Tag Archives: Intelligence

Former CIA Analyst Slams Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats Over Bogus Claim That CIA Spied on Congress

Below is a letter that my colleague Fred Fleitz wrote in response to a May 8 letter to the CIA signed by Senate Intelligence Committee members Ron Wyden (D-OR), Mark Heinrich (D-NM) and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) demanding an apology from CIA Director John Brennan for the Agency conducting an unauthorized and illegal search of Senate files during an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Democratic staff of the CIA enhanced interrogation program.  This led to a firestorm of criticism last year that CIA had spied on Congress and tried to sabotage the committee’s investigation.

Fleitz explained in an in-depth February 2, 2015 National Review article, Who Oversees the Overseers, that the charges of CIA misconduct in this case are utterly false and the real misconduct was committed by the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Democratic staff.  He noted that this misconduct included removing classified documents from a CIA building without authorization, smuggling a camera into the CIA, and hacking a CIA computer system to access documents that the staff were not authorized to read that were protected by attorney-client and executive privileges.

In his letter to the three Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Fleitz calls them out for repeating this false charge against the CIA and calls on them to repair the damage done to the trust between Congress and the U.S. Intelligence Community by investigating the staff misconduct and holding them accountable.

It is unfortunate that these three senators are trying to revive this false story by writing to CIA and circulating their letter to the news media.  Hopefully Fleitz’s letter will help defuse this story by providing the press and members of Congress a more accurate account of this affair and the damage it did to U.S. intelligence oversight.
CIA Letter

Letter attachment:  “Who Oversees the Overseers?”  

Who Oversees the Overseers?

Many in Congress and the news media were surprised by a recent CIA Accountability Board report that cleared CIA personnel of wrongdoing in last year’s spying-on-Congress scandal, a finding that contradicted a July 2014 report by the CIA Inspector General. However, a close reading of both reports — which were released in unclassified form last month — indicates that the fault in this affair lies almost entirely with the Senate Intelligence Committee, whose staff appeared to have engaged in serious misconduct, including trying to smuggle a camera into a secure CIA facility, hacking into a CIA computer system, and stealing and misusing classified documents subject to attorney-client privilege.

The CIA found itself in hot water last March after Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), then-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, alleged that the agency had illegally monitored and removed information from computers being used by committee staff members investigating the CIA’s enhanced-interrogation program, a program its critics claim included torture. This $50 million, six-year investigation had produced a controversial 6,000-page classified report in December 2012. A declassified version of the report’s 499-page executive summary, along with additional views by Democratic and Republican members, was released in December 2014. Copies of these documents can be found here.

In response to Feinstein’s charges, CIA officials claimed they had done nothing wrong and were trying to address possible misconduct by Senate staff members. As I explained in an NRO article last August, the computers in question were not Senate computers; they were CIA computers in a facility that the CIA made available to the committee staff for the enhanced-interrogation investigation.

The dispute was triggered by the use in the investigation of restricted CIA documents that the committee staff was not supposed to have, and the staff’s removal of the documents from the CIA facility in violation of an agreement between the committee and the agency.

Not only did Democratic committee staffers bring these documents to the committee’s offices without telling CIA officials, they also failed to provide copies to their Republican counterparts, a violation of the committee’s rule that any classified materials provided to the committee by the executive branch must be shared with both sides.

The documents in question, known as the Panetta Review, constitute a draft account of the enhanced-interrogation program that reportedly differs from the agency’s official account. After CIA officials realized the Democratic staff had these documents, the agency audited the staff computers and made a referral to the Justice Department. I wrote in my August NRO article that this was a mistake by CIA director John Brennan that unnecessarily infuriated Feinstein, who had been one of the agency’s strongest Democratic supporters. Brennan should have worked out this matter with Feinstein and should not have made criminal referrals against Senate staff members.

Feinstein’s denunciation of the CIA over the computer monitoring led to an uproar in Congress, including claims by Democratic members and some Republicans that the CIA was out of control — that it had violated the Fourth Amendment by conducting an illegal search and seizure, and had violated the separation of powers. Feinstein also asserted that the CIA was trying to interfere with the enhanced-interrogation investigation and intimidate the investigators.

Feinstein jumped on the findings of the classified report from the CIA Inspector General issued last July, which concluded that CIA personnel improperly accessed agency computers being used by the Senate staff, that they accessed e-mails written by committee staff members on the agency computer system, and that the referral of Senate staffers to the Justice Department was inappropriate. Brennan apologized to Feinstein in response to the IG report. A declassified version of this report was released last month.

Although Feinstein maintained that the IG report supported her charges about agency misconduct, it left many questions unanswered. For example, the report looked at the conduct of CIA personnel only and said “the activities of SSCI [Senate Select Committee on Intelligence] staff members were deliberately excluded from the investigation.” The IG report mentioned uncertainty about the ground rules on access to the CIA computers and allegations by CIA officials that the Intelligence Committee’s Democratic staff exploited a software vulnerability to bring CIA documents that they were not cleared to view across a computer-system firewall.

A second, more in-depth investigation by the CIA Accountability Board was begun in response to the IG report. This five-member board was headed by former Democratic Senator Evan Bayh. A declassified version of that report was also issued last month.

Although the AB rejected many of the IG’s findings and cleared the CIA employees in question of wrongdoing, I believe both reports suggest six major conclusions as to what really happened in the so-called spying-on-Congress scandal.

1. The CIA assumed responsibility for the security of the computers used in the investigation only after the Intelligence Committee refused to do so.

The AB found that the committee and the CIA had sparred over the ground rules on access to the CIA computers and were forced to rely on oral, ad hoc agreements because they could not reach a formal agreement. The committee demanded a stand-alone system that only committee and CIA IT personnel could access. The agency refused to agree to this. The committee also said it would own any documents provided to the investigation by the CIA, a demand the agency rejected.

Both the IG and the AB said the CIA was in charge of security for the computers. Both reports noted that the Senate staffers were reminded of this every time they logged on to these computers, because logging on required them to click an “OK” button acknowledging a banner warning that read:

This is a U.S. Government computer system and shall be used for authorized purposes only. All information on this system is the property of the U.S. Government and may not be accessed without prior authorization. Your use of this system may be monitored and you have no expectation of privacy. Violation of system security regulations and guidance may result in discipline by the Agency, and violators may be criminally prosecuted.

A memo by the agency’s general counsel released with the IG report revealed that the Intelligence Committee failed to take any steps to secure the computers, while also objecting to the CIA’s doing so. An exasperated general counsel wrote:

SSCI has never attempted any sort of security protocols or monitoring over the system. To my knowledge, no SSCI security officer has ever accessed the system or requested permission to do so. If SSCI is right in claiming that CIA lacks the authority to maintain security of the system and its compliance with Agency regulations and applicable law, then we have created a system in which no one has that responsibility. Even the Director lacks the authority to establish a system for maintaining extremely sensitive, classified documents and exempt it from all security monitoring and compliance.

