let these tech companies show how many users are impacted. Once again, the problem there is the over-secrecy on the part of the NSA.

Finally, the idea that others are upset with the US because it "can't keep stuff secret" is equally bogus. No one has complained about that one bit. The Snowden leaks happened. No one seems to think that makes the next leak any more or less likely. Hayden is just, once again, trying to pin the blame of the NSA's own overreach back on Snowden.

SPIEGEL: The Germans are more sensitive when it comes to the issue of surveillance.

Hayden: I confess that we Americans underappreciated the impact of that not just on the chancellor but on the German population, and I mean this sincerely. Perhaps we underestimated the depth of feelings that the German people -- and again, not just the chancellor, but the German people, felt about this question of privacy, given their historical circumstances compared to our historical circumstances. At the Munich Security Conference it was clear to me that Germans regard privacy the way we Americans might regard freedom of speech or religion. Perhaps we did not appreciate that enough.

In which Hayden more or less admits that he thinks the First Amendment is important, but the Fourth? Not so much.

SPIEGEL: Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA is conducting similar operations against China. They monitor the head of state of China. They monitored a couple of universities. NSA is breaking into some Chinese companies. Isn't it hypocritical to complain and yet do similar things?

Hayden: It's only hypocritical if you had a peculiar and inaccurate way of looking at it at the beginning, and I have been quite public. I'd say, "Look, we spy. We're really good at it." There are two differences between us and the Chinese. We're actually more sophisticated, and we're self-limited. We don't do industrial espionage. I never claimed the moral high ground, you seem to be suggesting that we didn't spy. Let me play a joke on myself. I say, you know, if I had to talk to the Chinese about it, I'd go to Beijing, and I'd sit across the table, which I have done, and I would begin the conversation, "Look, you spy, we spy, but you steal the wrong stuff."

Note that he never explains why "industrial espionage" is so bad, while plain old espionage is fine. And, the evidence from the Huawei effort certainly suggested that the US was, in effect, doing industrial espionage anyway.

SPIEGEL: Give us a prediction about Snowden's future.

Hayden: I don't know. I think he asked for an extension of his visa. I think they will just kind of toss the ball up and keep juggling it for another year to see what happens.

SPIEGEL: Wouldn't it be better to bring him home...

Hayden: ... absolutely ...

SPIEGEL: ... and grant him clemency?

Hayden: No. God, no. No. No. This is the single greatest hemorrhaging of legitimate American secrets in the history of this country. It is incredibly damaging, and if we give him some sort of clemency or amnesty, all we're doing is teaching the next Edward Snowden that if you do this, make sure you steal a whole bunch of stuff.Edward Snowden has given this data to all these other folks. Glenn Greenwald has got it. Laura Poitras has got it. Bart Gellman has got it. DER SPIEGEL apparently has it. I mean, this stuff is coming out beyond the control of Edward Snowden.

Hayden still doesn't get it (or is purposely misleading). No one thinks Snowden should get clemency because he took "a whole bunch of stuff," but because he helped reveal a ton of very questionable activities by the US government, much of which may be unconstitutional and illegal. And that's the kind of thing that we should be encouraging, because as government employees, people take an oath to uphold the Constitution. That means when they see the government doing unconstitutional things, they should blow the whistle.

Michael Hayden may not like that -- especially as some of the revelations appear to implicate him and the decisions he made personally. But his answers here are flat out ridiculous, and they don't make Hayden look good. They make him look petty and vindictive, attacking a whistleblower who has exposed a bunch of things that Hayden helped set in motion. There's a lot more in the interview (including a lot of talk about spying on Germans), but these snippets here give you a sense of how Hayden approached this particular interview.

Filed Under: cia, ed snowden, internet, michael hayden, nsa, surveillance, threats

How Can We Tell Obama's NSA Reforms Are Weak? Michael Hayden Doesn't Have Much Of A Problem With Them

from the lots-of-hat,-very-few-cattle dept

President Obama detailed his NSA reforms last week and, as noted earlier, while they weren't quite as weak as some thought they might be, they were still pretty toothless. If you need any confirmation that the administration's idea of reform differs greatly from that of the NSA's opponents, you need look no further than uber-NSA-defender Michael Hayden's comments on Obama's speech.

