Intelligence

Intercepts Key Element in Terrorism Fight, Attorney General Says

Intercepts Key Element in Terrorism Fight, Attorney General Says

Gonzales asserts United States' terrorist surveillance program is legal

The conflict with terrorist groups, especially al-Qaida, responsible for the deadly attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, is a “war of information,” says Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Speaking at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington on January 24, Gonzales said the National Security Agency’s terrorist surveillance program, which began in 2002, is used to protect Americans by intercepting the international e-mails and telephone calls of people in the United States reasonably believed to be members or agents of terrorist organizations, Gonzales said.

“We cannot build walls thick enough, fences high enough, or systems strong enough to keep our enemies out of our open and welcoming country,” Gonzales said. “We have to collect more dots … before we can connect the dots.”

President Bush authorized the terrorist surveillance program, which does not require the government to obtain warrants, in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks, and “it is designed solely to prevent the next attack,” Gonzales said. “If we conduct this reasonable surveillance -- while taking special care to preserve civil liberties as we have -- we can all continue to enjoy our rights and freedom for generations to come.”

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Republican Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, will begin hearings February 6 on the legality of the surveillance program, particularly whether there have been violations of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Congress has the authority to inquire, through committee hearings, about important U.S. issues, including actions by the president or other governmental entities. The hearings allow for the presentation of various points of view, and for suggestions on possible congressional action. In the case of the National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program hearings, experts from inside and outside the U.S. government will present testimony. Most of the hearings will be open to the public and transcripts will be available for all to read.

Gonzales said that the terrorist surveillance program complies with the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, because the amendment never has been understood to require warrants in all circumstances.

For additional information on American rights and freedoms, see U.S. Legal System.

Following is the transcript of the remarks by Gonzales as prepared for delivery:

(begin transcript)

U.S. Department of Justice
PREPARED REMARKS FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL ALBERTO R. GONZALES
AT THE GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER
WASHINGTON, D.C.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2006

"Intercepting Al Qaeda: A Lawful and Necessary Tool for Protecting America"

Thank you, Dean.

Just after dawn on September 11th, 2001, I flew out of Dulles Airport less than an hour before the departure from the same airport of American Airlines Flight 77, the plane that was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon later that morning. When I arrived in Norfolk, Virginia, to give a speech, the North Tower of the World Trade Center had been hit. By the end of my remarks, both the North and South Towers stood shrouded in smoke and flames with many desperate people jumping to their deaths, some 90 stories below. I spent much of the rest of that horrible day trying to get back to Washington to assist the President in my role as White House Counsel.

Everyone has a story from that morning. Up and down the East Coast, men and women were settling into their desks, coming home from a graveyard shift, or taking their children to school. And across the rest of the country, Americans were waking up to smoldering ruins and the images of ash covered faces. We remember where we were, what we were doing ... and how we felt on that terrible morning, as 3,000 innocent men, women, and children died, without warning, without being able to look into the faces of their loved ones and say goodbye . . . all killed just for being Americans.

The open wounds so many of us carry from that day are the backdrop to the current debate about the National Security Agency's terrorist surveillance program. This program, described by the President, is focused on international communications where experienced intelligence experts have reason to believe that at least one party to the communication is a member or agent of al Qaeda or a terrorist organization affiliated with al Qaeda. This program is reviewed and reauthorized by the President approximately every 45 days. The leadership of Congress, including the leaders of the Intelligence Committees of both Houses of Congress, have been briefed about this program more than a dozen times since 2001.

A word of caution here. This remains a highly classified program. It remains an important tool in protecting America. So my remarks today speak only to those activities confirmed publicly by the President, and not to other purported activities described in press reports. These press accounts are in almost every case, in one way or another, misinformed, confusing, or wrong. And unfortunately, they have caused concern over the potential breadth of what the President has actually authorized.

It seems that everyone who has heard of the President's actions has an opinion -- as well we should regarding matters of national security, separation of powers, and civil liberties. Of course, a few critics are interested only in political gains. Other doubters hope the President will do everything he can to protect our country, but they worry about the appropriate checks upon a Commander in Chief's ability to monitor the enemy in a time of war.