2. The Senate Intelligence Committee knew about the CIA’s computer monitoring.

The AB found that the Intelligence Committee and its staff knew the agency had full access to the computers in question and was monitoring them. In fact, the AB report said committee staff members on several occasions asked the CIA’s IT staff to scan the committee’s side of the computer system to find documents they had lost track of.

The AB also cited an incident in 2010 in which the CIA removed 926 documents accidentally placed in a committee-staff database because they had not been screened for executive privilege. According to the board, this incident reflected an agency and White House view, known to the Intelligence Committee, that the Senate side of the CIA computer system “was non-inviolable.”

The CIA eventually returned most of these documents after the White House reviewed them for executive privilege, but it withheld several subject to the privilege. Feinstein objected at the time to the removal of the documents, and the White House acknowledged her concerns, said the documents should not have been removed without notice, and said no such removals would occur in the future. However, neither the CIA nor the White House agreed that the CIA could not monitor the computers for security or privilege reasons.

This incident is important because it demonstrates that despite Feinstein’s accusations that the CIA violated the Fourth Amendment and various laws, she and the committee staff had been aware of CIA monitoring of the computers and tolerated this since at least 2010. If Feinstein actually believed this arrangement was illegal, she should have ordered her staff years earlier to cease using these computers until formal access rules could be negotiated.

3. CIA computer monitoring uncovered misconduct by Intelligence Committee staff members.

According to the Accountability Board report, agency computer monitoring discovered in 2010 that a Senate staff member had brought a camera into a secure room in the CIA facility being used for the enhanced-interrogation investigation. There is blacked-out text in the report that appears to indicate that computer monitoring had detected another security violation by this individual in 2009. According to the report, this person was removed from the SSCI team after these incidents were reported to the CIA Counterintelligence Center’s Counterespionage Group.

The AB also reported that computer monitoring detected in 2010 that a committee staff member tried to bypass a computer-system restriction in order to print a sensitive document after the CIA refused to provide a printed copy. The CIA responded to this incident by reminding the staff to respect the security of sensitive documents.

4. An Intelligence Committee staff member hacked the CIA computer system.

The CIA’s strong reaction to the acquisition of the Panetta Review documents by the Senate staff was due to evidence indicating that in 2010 a committee staff member had exploited a software vulnerability “numerous times” to move 166 classified documents from the CIA side of a firewall to the Intelligence Committee’s side. This staff member later shared these documents with four other staffers.

On January 9, 2014, the CIA Office of Security began an investigation of the alleged hacking. Brennan issued a stand-down order to the investigators on January 14. (As I discuss below, some Office of Security officers did not get this order for several days and continued the investigation.) On January 15, Brennan briefed Feinstein on the alleged hack by the committee staff member and the agency’s investigation of this matter. Brennan invited the committee to conduct a joint forensic investigation of the hack, but it declined to participate.

5. Misuse and theft of classified, attorney-client-privilege documents.

As bad as the above alleged misconduct by the Senate staffers appears, I believe the theft and use of classified documents subject to attorney-client privilege is a far more serious matter.

Both the IG and the AB reports said the Panetta Review documents were privileged. According to the IG report and a December 2014 CIA response to a Freedom of Information Act request, each of these documents was stamped “Deliberative Process Privileged Document” at the top and had this language on the first page:

This document also contains material protected by the attorney-client and attorney work-product privileges. Furthermore, this document constitutes deliberative work product, protected by the deliberative-process privilege, and is not a final, conclusive, complete, or comprehensive analysis of DRG-RDI [CIA Director’s Review Group for Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation] or CIA.

I spoke about this with an experienced Washington attorney who told me that when, during a lawsuit or investigation, a lawyer comes across a document that belongs to the other side and is marked “Deliberative Process Privileged Document” or “protected by the attorney-client and attorney work-product privileges,” he or she cannot use the document and is ethically bound to immediately return it to the other side.

In this case, the Intelligence Committee’s Democratic staff members did not inform the CIA when they acquired these documents in 2010, removed them from a CIA facility in violation of the committee’s agreement with the agency — an action that Republican members of the committee claim amounts to theft — and used the documents as part of their investigation.

By contrast, the committee’s Republican members, who did not learn about the Panetta Review documents until January 2014, said in their “additional views” appendix to the enhanced-interrogation report that at no time had a Republican member of the committee or staff member handled these documents or reviewed their contents because of the CIA’s repeated assertions of privilege.

The Democratic staff member who headed the enhanced-interrogation investigation in 2010 was Alissa Starzak, an attorney. She was named last summer to be the next general counsel of the U.S. Army but did not receive a confirmation vote before the end of the last Congress. Some Republican senators have called for Starzak’s nomination to be defeated or pulled because of her involvement in the use and theft of the Panetta Review documents.

I believe this is a scandal that goes beyond Starzak, because the Intelligence Committee’s Democratic members are experienced legislators who obviously understand what attorney-client privilege and deliberative work process mean. What did these Democratic senators know about CIA documents used in the enhanced-interrogation investigation that were covered by attorney-client privilege, and when did they know it?

6. The CIA made mistakes but did not try to interfere with the investigation.

Two of the most damning accusations made against the CIA in this affair are that CIA officers read the e-mails of Senate Intelligence Committee staffers and that the CIA tried to interfere with the committee’s investigation.

Both the reports found that CIA Security’s access to the committee staff’s classified e-mails occurred because it took several days for some CIA Security personnel to be told about the stand-down order by Brennan. The Accountability Board faulted the CIA over this but said it occurred through a communications mix-up and was limited to five e-mails that were not related to the substance of the committee’s investigation.

Neither the IG nor the AB concluded that CIA officials were trying to interfere with the committee’s investigation. The board report noted that CIA management tried to limit its investigation to how the committee staffers accessed the Panetta Review documents and tried to avoid conducting a “fishing expedition” in the committee’s files.

Although the IG faulted CIA personnel for improperly accessing the Democratic staff’s shared drive on the computer network, the AB disagreed, noting that this was an extraordinary situation with no easy answers, because of the CIA’s interest in ensuring the security of a computer system containing a substantial amount of sensitive material, while also trying to safeguard the prerogatives of the Senate.

Conclusion

The lack of clear ground rules on security and access to the CIA computers virtually ensured blowback for the agency. But the controversy was not caused by these uncertainties. It resulted from blatant disregard of established security regulations and ethical practices by the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Democratic staff members. The controversy was made worse when, instead of holding the committee staff accountable, Senator Feinstein leveled false charges against the CIA.

Feinstein’s assertion that the CIA spied on Congress in violation of the Fourth Amendment was especially damaging to the public’s confidence in the CIA and the U.S. intelligence community at large in the aftermath of the Snowden leaks. I believe this irresponsible charge — which Feinstein knew was false — is a stain on her career as a public servant.

The enhanced-interrogation report hurt congressional oversight of intelligence because the report was partisan, was poorly written, and failed to include interviews. However, I believe the bogus CIA-spying-on-Congress scandal will cause more serious and long-lasting damage because of what this affair says about the ethics, trustworthiness, and honesty of the congressional overseers of intelligence.