Hayden's interview with Fox News Sunday featured this mild statement of support for Obama's reform package.

That first third [of Obama's speech] is the most robust defense of why we conduct intelligence and how we conduct intelligence that the president has made since he's been in office…

Now, when you get into the substance, what he changed, I think there's a clear pattern with both the domestic and the foreign piece. He's going to cut back on some capacities. He hopes that the margins, cutting into agility a bit, putting administrative burdens on, that could be risky. But it looks like he's willing to accept that risk in order to fundamentally preserve the programs.

As Hayden sees it, the reforms Obama announced do nothing to alter the essence of the NSA's programs. It's a haircut, at most. As the interview goes on, Hayden (and Chris Wallace) point out just how much the reform plan leaves untouched.

HAYDEN: [W]hat he's done here -- it's very interesting, Chris. And the president's language is very precise. He did not commit to pulling back on collection against foreign targets other than heads of state and heads of government. What he's talking about is the retention of that data and then how it's disseminated, and that part, he does say, we'll use the same standards we used for American persons[…]

WALLACE: I want to make it clear though as we wrap this up. I want to move to one other subject, that basically, there's a lot less that the president changes than what he does change. And I want to talk about that.

The government will still be able to issue national security letters of broad subpoena power. They will still be able to build backdoors into hardware and software of private companies to collect information…

HAYDEN: Absolutely. And let me add one more item to your list, about going after encryption. His commission said we should pull back on that. He never mentioned encryption once in his talk.

The main target continues to be the bulk records collection. This is a concern, and there were specific comments made about how it would be changed. But as Hayden and Wallace point out, there are several more areas where the NSA's surveillance techniques veer into legally questionable territory, but those aren't being addressed.

But the heart of the matter here is that this president will be very unlikely to support true reform of the agency. Obama has taken everything Bush left in place, surveillance-wise, and expanded it. Obama's speech, however, portrays this fact very differently.

I maintained a healthy skepticism toward our surveillance programs after I became President. I ordered that our programs be reviewed by my national security team and our lawyers, and in some cases I ordered changes in how we did business. We increased oversight and auditing, including new structures aimed at compliance. Improved rules were proposed by the government and approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. And we sought to keep Congress continually updated on these activities.

This claim isn't borne out by the evidence. Hayden states as much in his interview with Chris Wallace.

WALLACE: Let me get to both briefly to answer this, because the impression I get, maybe I'm wrong, General, isn't the basic surveillance structure that George W. Bush started after 9/11, isn't that still intact?

HAYDEN: Exactly. Of course -- no, that's exactly -- the president has embraced it.

Now, we're finally receiving some sort of concessions from a president who has been forced into a "conversation" he thought he'd never have. What Obama's doing now is attempting to regain public support while not seriously damaging relationships within the intelligence community. It's a political move more aimed at preserving his presidency (and legacy) than it is actual reform.

This lack of teeth is evidenced by Hayden's comments. His main concern (not that it's necessarily his problem anymore) is that the work "around the fringes" will result in more paperwork related to minimization and oversight (especially in terms of granting foreign citizens the same "protections" granted to Americans).

That the primary focus is the Section 215 programs is no surprise. The NSA obviously loves having it even if it fails to produce results. But it has also steered the conversation towards this program again and again, which leads to the speculation that it would be content with sacrificing it (not completely, of course, but operate it under further restrictions) in order to keep better, more useful (and potentially more privacy-violating) programs intact.

Filed Under: barack obama, michael hayden, nsa, nsa reforms

Former NSA Insiders Ask President Obama To Let Them Brief Him On Everything Wrong With The NSA

from the that-would-be-interesting dept

As pretty much everyone has been sending over, a bunch of former NSA and intelligence community insiders who later went on to become whistleblowers (many of whom were then attacked or even prosecuted for their whistleblowing) have written quite an astounding open letter to President Obama, requesting that he allow them to brief him on the problems of the NSA. The letter goes a bit overboard on the rhetoric (which actually pulls away from its important underlying message, unfortunately), but the key points are clear. From what they've seen, they know that not only have the NSA's efforts violated the 4th Amendment and been ineffective, they have actually made it more difficult for the NSA to do its job properly.