Whatever your opinion, this much is clear: No one is above the law. We are all bound by the Constitution, and no matter the pain and anger we feel from the attacks, we must all abide by the Constitution. During my confirmation hearing, I said that, quote, "we are very, very mindful of Justice O'Connor's statement in the 2004 Hamdi decision that a state of war is not a blank check for the President of the United States with respect to the rights of American citizens. I understand that and I agree with that." Close quote. The President takes seriously his obligations to protect the American people and to protect the Constitution, and he is committed to upholding both of those obligations.

I've noticed that through all of the noise on this topic, very few have asked that the terrorist surveillance program be stopped. The American people are, however, asking two important questions: Is this program necessary? And is it lawful? The answer to each is yes.

The question of necessity rightly falls to our nation's military leaders. You've heard the President declare: We are a nation at war.

And in this war, our military employs a wide variety of tools and weapons to defeat the enemy. General Mike Hayden, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence and former Director of the NSA, laid out yesterday why a terrorist surveillance program that allows us to quickly collect important information about our enemy is so vital and necessary to the War on Terror.

The conflict against al Qaeda is, in fundamental respects, a war of information. We cannot build walls thick enough, fences high enough, or systems strong enough to keep our enemies out of our open and welcoming country. Instead, as the bipartisan 9/11 and WMD Commissions have urged, we must understand better who they are and what they're doing -- we have to collect more dots, if you will, before we can "connect the dots." This program to surveil al Qaeda is a necessary weapon as we fight to detect and prevent another attack before it happens. I feel confident that is what the American people expect ... and it's what the terrorist surveillance program provides.

As General Hayden explained yesterday, many men and women who shoulder the daily burden of preventing another terrorist attack here at home are convinced of the necessity of this surveillance program.

Now, the legal authorities. As Attorney General, I am primarily concerned with the legal basis for these necessary military activities. I expect that as lawyers and law students, you are too.

The Attorney General of the United States is the chief legal advisor for the Executive Branch. Accordingly, from the outset, the Justice Department thoroughly examined this program against al Qaeda, and concluded that the President is acting within his power in authorizing it. These activities are lawful. The Justice Department is not alone in reaching that conclusion. Career lawyers at the NSA and the NSA's Inspector General have been intimately involved in reviewing the program and ensuring its legality.

The terrorist surveillance program is firmly grounded in the President's constitutional authorities. No other public official -- no mayor, no governor, no member of Congress -- is charged by the Constitution with the primary responsibility for protecting the safety of all Americans -- and the Constitution gives the President all authority necessary to fulfill this solemn duty.

It has long been recognized that the President's constitutional powers include the authority to conduct warrantless surveillance aimed at detecting and preventing armed attacks on the United States. Presidents have uniformly relied on their inherent power to gather foreign intelligence for reasons both diplomatic and military, and the federal courts have consistently upheld this longstanding practice.

If this is the case in ordinary times, it is even more so in the present circumstances of our armed conflict with al Qaeda and its allies. The terrorist surveillance program was authorized in response to the deadliest foreign attack on American soil, and it is designed solely to prevent the next attack. After all, the goal of our enemy is to blend in with our civilian population in order to plan and carry out future attacks within America. We cannot forget that the 9/11 hijackers were in our country, living in our communities.

The President's authority to take military action-including the use of communications intelligence targeted at the enemy-does not come merely from his inherent constitutional powers. It comes directly from Congress as well.

Just a few days after the events of September 11th, Congress enacted a joint resolution to support and authorize a military response to the attacks on American soil. In this resolution, the Authorization for Use of Military Force, Congress did two important things. First, it expressly recognized the President's "authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States." Second, it supplemented that authority by authorizing the President to, quote, "use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks" in order to prevent further attacks on the United States.

The Resolution means that the President's authority to use military force against those terrorist groups is at its maximum because he is acting with the express authorization of Congress. Thus, were we to employ the three-part framework of Justice Jackson's concurring opinion in the Youngstown Steel Seizure case, the President's authority falls within Category One, and is at its highest. He is acting "pursuant to an express or implied authorization of Congress," and the President's authority "includes all that he possesses in his own right [under the Constitution] plus all that Congress can" confer on him.