If the intelligence committees will not police themselves and hold their members and staffs to high ethical standards, intelligence oversight will suffer because intelligence agencies and personnel will scale back their cooperation. Such a situation could damage U.S. national security by distracting intelligence agencies from their mission and further demoralizing intelligence officers.

The lesson from this story is clear. Congress needs to find a way to oversee its intelligence overseers.

Senate Dems Politicize Intelligence Oversight

Aided by numerous leaks by Democratic members and staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, mainstream media are planning a nostalgic trip back to the Bush-bashing days of the 2000s with today’s release of declassified parts of a Senate report on the Bush-era enhanced-interrogation program, a CIA counterterrorism initiative that its critics claim included torture.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has released a 499-page declassified executive summary of the still-classified 6,700-page report. Declassified versions of a CIA rebuttal and additional Democratic and Republican views reportedly also will be released today.

This investigation marks a new low for congressional oversight of intelligence because of its naked partisanship and refusal to consider all relevant evidence. The report was written entirely by the committee’s Democratic staff. The investigation included no interviews — it is based only on a review of documents. Because the report lacks Republican co-authors or interviews of people who ran the enhanced-interrogation program, it has no credibility and amounts to a five-year, $50 million Democrat cherry-picking exercise to investigate the Bush administration.

This didn’t have to happen. There are congressional Republicans who have problems with the enhanced-interrogation program and wanted an honest, bipartisan assessment of it. This is why all but one Republican member of the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to approve the probe in March 2009. However, all of the committee’s GOP members withdrew their support six months later when it became clear that this inquiry would be a witch hunt against the Bush administration and the CIA and not a balanced, bipartisan investigation.

And what will this report tell us that we don’t already know? New details about enhanced-interrogation techniques and Democratic objections to them won’t be news. According to press leaks about the report, it will claim the program was poorly run and that CIA personnel exceeded their legal authority in running the program and lied about it to Congress and the White House. Such charges are hard to take seriously, because CIA officers accused in the report of improper and illegal activities were not interviewed by the committee’s staff investigators. Most of them were not even allowed to read the report — that privilege was limited to former CIA directors and deputy directors, and they were forced to sign non-disclosure agreements by the committee before they were given access to it.

The report will dispute that the enhanced-interrogation program produced useful intelligence. However, such a finding isn’t credible, since it is written by Democratic staff and reflects a partisan position long held by Democrats.

There are many former Bush-administration and CIA officials who claim that the enhanced-interrogation program was effective, provided crucial counterterrorism intelligence, and was conducted entirely within the law. These officials also claim that Democratic members of the House and Senate intelligence committees were fully briefed on the program and supported it until it became politically useful to condemn it. Former CIA official Jose Rodriguez, who ran the enhanced-interrogation program, recently wrote a compelling Washington Post op-ed explaining these points.

Do these officials, including the CIA officers who ran the enhanced-interrogation program — former CIA director Michael Hayden, former deputy CIA director John McLaughlin, former CIA director George Tenet, former CIA general counsel John Rizzo, and others — have so little credibility that it was not worth interviewing them? How could a fair and thorough investigation of such a controversial intelligence program possibly be conducted without interviewing the key people who worked on or oversaw it?

While the decision by the Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats to ignore the views of CIA officials who knew the enhanced-interrogation program best and to refuse to interview them as part of the inquiry may seem odd, this makes perfect sense for an investigation that was only looking for information that fit its predetermined conclusions. They did not want to spoil their pre-cooked report with unpleasant facts and dissenting views from CIA officials.

The Obama administration and congressional Republicans have raised concerns that the report being pushed by Democratic committee members will damage U.S. national security and could endanger American lives.

Revealing more details about the program will hurt American relations with key allies and could discourage them from sharing intelligence with the United States or cooperating with us on risky intelligence or military operations in the future.

Fear that the report also could lead to violence against Americans or to terrorist attacks led Secretary of State John Kerry to request that its release be delayed. American military personnel overseas and U.S. embassies and consulates have been warned to be on guard for “potential violence” because of the release of the report. House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers (R., Mich.) warned on Sunday that the report would be used as a propaganda tool by terrorist groups to incite anti-American unrest and would lead to “violence and deaths.”

So given all these issues with the report, why did Democrat on the committee push it? Why is Senator Feinstein determined to issue it before she loses her Intelligence Committee chairmanship next month?

While Feinstein has long been a supporter of the report, it was actually driven by the committee’s three far-left members: Senators Ron Wyden (D., Ore.), Mark Udall (D., Col.), and Martin Heinrich (D., N.M.). Not surprisingly, these three senators are also the only ones on the committee who have aggressively criticized NSA in the light of Edward Snowden’s leaks and tried to shut down crucial NSA collection programs. There have been calls by left-wing groups for Udall, who was defeated in his reelection bid, to leak information about NSA programs and the entire text of the enhanced-interrogations report before he leaves office, using his Senate immunity under the speech and debate clause.

Feinstein appears to have gone along with efforts by these three senators to radicalize the enhanced-interrogation investigation. She probably decided to release it because of pressure from liberal groups and Democratic contributors. Feinstein knows that if the declassified portion of the report had not been released this month, it never would have been released.

By issuing such a blatantly partisan report on events that took place ten years ago or more, the enhanced-interrogation report will seriously damage the credibility of congressional oversight of intelligence and the credibility of Senate Democrats — especially Feinstein — on national security. The myth that the Senate Intelligence Committee’s oversight of intelligence is non-political has been decisively disproved. It will be a long time before Senate Democrats and the Senate intelligence committee will regain the trust of U.S. intelligence officers and the American people on intelligence matters, owing to the politicized Democratic report on the enhanced-interrogation program.

Intel Brief: Enhanced interrogation methods and political gain

Center for Security Policy Staff and Senior Fellows bring a wealth of skills and experience to Center programs and initiatives. Fred Fleitz and Clare Lopez, have applied their expertise to a continuing video project. Fleitz served in U.S. national security positions for 25 years at the CIA, DIA, Department of State and the House Intelligence Committee staff, while Lopez is a former 20-year career operations officer with the CIA, and a professor at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies.

In this brief they cover enhanced interrogation methods and political gains, as well as allegations of CIA spying on Congress.

CIA Director Brennan Should Resign

CIA director John Brennan did the right thing Thursday in apologizing to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) for CIA monitoring of computers being used by the committee’s staff for an investigation of the Bush-era enhanced-interrogation program. Nevertheless, heads must roll at the CIA over this scandal, including Brennan’s.

While what the CIA did was not illegal, its actions were the result of reckless decisions by agency officials in response to misconduct by SSCI staff members. The CIA should have handled this matter by raising it quietly with SSCI chairwoman Dianne Feinstein. The agency didn’t need another scandal at a time when all U.S. intelligence agencies were under fire in the aftermath of the Snowden leaks.

Brennan’s apology has been seized upon by members of Congress to make hysterical claims that the CIA spied on U.S. senators and is out of control. News reports of this controversy have been wildly inaccurate and have accused the CIA of spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee because the agency was opposed to the SSCI’s enhanced-interrogation investigation.