What we tell you in this Memorandum is merely the tip of the iceberg. We are ready – if you are – for an honest conversation. That NSA’s bulk collection is more hindrance than help in preventing terrorist attacks should be clear by now despite the false claims and dissembling.

Much of the letter repeats things that were reported in the past, specifically in Jane Meyer's incredible New Yorker story about Thomas Drake (who signed this letter) from nearly three years ago. It talks about THINTHREAD, the program developed by William Binney (also signed on to the letter) as a system for sorting through information without violating the 4th Amendment, or the NSA's mandate. As was detailed both in Meyer's article, and again in this letter, THINTHREAD, which was developed prior to 9/11 for just a few million dollars, had built in a bunch of privacy and anonymity controls, but would also ease information sharing when necessary and appropriate. However, rather than use it, the NSA director at the time, Michael Hayden, chose to go with a plan from some outside defense contractors, costing billions of dollars, which didn't bother protecting the 4th Amendment or people's privacy. When the folks behind THINTHREAD reported this level of waste to the Inspector General, they were investigated, leading to various bogus charges against Drake (almost all of which were eventually dropped).

In the letter, Drake also discusses how, as the NSA exec in charge of figuring out the beset technology to fight against terrorism, he tried to get THINTHREAD reinstated. He also was asked to prepare a briefing for then head of the House Intelligence Committee, Saxby Chambliss (who's now a staunch NSA defender on the Senate Intelligence Committee) about why 9/11 happened. His initial report noted that the NSA knew all about the hijackers, but failed to share the info. He wasn't allowed to give that report.

At a SIGINT Leadership Team meeting in February 2002, SIGINT chief Maureen Baginski directed me to lead a NSA Statement-for-the-Record effort for a closed-door hearing scheduled by Sen. Chambliss for early March to discuss what NSA knew about the 9/11 hijackers and their plotting before 9/11.

As indicated above, the highly embarrassing answer was that NSA knew a great deal, but had not shared what it knew outside of NSA.

After a couple of weeks Baginski rejected my draft team Statement for the Record report and removed me from the task. When I asked her why, she said there was a ‘data integrity problem’ (not further explained) with my draft Statement for the Record. I had come upon additional damaging revelations. For example, NSA had the content of telephone calls between AA-77 hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar in San Diego, CA, and the known al-Qaeda safe house switchboard in Yemen well before 9/11, and had not disseminated that information beyond NSA.

The letter goes on in great detail about the misleading claims by NSA defenders -- which we've discussed in the past -- that 9/11 could have been prevented if the bulk metadata collection was in use at the time.

It is unlikely that President Obama will respond to this in any manner. Over the past decade, the government worked hard to try to discredit Binner, Drake and the two other signatories, Edward Loomis and Kirk Wiebe (who both worked on THINTHREAD with Binney). Still, it's a powerful letter highlighting, yet again, how dysfunctional the NSA and the intelligence community are, how much of what they do seems to be driven by the corporate interests of defense contractors, and how little they seem to care about privacy or the Constitution.

Filed Under: barack obama, edward loomis, kirk wiebe, michael hayden, nsa, thinthread, thomas drake, william binney

Michael Hayden Calls Clemency For Snowden 'Outrageous,' Says It Sends 'Wrong Message' To Potential Whistleblowers

from the he-and-Peter-King-should-recuse-themselves-from-the-'debate' dept

We've already seen one reaction to the New York Times' call for clemency for whistleblower Ed Snowden. That one came courtesy of the terminally-perturbed Rep. Peter King, a man who cares so much for this country that he believes Snowden should be imprisoned for "appeasing terrorists." Calling Snowden a traitor only gains you so much political traction these days, but King's in no hurry to give up his antagonistic calls for Snowden's head, even when his assertions of "terrorist appeasement" clash with his own background as a terrorist appeaser.

Another talking head who can't seem to find a single good word to say about Snowden's leaks is former NSA boss Michael Hayden. His unwavering defense of the NSA would perhaps be admirable if it didn't suggest that his position at the Chertoff Group is dependent on an absurdly healthy surveillance state and a never ending "War on Terror."

[If you're not already familiar with the Chertoff Group, this blurb from its "About" page will give you an indication of how Hayden's defense of all things NSA is intertwined with his "private sector" income:

As Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff worked closely with America’s most experienced intelligence experts and security professionals. Now a select group of them have joined him to form The Chertoff Group.