In 2004, the Supreme Court considered the scope of the Force Resolution in the Hamdi case. There, the question was whether the President had the authority to detain an American citizen as an enemy combatant for the duration of the hostilities.

In that case, the Supreme Court confirmed that the expansive language of the Resolution -"all necessary and appropriate force"-ensures that the congressional authorization extends to traditional incidents of waging war. And, just like the detention of enemy combatants approved in Hamdi, the use of communications intelligence to prevent enemy attacks is a fundamental and well-accepted incident of military force.

This fact is borne out by history. This Nation has a long tradition of wartime enemy surveillance-a tradition that can be traced to George Washington, who made frequent and effective use of secret intelligence, including the interception of mail between the British and Americans.

And for as long as electronic communications have existed, the United States has conducted surveillance of those communications during wartime-all without judicial warrant. In the Civil War, for example, telegraph wiretapping was common, and provided important intelligence for both sides. In World War I, President Wilson ordered the interception of all cable communications between the United States and Europe; he inferred the authority to do so from the Constitution and from a general congressional authorization to use military force that did not mention anything about such surveillance. So too in World War II; the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt authorized the interception of all communications traffic into and out of the United States. The terrorist surveillance program, of course, is far more focused, since it involves only the interception of international communications that are linked to al Qaeda or its allies.

Some have suggested that the Force Resolution did not authorize intelligence collection inside the United States. That contention cannot be squared with the reality of the 9/11 attacks, which gave rise to the Resolution, and with the language of the authorization itself, which calls on the President to protect Americans both "at home and abroad" and to take action to prevent further terrorist attacks "against the United States." It's also contrary to the history of wartime surveillance, which has often involved the interception of enemy communications into and out of the United States.

Against this backdrop, the NSA's focused terrorist surveillance program falls squarely within the broad authorization of the Resolution even though, as some have argued, the Resolution does not expressly mention surveillance. The Resolution also doesn't mention detention of enemy combatants. But we know from the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdi that such detention is authorized. Justice O'Connor reasoned: "Because detention to prevent a combatant's return to the battlefield is a fundamental incident of waging war...Congress has clearly and unmistakably authorized detention in the narrow circumstances considered here."

As Justice O'Connor recognized, it does not matter that the Force Resolution nowhere specifically refers to the detention of U.S. citizens as enemy combatants. Nor does it matter that individual Members of Congress may not have specifically intended to authorize such detention. The same is true of electronic surveillance. It is a traditional incident of war and, thus, as Justice O'Connor said, it is "of no moment" that the Resolution does not explicitly mention this activity.

These omissions are not at all surprising. In enacting the Force Resolution, Congress made no attempt to catalog every aspect of the use of force it was authorizing.

Instead, following the model of past military force authorizations, Congress-in general, but broad, terms-confirmed the President's authority to use all traditional and legitimate incidents of military force to identify and defeat the enemy. In doing so, Congress must be understood to have intended that the use of electronic surveillance against the enemy is a fundamental component of military operations.

Some contend that even if the President has constitutional authority to engage in the surveillance of our enemy in a time of war, that authority has been constrained by Congress with the passage in 1978 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Generally, FISA requires the government to obtain an order from a special FISA court before conducting electronic surveillance. It is clear from the legislative history of FISA that there were concerns among Members of Congress about the constitutionality of FISA itself.

For purposes of this discussion, because I cannot discuss operational details, I'm going to assume here that intercepts of al Qaeda communications under the terrorist surveillance program fall within the definition of "electronic surveillance" in FISA.

The FISA Court of Review, the special court of appeals charged with hearing appeals of decisions by the FISA court, stated in 2002 that, quote, "[w]e take for granted that the President does have that [inherent] authority" and, "assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power." We do not have to decide whether, when we are at war and there is a vital need for the terrorist surveillance program, FISA unconstitutionally encroaches -- or places an unconstitutional constraint upon -- the President's Article II powers. We can avoid that tough question because Congress gave the President the Force Resolution, and that statute removes any possible tension between what Congress said in 1978 in FISA and the President's constitutional authority today.