Unfortunately, this scandal is distracting attention from a more serious issue: how the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2014 was still working on a partisan $50 million probe of the Bush administration. The news media and Congress should be focused on the fact that this is a pointless and wasteful investigation and not on a scandal that the CIA inflicted on itself.

Contrary to media reports that Brennan apologized for CIA spying on “the Hill” or U.S. senators, this controversy concerns CIA personnel monitoring CIA computers in a CIA building that were being used by Senate staff members. The CIA did not spy on Senate-owned computers, Senate offices, or members of the Senate. The computers were made available by the CIA for the SSCI staff to review millions of classified documents related to the enhanced-interrogation program.

CIA officials decided to audit the computers being used by the SSCI staff after the agency determined that staff members violated an agreement on access to the computers by obtaining documents they were not supposed to have and removing them from a CIA facility without authorization. The CIA also made a referral to the Justice Department over the staff’s actions.

The CIA’s relations with Congress sank to their lowest level in many years after this story broke. Feinstein said in a speech on the Senate floor that the agency’s actions may have violated the separation-of-powers clause of the Constitution and the Fourth Amendment. Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) said after the incident: “I think I perceive fear of an intelligence community drunk with power, unrepentant and uninclined to relinquish power.” Representative Darryl Issa (R., Calif.) accused the CIA of possible treason.

The CIA responded to this uproar by initiating an Inspector General investigation into the actions of CIA personnel but not SSCI staff. The agency also made a second referral to the Justice Department on the conduct of its personnel. The Senate Intelligence Committee asked the Senate sergeant-at-arms to investigate the actions of the SSCI staff. This investigation is still underway.

The Justice Department closed its investigation July 9 after finding insufficient evidence that either side had committed a crime.

Brennan didn’t help himself last May when he vigorously denied that the CIA had hacked Senate computers, saying, “Nothing could be further from the truth.” While Brennan’s comments may have been technically correct, he should have avoided making any statements on this issue until the conclusion of the CIA IG investigation. Brennan’s comments inflamed this controversy and have been seized upon by several senators to accuse him of lying and to call for his resignation.

Brennan’s apology came after the release of a CIA Inspector General report that found agency personnel “improperly accessed or caused access to the SSCI Majority staff shared drives on the RDINet.” RDINet (Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation Network) is a computer system set up at a CIA facility for the SSCI’s enhanced-interrogation investigation. An unclassified summary of the CIA IG report can be found here.

There apparently are other, more embarrassing findings in the IG report. The report’s summary said that a crimes report the CIA sent to the Justice Department on the SSCI staff’s action “was not supported,” because “the author of the referral had been provided inaccurate information on which the letter was based.” The IG report also said the CIA had searched SSCI staff e-mail accounts on the RDINet system (probably classified e-mail accounts with no access to the Internet) and accused three CIA IT staff members of a lack of candor about their activities during the IG probe.

Classified elements of the IG report have already been leaked to the press — probably by a senator on the Intelligence Committee — and include reports that the CIA used false identities to access the SSCI computers and took screen shots.

CIA management responded to the IG report by announcing the formation of an internal accountability board to be chaired by former senator Evan Bayh (D., Ind.) to determine whether any CIA officers should be disciplined over this incident.

The CIA spying-on-Congress scandal is providing cover for the SSCI’s partisan 6,300-page report on the Bush-era enhanced-interrogation program, a series of harsh techniques — including waterboarding — to force terrorist suspects to provide intelligence on planned terrorist attacks.

The enhanced-interrogation program has long divided Democrats, Republicans, and intelligence officials. Democratic officials — especially Barack Obama, when he was a presidential candidate, and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi — claimed this program was illegal and was never briefed to Congress. CIA and GOP defenders of this program adamantly deny this and have cited CIA records showing that Pelosi was briefed on it.

The main focus of the SSCI probe reportedly is to prove Democratic claims that the effectiveness of the enhanced-interrogation program has been exaggerated. Former CIA director Michael Hayden and other former senior CIA officials involved in the enhanced-interrogation program dispute this. According to Hayden, as late as 2006 fully half of the government’s knowledge about the structure and activities of al-Qaeda came from harsh interrogations.

Despite their firsthand knowledge of the enhanced-interrogation program, there is no input in the SSCI report from Hayden, former CIA general counsel John Rizzo, or other CIA officials, since the report is based solely on an examination of documents. Its Democratic-staff authors refused to interview any of the CIA players involved.

The CIA has been highly critical of the committee’s investigation and issued a 120-page rebuttal last year raising objections to many of its findings and cataloging dozens of errors. While the probe was originally approved on a bipartisan basis, Republican SSCI members later withdrew their support. As a result, committee minority staff members were barred from working with the majority on the investigation and from access to a secure room in a CIA building set up for the investigation. The committee’s Republican staffers were instead provided with a separate secure room to access enhanced-interrogation documents.

Partisan bickering in the SSCI over the probe also has interrupted the work of the committee over the last few months on important current issues such as Syria and the Iranian nuclear program.

The bias of the SSCI report, the committee’s refusal to interview CIA officials who approved and monitored the enhanced-interrogation program, and the removal of classified documents by SSCI Democratic staff members from a CIA building without authorization have resulted in a report that is a partisan travesty that represents misuse of congressional oversight and politicization of intelligence.

The SSCI submitted the 480-page executive summary to the CIA for declassification so it could be released to the public. After the CIA returned the summary to the SSCI on Friday, Feinstein delayed releasing it “until further notice” because the CIA’s redactions were so extensive. This could be another drawn-out battle as the SSCI negotiates with the CIA and the White House to declassified more language in the summary.

When the summary is released, the news media are certain to downplay the fact that the final report is a Democratic report with no Republican support and instead claim that it breaks new ground on CIA abuses. However, given other domestic and international challenges facing this country, I believe the report will get little traction with the American public.

On the other hand, I believe the SSCI probe and its partisan final report will be taken very seriously by U.S intelligence agencies and will hurt Congress’s relationship with them, possibly by making intelligence agencies and officers less willing to cooperate with congressional oversight.

While I believe the SSCI probe is a partisan embarrassment, there is still an urgent need for CIA accountability in this affair.

The CIA’s response to the SSCI staff’s removing of classified documents from a CIA facility was incredibly reckless and needlessly jeopardized its relations with Senator Feinstein, one of the U.S. intelligence community’s few strong Democratic supporters in Congress. CIA director Brennan’s clumsy and arrogant comments made matters worse and have led to bipartisan calls for his resignation.

The CIA needs a partnership with Congress and the support of key members such as Feinstein to do its important work to protect our nation from new and emerging threats. It also must defend itself from a new wave of criticism against U.S. intelligence agencies by Americans worried about government secrecy and by some who do not understand the urgent need for the United States to maintain a robust foreign-intelligence capability to protect our nation in a dangerous world.