The Chertoff Group provides business and government leaders with the same kind of high-level, strategic thinking and diligent execution that have kept the American homeland and its people safe since 9/11.

Michael Hayden is just one of the former government officials employed by the Chertoff Group. Many other members are just as connected to government security and intelligence agencies. VP and co-founder Chad Sweet served as Chief of Staff in the DHS. Principal Jayson Ahern? 33 years in the US Customs and Border Protection, a division of the DHS. Richard Falkenrath? Adjunct Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security at the Council on Foreign Relations. Jay Cohen? Chief of Naval Research. Michael Weatherford? Served as the Deputy Under Secretary for Cybersecurity with the DHS. Larry Castro? NSA Security Service Representative to the DHS.

The list goes on and on.]

So, this is why Hayden's statements on Snowden and the leaked documents resemble those of someone still employed by the NSA. That's because, for all intents and purposes, he pretty much is. His current employer's future prosperity cannot be disentangled from the NSA and other, equally-overreaching branches of the government.

Back to the point at hand. The New York Times strongly suggested Ed Snowden be given clemency for exposing the NSA's abuses and overreach. In an interview Thursday, Hayden had this to say in response.

[M]ichael Hayden, who served as NSA director and CIA director under the last administration, called the suggestion of clemency for Snowden “outrageous.” He predicted any efforts to grant Snowden clemency would be met with significant resistance from U.S. intelligence officials. He pointed to the campaign on behalf of Jonathan Pollard, an Israeli spy who stole secrets for the Jewish state in the early 1980s when he worked as an analyst for the U.S. Navy. “There is a lot of push to give clemency for Jonathan Pollard, who did far less damage than Snowden and the U.S. intelligence community has been adamant against clemency for Pollard,” Hayden said. He added that giving clemency to Snowden would send the message to future leakers: “If you are going to do this, make sure you steal enough secrets to bargain for clemency.”

The suggestion isn't that "outrageous." Snowden's leaks have prompted some normally-complacent politicians to reexamine the NSA. Several pieces of legislation have been introduced in response and the support for these crosses party lines. These excesses, which trace back even before the 9/11 attacks (but increased exponentially shortly thereafter) are finally in "danger" of being reined in. The NSA, and Michael Hayden, have always defended the agency's actions by pointing at the "rigorous oversight" of the House and Senate. The agency's defenders resent the fact that its previously (deliberately) underinformed "oversight" is now privy to the ugly reality of the NSA's programs and is attempting to (finally) curb its power.

Hayden points to Pollard's situation as being comparable when it really isn't. Pollard sold secrets to another country. Snowden gave his documents to the public. Most people can distinguish a spy from a whistleblower. Hayden, apparently, is not one of them. He follows this up by claiming granting Snowden clemency would just encourage whistleblowers to grab massive amounts of documents as bargaining chips. That claim is similarly weak.

First and foremost, this administration has sent a clear message to whistleblowers over the last five years: keep your head down and shut up. The Obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other administrations combined. Anyone hoping to blow the whistle under this administration might as well grab all the documents they can because they're going to end up being prosecuted anyway, no matter what "safeguards" are built into the system. The system sets up whistleblowers to fail. Taking the "proper" path just gets you rerouted, stonewalled and finally, flushed from the system.

Hayden believes we can't show Snowden any sort of mercy without encouraging others to follow in his footsteps. He may think this hardline is a necessity to ensure the nation's security, but what it really says is that those defending this agency (and others operating in the same sphere) know there's a whole lot of deep, dark secrets they'd rather not share with the American public. This is a problem with the NSA, not a problem with Snowden or the agency's many detractors. If the agency (through mouthpieces like Gen. Keith "I can't think of another way to do this" Alexander) can't find a way to protect the nation without carving huge holes out of the public's civil liberties, it's only for a lack of trying. It's never had to find another way because it was given free rein to accomplish its goals by uninformed oversight, broad executive orders and a compliant court system.