Let me explain by focusing on certain aspects of FISA that have attracted a lot of attention and generated a lot of confusion in the last few weeks.

First, FISA, of course, allows Congress to respond to new threats through separate legislation. FISA bars persons from intentionally "engag[ing] . . . in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute." For the reasons I have already discussed, the Force Resolution provides the relevant statutory authorization for the terrorist surveillance program. Hamdi makes it clear that the broad language in the Resolution can satisfy a requirement for specific statutory authorization set forth in another law.

Hamdi involved a statutory prohibition on all detention of U.S. citizens except as authorized "pursuant to an Act of Congress." Even though the detention of a U.S. citizen involves a deprivation of liberty, and even though the Force Resolution says nothing on its face about detention of U.S. citizens, a majority of the members of the Court nevertheless concluded that the Resolution satisfied the statutory requirement. The same is true, I submit, for the prohibition on warrantless electronic surveillance in FISA.

You may have heard about the provision of FISA that allows the President to conduct warrantless surveillance for 15 days following a declaration of war. That provision shows that Congress knew that warrantless surveillance would be essential in wartime. But no one could reasonably suggest that all such critical military surveillance in a time of war would end after only 15 days.

Instead, the legislative history of this provision makes it clear that Congress elected NOT TO DECIDE how surveillance might need to be conducted in the event of a particular armed conflict. Congress expected that it would revisit the issue in light of events and likely would enact a special authorization during that 15-day period. That is exactly what happened three days after the attacks of 9/11, when Congress passed the Force Resolution, permitting the President to exercise "all necessary and appropriate" incidents of military force.

Thus, it is simply not the case that Congress in 1978 anticipated all the ways that the President might need to act in times of armed conflict to protect the United States. FISA, by its own terms, was not intended to be the last word on these critical issues.

Second, some people have argued that, by their terms, Title III and FISA are the "exclusive means" for conducting electronic surveillance. It is true that the law says that Title III and FISA are "the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance . . . may be conducted." But, as I have said before, FISA itself says elsewhere that the government cannot engage in electronic surveillance "except as authorized by statute." It is noteworthy that, FISA did not say "the government cannot engage in electronic surveillance 'except as authorized by FISA and Title III.'" No, it said, except as authorized by statute -- any statute. And, in this case, that other statute is the Force Resolution.

Even if some might think that's not the only way to read the statute, in accordance with long recognized canons of construction, FISA must be interpreted in harmony with the Force Resolution to allow the President, as Commander in Chief during time of armed conflict, to take the actions necessary to protect the country from another catastrophic attack. So long as such an interpretation is "fairly possible," the Supreme Court has made clear that it must be adopted, in order to avoid the serious constitutional issues that would otherwise be raised.

Third, I keep hearing, "Why not FISA?" "Why didn't the President get orders from the FISA court approving these NSA intercepts of al Qaeda communications?"

We have to remember that we're talking about a wartime foreign intelligence program. It is an "early warning system" with only one purpose: To detect and prevent the next attack on the United States from foreign agents hiding in our midst. It is imperative for national security that we can detect RELIABLY, IMMEDIATELY, and WITHOUT DELAY whenever communications associated with al Qaeda enter or leave the United States. That may be the only way to alert us to the presence of an al Qaeda agent in our country and to the existence of an unfolding plot.

Consistent with the wartime intelligence nature of this program, the optimal way to achieve the necessary speed and agility is to leave the decisions about particular intercepts to the judgment of professional intelligence officers, based on the best available intelligence information. They can make that call quickly. If, however, those same intelligence officers had to navigate through the FISA process for each of these intercepts, that would necessarily introduce a significant factor of DELAY, and there would be critical holes in our early warning system.

Some have pointed to the provision in FISA that allows for so-called "emergency authorizations" of surveillance for 72 hours without a court order. There's a serious misconception about these emergency authorizations. People should know that we do not approve emergency authorizations without knowing that we will receive court approval within 72 hours. FISA requires the Attorney General to determine IN ADVANCE that a FISA application for that particular intercept will be fully supported and will be approved by the court before an emergency authorization may be granted. That review process can take precious time.