For these reasons, I believe CIA director John Brennan and agency officials involved in the monitoring of computers used by the SSCI staff must resign to help mend the CIA’s relationship with Congress. Such resignations would go a long way toward restoring the confidence of the SSCI in the CIA and, it is to be hoped, would win the agency and the National Security Agency some crucial allies in both houses of Congress to fend off several ill-advised intelligence-reform proposals currently under discussion there.

Although no laws were broken in the CIA’s monitoring of computers used by SSCI staff members, and statements by Director Brennan about this matter may have been accurate, this scandal is a CIA self-inflicted wound that Brennan made worse. For the good of the country and the CIA’s national-security mission, Brennan must go.

Grandstanding Against the NSA

An amendment to the 2015 defense appropriations bill, which passed the House on Thursday night by a 293–123 vote, is receiving the usual over-the-top coverage from the news media, being portrayed as protecting the American people from runaway domestic spying.

Press stories on the amendment cite the usual scaremongering comments by a handful of House members, including Representative Thomas Massie (R., Ky.), who said that “the American people are sick of being spied on,” and Tulsi Gabbard (D., Hawaii), who condemned “this dragnet spying on millions of Americans.”

Despite such nonsensical statements, this amendment will have little or no effect on key NSA surveillance programs, if it survives to become part of the Senate version of the defense bill. Nevertheless, similar moves are likely in both houses of Congress as legislators finalize legislation in response to the Snowden leaks.

Backers of the amendment said it addresses shortcomings in the USA Freedom Act, a bipartisan bill passed on May 22, which privacy advocates claim did not go far enough to rein in NSA collection programs.

However, the amendment is actually very limited in scope and does not address the most controversial aspect of the USA Freedom Act — the collection of phone records (the NSA metadata program) under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Killing this program — which has been upheld in 36 out of 39 decisions before 19 different judges — is the main objective of NSA critics. Several members of Congress, including Senators Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) and Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) and Representative Justin Amash (R., Mich.), hope to change the language of the USA Freedom Act, which allows the metadata program to continue under significant restrictions. The absence of any reference to the metadata in last night’s amendment suggests there is insufficient support in the House to change the act’s existing language on this NSA collection program.

Unable to muster support to stop the metadata program, the amendment’s sponsors focused on easier targets, using legislative language that would be politically difficult for many members to oppose: closing two so-called backdoors that the NSA allegedly has used to spy on Americans.

According to documents leaked by former NSA technician Edward Snowden, one “backdoor” is a 2011 rule change allowing the NSA to search its databases using the names or other identifying information of Americans under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, which enables a program that collects electronic intelligence against foreign targets outside the United States.

Privacy advocates cried foul over the reported 2011 rule change but have ignored language in a document leaked by Snowden, indicating that the NSA did not intend to use this authority without appropriate oversight. According to this document, “analysts may NOT/NOT implement any USP [U.S. persons] queries until an effective oversight process has been developed by NSA and agreed to by DOJ/ODNI [Department of Justice and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence].”

The new amendment bars 702 authority for “using a United States person identifier” unless a warrant is obtained under several provisions of FISA. However, since it is unclear whether any collection was ever conducted under the 2011 rule change, and given that the NSA barred collection under this rule until an effective oversight process was in place, the amendment’s language may be addressing an alleged problem, one that does not exist.

The amendment also prohibits the NSA (and the CIA) from asking hardware makers and software developers to build backdoors into their products to give U.S. intelligence agencies access to users’ communications. The USA Freedom Act did not include such language, probably because there are national-security reasons for the NSA to have this capability. The extent to which the NSA may have pressed technology companies to create such backdoors has not been made public.

Few media accounts mentioned an important exception in the amendment on NSA’s alleged efforts to create software and hardware backdoors: This language does not apply to intelligence collection under the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. This means that if the NSA needed software or hardware adapted for collection against al-Qaeda, it could work with the FBI to have software or hardware backdoors created as part of a criminal investigation.

The amendment’s language on these so-called NSA backdoors is pretty meaningless. More significant are tougher provisions that congressional critics of the NSA had to drop to pass the amendment. Aside from trying to kill the metadata program, this included barring the collection of any data on Americans unless they were targets of active investigations and restricting the type of information the NSA can collect to specific threats facing the United States.

The amendment’s sponsors also did not attempt to roll back last-minute changes to the USA Freedom Act that were made at the insistence of the Obama administration and that have been strongly criticized by NSA opponents. These included loosening restrictions on how the NSA can query the metadata database and restricting when companies can reveal government requests for this data. Obama officials also arranged for declassification decisions to be made by the director of national intelligence, not the attorney general, and to drop language to create an independent advocate for FISA court hearings.

I agree with Representative Steve King (R., Iowa), who wrote in a May 22 NRO article that the USA Freedom Act weakens key NSA programs that have played an important role in preventing terrorist attacks against the United States. However, given the anti-surveillance hysteria whipped up by the news media and some members of Congress, I believe this bill is the best way to salvage NSA programs damaged by Snowden’s treachery and to protect the agency’s capabilities.

Yesterday’s House amendment probably won’t undermine the USA Freedom Act bill, and there is a good chance the amendment will be rejected or watered down by the Senate. However, it is a sign of the determination by a noisy minority in both chambers to handcuff crucial counterterrorism intelligence-collection programs either because they refuse to recognize the need for them or because they are campaigning against these programs for political gain. Members of Congress who want to maintain robust intelligence collection to protect the U.S. homeland therefore must be watchful as the Senate considers the USA Freedom Act and possible Senate amendments similar to what the House passed last night.

Edward Snowden Was Not a Trained Spy

So Edward Snowden told NBC News that he was not a low-level CIA employee or analyst. He says he was a “trained spy.”
 
No he wasn’t. 
 
Snowden was a low-level computer technician who briefly worked for the CIA abroad.  After he left CIA, he was a computer technician for NSA and for Booz Allen.
 
Like most CIA employees when they work abroad, Snowden was given a cover name and cover employment.  This is standard practice for almost all CIA employees working overseas.
 
Snowden was a CIA intelligence officer.  Like all CIA intelligence officers, he received professional training.  When Snowden says he was a spy, he is trying to equate his low-level CIA employment with CIA case officers who run and recruit human assets and conduct covert operations.
 
These officers are carefully chosen and put through intense training and evaluation.  Many wash out.  While Mr Snowden somehow slipped through the cracks to become a CIA computer technician, I can say without hesitation that there is no way such an undisciplined and reckless individual would ever meet the high qualifications and pass the difficult tests required to become a CIA case officer.
 
I believe Edward Snowden’s ridiculous claim that he was a trained spy is a sign of his irritation that fewer people are taking him seriously and more people are beginning to see him for the traitor that he is. 
 

House NSA Reform Bill is Imperfect But Could be Made Much Worse

A bill passed by the House last week to reform NSA’s metadata phone records collection program – the USA Freedom Act — is far from perfect and will impose limits on this counterterrorism program that will reduce its effectiveness. Nevertheless, it is urgent that the Senate pass this bill in its current form and resist pressure to weaken it from the news media and left-wing privacy advocates. While many NSA supporters are unhappy about the text of the House bill, it is a compromise reflecting the reality that regardless of the merits and capabilities of the metadata program, it has been so damaged by fear-mongering attacks by the press and some politicians that it cannot continue in its current form.