Granting Snowden clemency would be a step in the direction of contrition -- a small admission of the government's betrayal of its constituents. If the legislators working to rein in the agency truly want to change the system, they need to persuade the executive branch to drop its plans to shoot the messenger. The problems are of the NSA's own making. Punishing the man who finally said, "this is enough" will just allow the "business as usual brigade" to increase the speed at which the surveillance state status quo is restored.

Filed Under: clemency, ed snowden, michael hayden, nsa, surveillance, whistleblowers
Companies: chertoff group

Former NSA Chief Says Administration Should Ignore The Public And Leave The NSA Alone

from the the-public-is-too-stupid-to-know-what's-good-for-it dept

Former NSA head Michael Hayden's (presumably unpaid) goodwill tour on behalf of the Agency-Most-Likely-To-Go-Rogue continues. Following up a memorable interview with CBS News in which he called Ed Snowden a "traitor" and ignored questions about the legality of installing exploits in computer hardware and pushing for adoption of compromised encryption methods, Hayden stopped in to speak with USA Today.

In this particular spin attempt, Hayden spoke up against the recommendations of the administration's task force charged with reviewing the NSA's activities and programs. Hayden's opposition to the recommendations is far less surprising than the recommendations themselves, which were surprisingly substantive.

Hayden first goes wrong when explaining why the NSA shouldn't have to change.

"Right now, since there have been no abuses and almost all the court decisions on this program have held that it's constitutional, I really don't know what problem we're trying to solve by changing how we do this," he said, saying the debate was sparked after "somebody stirred up the crowd." That's a reference to Snowden, who was granted asylum in Russia.

Saying there have been "no abuses" is clearly untrue. The agency itself has admitted to several abuses (although the NSA frames them as errors, rather than deliberate misuse of the system) and others have leaked information on others the agency hasn't been particularly forthcoming about. (LOVEINT, anyone?)

Hayden also applies a bit of misdirection by narrowing the focus to the Section 215 program. There are many other programs that are at least as dubious in terms of constitutionality. But this one is the safe pick -- the one that relies on the Third Party Doctrine and the fact that it's been almost impossible until just recently for anyone to be granted standing to bring a lawsuit against the government for civil liberties violations committed by the agency.

Lastly, trying to dismiss Snowden as a rabble rouser makes the implicit suggestion that everything the NSA does is perfectly normal, legal and no big deal. If it "looks bad," it's only because a former analyst somehow made it look bad by exposing the inner workings. In other words, the problem isn't the agency's programs -- it's the easily-ired public.

And as far as dealing with the public's reaction to these leaks goes, Hayden's suggestion to the administration is to ignore the outrage and do what's "right" (in the eyes of the agency).

"Here I think it's going to require some political courage," said Hayden, 68, a retired Air Force general whose service in the nation's top intelligence posts gives him particular standing. "Frankly, the president is going to have to use some of his personal and political capital to keep doing these things..."

"President Obama now has the burden of simply doing the right thing […] And I think some of the right things with regard to the commission's recommendations are not the popular things. They may not poll real well right now. They'll poll damn well after the next attack, all right?"

According to Hayden, the NSA is right and the public is wrong, even if it doesn't realize it. Obama and those that follow him will just need to trust the agency and not worry too much about the public's opinion. Hayden says the government needs to make the tough decision to protect the surveillance status quo. If the administration chooses to roll things back, and another 9/11 occurs because of this (this is very specious reasoning), rescinding these restrictions will suddenly poll extremely well, at least according to Hayden.

But that's an assumption that only the NSA defenders make. Somehow they've arrived at the conclusion that the public will always clamor for increased security and fewer civil liberties in the wake of a terrorist attack. This is based on the prevailing perception of the public's attitude shortly after the 9/11 attacks. But the recent attack in Boston didn't result in citizens asking for more cameras, cops and pervasive surveillance. In fact, many Bostonians were shocked that the city was so quick to effectively put the city under martial law and perform house-to-house searches for the one of the suspects. The only people asking for more government intrusion were government officials and law enforcement heads already prone to pushing for greater power and expanded surveillance.

Moving on from these baffling assertions, Hayden then rejects nearly every other recommendation from the presidential commission. He claims Section 215 data would be more "secure" and "private" if stored by the NSA, rather than held by private companies. He also stated the agency shouldn't be forced to seek court orders before querying the collection, saying this would "reverse" changes made post-9/11. This, of course, ignores the fact that the agency had to do exactly that (court orders for searching the database) after it screwed up the Section 215 program so thoroughly FISC judge Reggie Walton nearly shut the whole thing down.