Thus, to initiate surveillance under a FISA emergency authorization, it is not enough to rely on the best judgment of our intelligence officers alone. Those intelligence officers would have to get the sign-off of lawyers at the NSA that all provisions of FISA have been satisfied, then lawyers in the Department of Justice would have to be similarly satisfied, and finally as Attorney General, I would have to be satisfied that the search meets the requirements of FISA. And we would have to be prepared to follow up with a full FISA application within the 72 hours.

A typical FISA application involves a substantial process in its own right: The work of several lawyers; the preparation of a legal brief and supporting declarations; the approval of a Cabinet-level officer; a certification from the National Security Adviser, the Director of the FBI, or another designated Senate-confirmed officer; and, finally, of course, the approval of an Article III judge.

We all agree that there should be appropriate checks and balances on our branches of government. The FISA process makes perfect sense in almost all cases of foreign intelligence monitoring in the United States. Although technology has changed dramatically since FISA was enacted, FISA remains a vital tool in the War on Terror, and one that we are using to its fullest and will continue to use against al Qaeda and other foreign threats. But as the President has explained, the terrorist surveillance program operated by the NSA requires the maximum in speed and agility, since even a very short delay may make the difference between success and failure in preventing the next attack. And we cannot afford to fail.

Finally, let me explain why the NSA's terrorist surveillance program fully complies with the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

The Fourth Amendment has never been understood to require warrants in all circumstances. For instance, before you get on an airplane, or enter most government buildings, you and your belongings may be searched without a warrant. There are also searches at the border or when you've been pulled over at a checkpoint designed to identify folks driving while under the influence. Those searches do not violate the Fourth Amendment because they involve "special needs" beyond routine law enforcement. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that these circumstances make such a search reasonable even without a warrant.

The terrorist surveillance program is subject to the checks of the Fourth Amendment, and it clearly fits within this "special needs" category. This is by no means a novel conclusion. The Justice Department during the Clinton Administration testified in 1994 that the President has inherent authority under the Constitution to conduct foreign intelligence searches of the private homes of U.S. citizens in the United States without a warrant, and that such warrantless searches are permissible under the Fourth Amendment.

The key question, then, under the Fourth Amendment is not whether there was a warrant, but whether the search was reasonable. This requires balancing privacy with the government's interests -- and ensuring that we maintain appropriate safeguards. We've done that here.

No one takes lightly the concerns that have been raised about the interception of communications inside the United States. But this terrorist surveillance program involves intercepting the international communications of persons reasonably believed to be members or agents of al Qaeda or affiliated terrorist organizations. This surveillance is narrowly focused and fully consistent with the traditional forms of enemy surveillance found to be necessary in all previous armed conflicts. The authorities are reviewed approximately every 45 days to ensure that the al Qaeda threat to the national security of this nation continues to exist. Moreover, the standard applied -- "reasonable basis to believe" -- is essentially the same as the traditional Fourth Amendment probable cause standard. As the Supreme Court has stated, "The substance of all the definitions of probable cause is a reasonable ground for belief of guilt."

If we conduct this reasonable surveillance -- while taking special care to preserve civil liberties as we have -- we can all continue to enjoy our rights and freedoms for generations to come.

I close with a reminder that just last week, al Jazeera aired an audio tape in which Osama bin Laden promised a new round of attacks on the United States. Bin Laden said the proof of his promise is, and I quote, "the explosions you have seen in the capitals of European nations." He continued, quote, "The delay in similar operations happening in America has not been because of failure to break through your security measures. The operations are under preparation and you will see them in your homes the minute they are through with preparations." Close quote.

We've seen and heard these types of warnings before. And we've seen what the result of those preparations can be -- thousands of our fellow citizens who perished in the attacks of 9/11.

This Administration has chosen to act now to prevent the next attack, rather than wait until it is too late. This Administration has chosen to utilize every necessary and lawful tool at its disposal. It is hard to imagine a President who wouldn't elect to use these tools in defense of the American people -- in fact, I think it would be irresponsible to do otherwise.

The terrorist surveillance program is both necessary and lawful. Accordingly, the President has done with this lawful authority the only responsible thing: use it. He has exercised, and will continue to exercise, his authority to protect Americans and the cherished freedoms of the American people.