Controversy over the NSA metadata collection program was sparked by leaks of classified documents to the news media by former NSA technician Edward Snowden. The metadata program under which NSA collects telephone records – not the contents of phone calls – has been deemed legal in about 35 out of 37 legal challenges. One district judge ruled the program was illegal and a violation of the fourth amendment last December. Another judge issued a ruling strongly supporting the program a few weeks later. While the Supreme Court will ultimately rule on recent contradictory court decisions on this program, the Court on April 7 declined to take on this issue, instead allowing it to first work its way through lower courts.

This article follows-up on the Center for Security Policy’s prior publications on NSA reforms precipitated by the Snowden leaks. These include:

Center for Security Policy Issues Rebuttal of Obama Panel’s NSA Reform Recommendations (January 13, 2014)

Senior National Security, Intelligence Professionals Warn President Obama Against Damaging US Collection Sources and Methods (January 17, 2014)

New Center Study Warns President Obama’s NSA Reforms Jeopardize National Security (January 27, 2014)

Critics of the metadata program have insisted it is a violation of the personal privacy rights of American and that there is no evidence this program helped protect the United States from terrorist attacks. Senior intelligence officials dispute such claims and point out that the metadata program has been carefully overseen by the courts and the intelligence oversight committees. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California), the Chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has defended the metadata program and said during a January 14, 2014 Judiciary Committee hearing that this program helped stop terrorist plots to bomb the New York City subway, the New York stock exchange, and a Danish newspaper.

House Intelligence Committee members hoped to pass legislation to address the public’s concerns about the metadata program by tightening the program without weakening it. When this became politically impossible, they merged their bill with a House Judiciary Committee bill, producing legislation that weakens the program but allows it to continue.

Under the USA Reform Act, phone companies, not NSA, will maintain metadata databases. This data will be held by phone companies for 18 months versus the five years it is currently held by NSA. Instead of the current arrangement under which the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court issues NSA with 90-day “basket” court orders to search the metadata database, NSA will now need to obtain a court order every time it wants to query the database on a specific phone number. In emergencies, NSA will be permitted access to the metadata database for seven days before getting court approval.

Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) has criticized the USA Freedom Act for the damage he believes it will do to the metadata program’s effectiveness as a counterterrorism tool and hopes to amend the bill. King believes the bill’s requirement that NSA obtain court orders for the metadata program on a case-by-case basis will significantly hamper the program. He also believes having phone companies retain phone metadata could create real threats to the privacy of Americans because a larger set of non-U.S. government personnel will be handing this data in several companies. I agree with Mr King but I regret that there does not appear to be enough political support in the House for his amendment to pass.

The House passed the USA Freedom Act by a vote of 303-to-121 with a majority of both Republican and Democratic members in support. However, privacy advocates, technology companies, the New York Times and many House members oppose it, claiming the bill dilutes stronger language from an earlier version, requires insufficient “transparency” of the metadata program, and allows it to essentially operate as it does today. Major House critics of the bill include Justin Amash (R-Michigan) and Zoe Lofgren (D-California) who are demanding the bill be substantially revised to either shut down the NSA metadata program or to place so many restrictions on the program that NSA would find it impossible to use.

For example, Lofgren wants to amend the bill so NSA would not only need a court order to query the phone records of an American citizen but would also need to certify that the American in question is the target of an active counterintelligence investigation. This is an impossible standard that would prevent NSA from pursuing huge numbers of terrorist leads. Her amendment would change the bill’s current language allowing NSA to query the phone records of Americans if they are reasonably suspected of having links to an agent of a foreign power.

While President Obama has a mixed record in defending NSA against the onslaught of criticism sparked by the Snowden leaks, his administration deserves credit for forcing the House to make important last-minute changes to the USA Freedom Act. This includes loosening restrictions on how NSA can query the metadata database and restricting when companies can reveal government requests for this data. Obama officials also arranged for declassification decisions to be made by the Director of National Intelligence, not the Attorney General, and to drop language to create an independent advocate for FISA court hearings.

These changes fall short of what Congressman King is proposing but they probably pushed the bill as far as possible without endangering its bipartisan support in the House. The USA Freedom Act now goes to the Senate where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has asked Senate Intelligence Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein and Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy to review the bill.

Senator Feinstein, who has proposed narrower restrictions to the metadata program, said she is open to the USA Freedom Act. Given the Obama administration’s support of the bill, she is likely to push through an identical version from the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The bill faces trouble from Senator Leahy who has said the final version passed by the House omits important reforms from a previous version that he plans to restore. Leahy will be joined by Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico) and Mark Udall (D-Colorado), three far-left senators who have been fighting a losing battle in the Democrat-controlled Intelligence Committee to gut the metadata program.

Teaming up with the news media and privacy advocates, who have already begun a campaign against the USA Freedom Act, Leahy will push hard to add language to a Senate version that will essentially end the NSA metadata program.

The Senate vote on NSA reform will come down to the loyalty of Democratic senators to the president and Senator Feinstein’s ability to counter Leahy. If Leahy succeeds in passing a Senate version with major changes, he will upset delicate compromises that led to the House bill, possibly causing it to collapse. Given the continuing controversy over NSA collection and the upcoming congressional elections, this could result in a new bill closer to what Leahy wants that would put other damaging limitations on vital NSA collection programs.

Many NSA supporters are understandably disappointed with the House USA Freedom Act. However, due to the erosion of public support for the metadata program, I believe this bill is the only way to save it. It is therefore essential that Americans concerned about U.S. national security push for passage of this bill and call on Democratic and Republican senators to resist pressure to weaken it from the left-wing senators, the news media and privacy advocates.

What the News Media Missed in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Benghazi Report

Last month’s Senate Intelligence Committee report on the September 2012 terrorist attacks against the U.S. consulate in Benghazi made headlines for its bipartisan conclusions that the attacks could have been prevented and for citing four al-Qaeda groups that were involved in the attacks or contributed participants.  While some of the report was debatable and watered-down, its findings are significant and further discredits the Obama Administration’s contention that the attacks were the result of demonstrations outside the consulate due to an anti-Muslim video.
 
Although it is an important bipartisan report on the Benghazi tragedy, reading the whole report carefully indicates much less agreement than the committee’s Democratic majority and the news media have claimed and suggests the report only got out the door after committee members agreed to discuss their substantial disagreements in an “additional views” appendix.  The report’s additional views are far more interesting than the body of the report and reflect the continuing wide partisan differences over the Benghazi tragedy and the Obama administration’s refusal to fully cooperate with congressional investigations of the attacks.
 
Additional views are not unusual for congressional reports and are usually part of Senate Intelligence committee reports.  The Benghazi report included additional views by the Democratic majority, by the committee’s Republican members (except for Senator Susan Collins), and a separate set of additional views by Collins.
 