Hayden, like many NSA defenders, increasingly appears to be living in an alternate reality where the leaks and documents freed via lawsuits against the government haven't exposed a great deal of agency abuse and misuse of its power and data collections. Each successive revelation furthers the notion that the agency has used several decades of darkness to insert itself into worldwide communications in ways that no one charged with oversight would have reasonably imagined. This makes all the claims about legality and protecting the country ring hollow. The agency's capabilities far surpass what's necessary to achieve its aims, and exceed what any rational person would believe to be protected by law.

Filed Under: michael hayden, nsa, public opinion, review panel, surveillance, task force

Former NSA Chief Claims Snowden Has 'Infinitely Weakened' Agency; Ignores Questions About Legality Of Backdoors And Exploits

from the almost-seems-like-he's-still-on-the-payroll dept

Former NSA head Michael Hayden continues to defend the agency from criticism even though he really doesn't have any stake in the outcome. Maybe an agency man is always an agency man, even after they've left for more lucrative private-sector positions. Whatever the reason, Hayden hasn't backed down on any of his assertions, even as more evidence mounts that the agency has seriously overstepped its boundaries.

Hayden was interviewed this past weekend on Face the Nation. We covered his claim that Snowden is a "traitor" earlier, a claim based on the press' misrepresentation of Snowden's letters to Germany and Brazil seeking asylum. [Full transcript here, needlessly marred by an autoplay video.] The usual talking points were deployed, but despite going head-to-head with an interviewer, Hayden still cherry-picked what he would actually respond to.

Interviewer Major Garrett kicked things off by discussing the two recent court decisions on the Section 215 collections, which came to opposite conclusions on the constitutionality of bulk metadata collection. Garrett asked Hayden if relying on a 35-year-old court decision (Smith v. Maryland) is appropriate, considering how much communication technology has changed. According to Hayden, there's no question about whether that case is relevant. It's simply what gives the NSA the permission to gather these records. The NSA (along with the FBI and countless law enforcement agencies) has used this ruling for more than three decades and it's not going to stop now, no matter what one federal judge has said.

Judge Leon ignored precedent. He ignored Smith v. Maryland, the case that you cited. He ignored that 15 FISA judges on over 30 occasions have upheld the lawfulness of this. And then judge Pauley, in the Southern District of New York, within a week issued another warning saying -- or another decision -- saying that this was inherently constitutional. And judge Pauley relied on precedent. Judge Leon relied on exclamation points throughout his judgment, not precedent.

Pauley may have relied on precedent (as far as Smith v. Maryland was written), but he also relied wholly on the government's trustworthiness and wrote a largely unskeptical opinion that embraced every half-truth or flat-out lie delivered by the NSA in defense of the Section 215 program.

Next, Garrett asked this question about some of the more "gray area" collections the NSA performs:

Now it's also been disclosed through Edward Snowden's leaks that the NSA tapped fiber optic cables abroad to siphon data, circumvented or cracked encryption codes and covertly inserted weaknesses into coding mechanisms. Now, you're telling me all of that is done in accordance with the Constitution and raises no fourth amendment concerns?

Hayden chose to ignore the majority of the question in order to defend the agency.

As long as it's done overseas against people not protected by the fourth amendment to the Constitution, Major, the Constitution doesn't enter into the conversation.

Using overseas cables to grab domestic communications is the agency's way of circumventing the Constitution to grab what it believes it should rightfully have access to. According to the agency, it's perfectly legal to spy on every other citizen in the world. After all, if they wanted privacy, they should have become American citizens, right?

But Hayden completely sidesteps Garrett's question about backdoors, exploits and compromised hardware and broken encryption. The agency can't defend these actions in terms of legality or constitutionality, so its defenders just ignore the questions, or talk around them. Phrases like "fighting terrorism" or "making the US more secure" are offered up instead of actual answers.