Thank you. May God continue to bless the United States of America.

(end transcript)

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

January 25, 2006 at 07:51 PM in NSA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Spy Agency Removes Illegal Tracking Files

Spy Agency Removes Illegal Tracking Files - New York Times

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 29, 2005

By The Associated Press The National Security Agency's Internet site has been placing files on visitors' computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite strict federal rules banning most files of that type.

The files, known as cookies, disappeared after a privacy activist complained and The Associated Press made inquiries this week. Agency officials acknowledged yesterday that they had made a mistake.

Nonetheless, the issue raised questions about privacy at the agency, which is on the defensive over reports of an eavesdropping program.

"Considering the surveillance power the N.S.A. has, cookies are not exactly a major concern," said Ari Schwartz, associate director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a privacy advocacy group in Washington. "But it does show a general lack of understanding about privacy rules when they are not even following the government's very basic rules for Web privacy."

Until Tuesday, the N.S.A. site created two cookie files that do not expire until 2035.

Don Weber, an agency spokesman, said in a statement yesterday that the use of the so-called persistent cookies resulted from a recent software upgrade.

Normally, Mr. Weber said, the site uses temporary cookies that are automatically deleted when users close their Web browsers, which is legally permissible. But he said the software in use was shipped with the persistent cookies turned on.

"After being tipped to the issue, we immediately disabled the cookies," Mr. Weber said.

Cookies are widely used at commercial Web sites and can make Internet browsing more convenient by letting sites remember user preferences. For example, visitors would not have to repeatedly enter passwords at sites that require them.

Privacy advocates point out that cookies can also track Web surfing, even if no personal information is collected.

In a 2003 memorandum, the Office of Management and Budget at the White House prohibited federal agencies from using persistent cookies - those that are not automatically deleted right away - unless there is a "compelling need."

A senior official must sign off on any such use, and an agency that uses them must disclose and detail their use in its privacy policy.

Peter Swire, a Clinton administration official who had drafted an earlier version of the cookie guidelines, said that clear notice was a must, and that "vague assertions of national security, such as exist in the N.S.A. policy, are not sufficient."

Daniel Brandt, a privacy activist who discovered the N.S.A. cookies, said mistakes happen, "but in any case, it's illegal."

Richard M. Smith, a security consultant in Cambridge, Mass., questioned whether persistent cookies would even be of much use to the security agency. They are great for news sites and others with repeat visitors, Mr. Smith said, but the agency's site does not appear to have enough fresh content to warrant more than occasional visits.

The government first issued strict rules on cookies in 2000 after disclosures that the White House drug policy office had used them to track computer users viewing its online antidrug advertising. Even a year later, a Congressional study found 300 cookies still on the Web sites of 23 agencies.

In 2002, the C.I.A. removed cookies it had inadvertently placed at one of its sites after Mr. Brandt called it to the agency's attention.

December 30, 2005 at 02:25 AM in NSA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Rice authorized National Security Agency to spy on UN Security Council in run-up to war, former officials say

The Raw Story | Rice authorized National Security Agency to spy on UN Security Council in run-up to war, former officials say

Jason Leopold

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President Bush and other top officials in his administration used the National Security Agency to secretly wiretap the home and office telephones and monitor private email accounts of members of the United Nations Security Council in early 2003 to determine how foreign delegates would vote on a U.N. resolution that paved the way for the U.S.-led war in Iraq, NSA documents show.

Two former NSA officials familiar with the agency's campaign to spy on U.N. members say then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice authorized the plan at the request of President Bush, who wanted to know how delegates were going to vote. Rice did not immediately return a call for comment.

The former officials said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also participated in discussions about the plan, which involved "stepping up" efforts to eavesdrop on diplomats.

A spokeswoman at the White House who refused to give her name also would not comment, and pointed to a March 3, 2003 press briefing by former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer when questions about U.N. spying were first raised.

"As a matter of long-standing policy, the administration never comments on anything involving any people involved in intelligence," Fleischer said. "So I'm not saying yes and I'm not saying no."