The committee’s Democratic members submitted five pages of additional views that preview how Hillary Clinton is certain to respond to criticism about her handling of the Benghazi attacks if she runs for president: the controversy over this tragedy is political, has been generated by “misinformed speculation and accusations” and it is time to move on.
 
The Democratic additional views focus on the infamous talking points about the Benghazi attacks provided to the intelligence committees on September 15, 2012, claiming that they were “flawed but mostly accurate.”  This document, initially drafted by the CIA and cleared through several government agencies and senior Obama officials at the National Security Council, was used by Ambassador Susan Rice on Sunday morning talk shows on September 16th and echoed by Obama officials for weeks.  The talking points said the consulate attacks were due to demonstrations stemming from an anti-Muslim video. 
 
The committee’s Democratic members blamed the CIA for inaccurate information in the talking points and said the CIA – not the NSC – removed references to al-Qaeda prior to sending the document around for inter-agency clearance.  They concluded that there were no efforts by the White House or others in the Executive Branch to cover-up facts or make alterations for political purposes. 
 
The Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats had to overlook a lot of inconvenient facts to come to such conclusions.
 
By contrast, in their 16-pages of additional views, six of the seven Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee present alternative views that are a powerful indictment of how the Obama administration mishandled the Benghazi tragedy and its efforts to cover-up the facts of the attacks before the November 2012 election.  The most important sentence of the Republican additional views is this:
 
“Many of us were frustrated and astounded by the great pains the Administration took after the attacks to avoid the clear linkage of what happened in Benghazi to the threat from international terrorism.” 
Concerning the talking points, the six Republicans found that the administration took steps to mislead Congress and the American people about the Benghazi attacks and the threat from al-Qaeda before the 2012 election.
 
“Rather than provide Congress with the best intelligence and on-the-ground assessments, the Administration chose to try to frame the story in a way that minimized any connection to terrorism.  Before the Benghazi attacks—in the lead-up to the 2012 presidential election, the administration continued to script the narrative that al-Qaeda had been decimated and on the run.  The Benghazi terrorist attacks inconveniently, and overwhelmingly, interfered with this fictitious and false narrative.”  
The additional views by the six Republicans rejected the charge that the CIA was at fault for erroneous language in the talking points, noting that emails reluctantly released to the committee clearly show the White House was asked to coordinate on the talking points from the earliest moments and had the final say in approving them.  The Republican members noted that this does not comport with what Acting CIA Director Morell told the intelligence committees in November 2012.
 
“. . . in spite of his [CIA Director Petraeus] own misgivings, the final content of the talking points was the ‘[National Security Staff’s] call, to be sure.’  In contrast, the Acting Director’s testimony perpetuated the myth that the White House played no part in the drafting or editing of the talking points.” 
This observation by the six Senate Intelligence Committee Republicans are supported by a Feb. 4 story by Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge that Morell – who is now a member of a Washington, DC consulting firm with close ties to Hillary Clinton – may have altered the Benghazi talking points to benefit the Obama administration before the November 2012 election by removing the word “Islamic” but keeping the word “demonstration.” 
 
The committee Democrats complained in their additional views that “controversy over the CIA talking points consumed a regrettable and disproportionate amount of time during the committee’s substantive review of the Benghazi attacks.”  Of course the Democrats said this because they were trying to paper over and shift the blame for an unprecedented and brazen scheme by the Obama Administration to manipulate the facts about the Benghazi attacks to ensure this tragedy did not prevent Mr Obama from being reelected.  The six Senate Intelligence Committee Republicans are to be given credit for not mincing their words about this abuse of the American people’s trust by President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and other senior Obama officials. 
 
The six committee Republicans had several other devastating criticisms of the Obama Administration concerning the Benghazi tragedy that have received little attention by the news media.  These include:
  • A complete absence of accountability.  The body of the report says nothing about holding White House, State Department, and Pentagon officials accountable for the Benghazi tragedy and devotes only one page to the failure to bring the attackers to justice.  The additional views by the six committee Republicans are sharply critical of the Obama Administration over these failures and notes that “the final responsibility for security at diplomatic compounds rests with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.”  Not only have key officials not been held accountable, the Republicans said “a strong case can be made that State engaged in retaliation against witnesses who were willing to speak with Congress” and that witnesses such as Charlene Lamb [Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Programs] who were shielded from or avoided committee requests for interviews were returned to duty.  An excellent majority staff report by the House Foreign Affairs Committee issued on Feb. 7 “Benghazi: Where is the Accountability?” makes these same points in greater depth.
  • Unknowns remain due to the Obama Administration’s obstructionism.  The additional views by the six Republicans detail how White House and State Department officials appeared to do everything possible to block the committee’s investigation.  This included blocking access to witnesses and documents, abusing executive privilege, and playing games with committee jurisdiction rules.  The committee Republicans noted how for seven months the Obama administration refused to provide the full paper trail for the talking points and instead provided a “re-creation” of the drafts to which it only gave the committee limited, “read only” access.  Because of this obstructionism, the six committee Republicans said important issues still need to be addressed to assess why Americans died in Benghazi and why no one has been held accountable.  The Republicans believe this needs to be investigated by “a committee that can and will use subpoena authority to obtain information from an uncooperative State Department.”  In my opinion, a House special committee to do this is long overdue.  Speaker Boehner should approve one immediately.
  • The State Department’s absurd attempt to shift blame to the CIA for security shortfalls in Benghazi.  According to the six Republicans, the State Department objected to language in a draft of the committee report concerning security at the Benghazi consulate by claiming that since the same number of people died at the CIA Annex, the CIA should be held equally responsible for its lack of security at the Annex.  The Republican additional views found this argument to be absurd, noting that “there is a tremendous difference between a fortified facility [the CIA Annex] that suffers a fatal blow from a mortar attack and a porous compound that yields to a basic ground assault.”  The six Republicans noted that the two men killed at the CIA Annex (Tyrone Woods and Glenn Doherty) were killed on the roof after being attacked by mortars and that there likely would have been more American casualties if it were not for the successful rescue efforts by the CIA Annex personnel. 
Senator Collins’ additional views are milder than her Republican colleagues but are still very critical of the Obama Administration.  She faults the committee’s report for not placing enough emphasis on “(1) the Administration’s initial misleading of the American people about the terrorist nature of the attack; (2) the failure of the Administration to hold anyone at the State Department, especially Under Secretary Patrick Kennedy, fully responsible for the security lapses; and (3) the unfulfilled promises of President Obama that he would bring the terrorists to justice.”
 
Predictably, the news media has facilitated efforts by the Obama Administration and Senate Democrats to portray the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the Benghazi attacks as the end of this story and a rebuke to Republicans who have alleged a cover-up about the Benghazi tragedy in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election.  Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein has said she hopes this report will put “conspiracy theories” to rest.  Democratic consultant Brent Budowsky joined this fight last month by calling Republican demands for investigations of Benghazi “the GOP Benghazi Disease” in an article in The Hill.  David Ignatius, a notorious apologist for the Obama administration who writes for theWashington Post, said in response to the Senate report that Congressional Republicans wasted a year arguing about “phony issues” and termed GOP interest in this issue an “obsession” and a “jihad.”
 