Hayden went on to claim Snowden's leaks have "infinitely weakened" the NSA. Without a doubt, the leaks have had a negative effect on the agency's intelligence gathering. But it's had a much larger impact on the agency's reputation -- and the US government's. The NSA has so thoroughly compromised encryption, computer hardware and communications technology that a majority of what has been leaked will have a very minimal effect on the NSA's intelligence gathering. Important, high-value targets aren't gliding across the visible surface of the internet or utilizing static IP addresses and phone numbers. Everyone knows about the Section 215 program now, but it's hardly resulted in millions of people dropping their phone service.

The fears the agency claims to have about exposed methods are just a cheap ploy to gather support and play the victim. The deeper, nastier stuff the agency does has yet to be exposed. We got a taste of the NSA's capabilities for installing persistent exploits in consumer and enterprise-level electronics -- and that info, as frightening as it was (i.e., iOS devices can be compromised with a 100% success rate) was a half-decade out of date. What it can do now is certainly even more incredible.

If anything, Snowden's revelations to this point will have done little more than help excise outdated surveillance programs that were long on data collection but short on value. The NSA (and its former leaders) should show a bit of appreciation for this inadvertent push towards working smarter, not harder.

Filed Under: ed snowden, michael hayden, nsa, surveillance

This Clip Of Former NSA Boss Michael Hayden Calling Snowden A Traitor Is Brought To You By Microsoft

from the making-the-worst-of-your-advertising-dollars dept

Former NSA head Michael Hayden hasn't been shy about offering his opinion on the Snowden leaks. Not being in a position where his opinion might damage the government's reputation has certainly encouraged him to speak his mind. This has led to some truly bizarre assertions from the former spy-in-chief, including his belief that Snowden is headed down the path to alcoholism, his supporters are mainly internet shut-ins and that state secrecy is just like personal privacy and worthy of the same protections.

Over the weekend, Hayden appeared on Face the Nation, where he defended the NSA's activities and further derided Ed Snowden. [Full transcript here with a bundled autoplay video for no conceivable reason.] Hayden has apparently "upgraded" his views on Snowden (although, I'm more inclined to believe they've never changed) based on recent developments.

HAYDEN: Well, I used to say he was a defector, you know, and there's a history of defection -- actually, there's a history of defection to Moscow, and that he seems to be part of that stream. I'm now, kind of, drifting in the direction of perhaps more harsh language.
GARRETT: Such as?
HAYDEN: Such as "traitor."

Hayden's "drift" is based on a misconception that spread throughout most of the media in recent weeks.

HAYDEN: Well, in the past two weeks, in open letters to the German and the Brazilian government, he has offered to reveal more American secrets to those governments in return for something -- and in return was for asylum. I think there's an English word that describes selling American secrets to another government, and I do think it's treason.

Except that's not what Snowden actually said. That's just how it was portrayed, but Snowden never made a conditional offer. He was simply looking for permanent asylum and offering nothing in exchange -- just presenting the details of his current situation. The press took this and presented it as Snowden offering to help spy on the US or divulge secret documents in exchange for asylum. Hayden bought it. No doubt the NSA believes it as well. But Hayden cites this specifically as why he believes Snowden is a traitor -- and it's for something Snowden not only hasn't done, but for something he never even offered to do.

Making this ridiculous assertion even more ridiculous is the odd synergy of CBS and its sponsorship deals. The official CBS News Twitter account offered up a clip of Hayden calling Snowden a traitor as a "Face the Nation Moment" -- sponsored by none other than Microsoft.

Ex-NSA chief Hayden on whether Edward Snowden is a “traitor” in this @FacetheNation moment sponsored by @Windows: http://t.co/MzfytHHPyC

— CBS News (@CBSNews) December 30, 2013

I'm sure this is the last (mostly inadvertent) tie-in the software giant hoped to see rolling out to CBS News' 2.8 million followers. Microsoft has tried hard to distance itself from the image of "willing surveillance participant" in the past several weeks. It has issued statements about valuing customer privacy even as news has surfaced about it handing over pre-encryption access to the agency for several of its most popular products, as well as newer acquisitions like Skype.

But the way CBS pitches it, the message comes across as Microsoft supporting Hayden's claims that Snowden is a traitor. Unfortunate to be sure, but not entirely unbelievable.

Filed Under: ed snowden, michael hayden, nsa, sponsorship, surveillance, traitor
Companies: cbs, microsoft