The Republican additional views to the Senate Intelligence report and the new majority staff report by the House Foreign Affairs Committee prove that there is still a lot to be investigated about the Benghazi attacks.  The news media and Democratic politicians are already stepping up their efforts to portray Republicans trying to pursue this issue as kooks.  Republican congressmen and future presidential candidates should not deterred by this pressure.  The Obama Administration’s cover-up of the Benghazi attacks to ensure Mr Obama would win the 2012 presidential election is a serious affront to our democratic system that it only got away with because the mainstream media refused to do its job.  Hillary Clinton was obviously an active, if not a central, figure in this cover-up.  The integrity of our system of government requires a full and honest accounting of this tragedy and making sure the American people fully weigh Mrs Clinton’s role if she runs for president in 2016.  The additional views by the six Senate Intelligence Committee Republicans provide an excellent blueprint on how to do this.

Six Important Take-Aways from the Intelligence Committee Threat Hearings

Over the last week, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees held their annual unclassified hearings on worldwide threats facing the United States.  Testifying to the hearings were Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey, and DIA Director Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.

The news media’s treatment of the hearings was predictably poor and superficial.  Here is what the Center believes are the top six take-aways that you need to know from these hearings.

1. A Growing Worldwide Terrorist Threat

All five witnesses stressed the increasing threat from a reconstituted and decentralized al-Qaeda organization which is expanding its influence, especially in Syria and North Africa.  CIA Director Brennan warned about al-Qaeda activity in Iraq and Syria, telling the House Intelligence Committee: “We are concerned about the use of Syrian territory by the Al Qaeda organization to recruit individuals and develop the capability to be able not just to carry out attacks inside of Syria, but also to use Syria as a launching pad.  There are camps inside of both Iraq and Syria that are used by Al Qaeda to develop capabilities that are applicable, both in the theater, as well as beyond.”

2. Sharply Increased Risk of Cyber Attacks by State and Non-State Actors

The U.S. intelligence community sees growing risks from cyberwarfare because government and personal functions are increasingly tied to the Internet and potential offensive cyber operations by Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, terrorist organizations, and cyber criminal organizations.  U.S. intelligence agencies believe Russia continues to target U.S. and allied personnel with access to sensitive computer network information.  China is trying to weaken U.S. dominance of Internet governance while continuing an expansive worldwide program of network exploitation and intellectual property theft.

3. The Snowden Leaks Will Result in the Loss of American Lives

In response to questions by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI), DIA Director Flynn discussed a recent damage assessment by his agency on the leaks of classified information by former NSA technician Edward Snowden.  According to Flynn, the Snowden leaks will make it harder to detect IEDs threatening U.S. troops in Afghanistan, will put all U.S. servicemen at risk, and provided America’s adversaries important insights into U.S. military vulnerabilities.   Director Clapper added that the vast majority of Snowden’s leaks probably had nothing to do with NSA programs.

These findings are important because they put the lie to claims by Snowden and his supporters that he only leaked information about NSA programs and was careful not to release information that would cost lives or endanger U.S. security.

4. Senator Rockefeller Comes Out Against Obama NSA Reform Proposal

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), a liberal senator with whom the Center has rarely seen eye-to-eye on national security matters, surprised everyone at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing by supporting the NSA metadata program in its current form and opposing President Obama’s proposal to move the metadata database to private parties.  Rockefeller said the metadata program, an NSA collection effort to gather telephone records, is an important counterterrorism tool and is already subject to numerous laws and regulations to ensure that it does not violate the privacy of Americans.  Rockefeller said he opposes the president’s proposal to take the metadata database away from NSA and giving it to private parties because such a move would put this information in the hands of personnel subject to significantly less stringent security clearance rules than NSA personnel, resulting in serious privacy and security risks.  The Center for Security Policy commends Senator Rockefeller for stating his strongly held views on the metadata program which are identical to a recent Center study.  (Click HERE to read the Center’s January 27, 2014 study, New Center Study Warns President Obama’s NSA Reforms Jeopardize National Security.)

5. Senate Intelligence Committee Leftists Tried to Hijack Threat Hearing

With three exceptions, the members at both intelligence hearings were civil, professional and took seriously witness testimony about increased threats from terrorism, cyberwarfare, and leaks of U.S. intelligence.  The three exceptions were Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), Senator Mark Udall (D-UT) and Senator Mark Heinrich (D-NM).

Instead of listening to the testimony about dire foreign threats facing this country, Wyden, Udall, and Heinrich took the nonsensical position that U.S. intelligence agencies are the main threat to American liberty.  Wyden accused top intelligence leaders of lying to the American people and a “reckless reliance on secret interpretations of the law.”  Udall and Heinrich attacked the CIA for refusing to cooperate with the committee’s investigation of the Bush-era enhanced interrogation program.  (Why is the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2014 still investigating the Bush administration?)  Heinrich accused the CIA of making inaccurate public statements about a secret CIA study on enhanced interrogations, claiming that the agency has tried to “intimidate, deflect and thwart legitimate oversight.”

The witnesses mostly ignored questions posed by Wyden, Udall, and Heinrich, noting that they were not germane to a hearing on global threats.  To her credit, Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) stated that she agreed with this response.

Not surprisingly, the scaremongering and histrionics of Wyden, Udall, and Heinrich received significant press play.  This is unfortunate since their views were not shared by other Senate or House Intelligence Committee members.  The three senators represent a small minority who tried to exploit an open hearing because a bipartisan majority has repeatedly refused to support them in committee votes.

6. Intelligence Officials Feigned Ignorance on Possible Belarussian Cyber Compromise of Obamacare Website, Americans’ Personal Information and Government Databases

During the February 4th House Intelligence Committee threat hearing, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann read aloud most of a February 3 Washington Free Beacon article by Bill Gertz that said U.S. intelligence agencies last week urged the Obama administration to check the Obamacare website (healthcare.gov) for malicious software after learning that web developers linked to the authoritarian Belarus government helped developed the site.  Mr. Gertz wrote that there have been cyber attacks against the United States originating from Belarus in the past and said an NSC spokeswoman recently commented on an intelligence report about involvement of Belarus programmers in constructing the Obamacare website.

Bachmann was so perplexed that all of the witnesses claimed to be unaware of this issue and the Free Beacon article that she individually polled each witness. The Center shares Congresswoman Bachmann’s concern. It is impossible to believe that the DNI, CIA, DIA and FBI Directors knew nothing about the Gertz article given their large support staffs, the fact that this article was 24 hours old and comments made about this issue by an NSC spokeswoman. What is more, Mr. Gertz reported that the Obama administration also directed the intelligence community to withdraw its report.

The most charitable explanation is that the witnesses feigned ignorance so they could avoid commenting on the controversial issue of the Obamacare website’s security vulnerabilities.

In response to the Free Beacon piece, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers and Congresswoman Bachmann demanded an independent security evaluation of the Obamacare website.