Disclosure of the wiretaps and the monitoring of U.N. members' email came on the eve of the Iraq war in the British-based Observer. The leak -- which the paper acquired in the form of an email via a British translator -- came amid a U.S. push urging U.N. members to vote in favor of a resolution that said Iraq was in violation of U.N. resolution 1441, asserting that it had failed to rid the country of weapons of mass destruction.

News of the NSA spying on the U.N. received scant coverage in U.S. newspapers at the time. But with the explosive domestic spying report published in the New York Times last week, a closer examination of pre-war spying may shed light on whether the Bush administration has used the NSA for its own political purposes, as opposed to tracking down communications regarding potential terrorist threats against the U.S.

The leaked NSA email detailing the agency's spy tactics against the U.N. was written Jan. 31, 2003 by Chief of Staff for Regional Targets Frank Koza. In the email, Koza asked an undisclosed number of NSA and British intelligence officials to "pay attention to existing non-UN Security Council Member UN-related and domestic comms (home and office telephones) for anything useful related to Security Council deliberations."

One intelligence source who spoke to RAW STORY said top White House officials and some Republican members of Congress had debated in December 2002 whether to step up the surveillance of U.N. officials to include eavesdropping on home telephone and personal email accounts. Some feared that in the event it was discovered, it would further erode relations between the U.S. and the U.N.

The source added that U.S. spying on the U.N. isn't new.

"It's part of the job," the intelligence source said. "Everyone knows it's being done."

Eavesdropping on U.N. diplomats is authorized under the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Services Act. However, it's still considered a violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which says that "The receiving state shall permit and protect free communication on the part of the mission for all official purposes... The official correspondence of the mission shall be inviolable."

According to one former official, "The administration pushed the envelope by tapping their home phones."

Koza's email, a copy of which is included at the end of this report, says the "Agency is mounting a surge particularly directed at the UN Security Council (UNSC) members (minus US and GBR of course) for insights as to how to membership is reacting to the on-going debate RE: Iraq, plans to vote on any related resolutions, what related policies/ negotiating positions they may be considering, alliances/ dependencies, etc."

"The whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals or to head off surprises. In RT, that means a QRC surge effort to revive/ create efforts against UNSC members Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea, as well as extra focus on Pakistan UN matters."

Koza's email was sent out to NSA and British intelligence officials through a top secret surveillance network set up by the NSA, the British Government Communication Headquarters and similar intelligence agencies based in Australia, New Zealand and Canada known as Echelon.

Moreover, the email was distributed just four days after Hans Blix filed his Iraq weapons report with the U.N.

It was leaked to a handful of media outlets in the U.S. and U.K. by Katharine Tersea Gun, a former translator for British intelligence. Gun was arrested in November 2003 and charged with violating her country's Official Secrets Act. She said she felt compelled to leak the memo because she believed the U.S. and Britain were about to launch an illegal war.

"Any disclosures that may have been made were justified on the following grounds: because they exposed serious illegality and wrongdoing on the part of the U.S. Government who attempted to subvert our own security services and, to prevent wide-scale death and casualties among ordinary Iraqi people and UK forces in the course of an illegal war," she said in a statement at the time.

In his book "Plan of Attack," Bob Woodward, deputy managing editor of the Washington Post, said the administration was also spying on Hans Blix, the U.N. weapons inspector sent to Iraq to look for WMDs.

"One of the things that's gone unnoticed is national intelligence assets spying on Hans Blix," Woodward told the Council on Foreign Relations on June 9, 2004 "And Bush was getting these reports and felt that there was incongruity between what Blix was saying publicly and what he was actually doing. It makes it very clear we were wiretapping Hans Blix."

In an article for Counterpunch, media critic Norman Solomon noted that the U.S. media barely covered the U.N. spying.

"Nearly 96 hours after the Observer had reported it, I called Times deputy foreign editor Alison Smale and asked why not," Solomon writes. "'We would normally expect to do our own intelligence reporting,' Smale replied. She added that 'we could get no confirmation or comment.' In other words, U.S. intelligence officials refused to confirm or discuss the memo -- so the Times did not see fit to report on it."

The Washington Post printed a 514-word article on a back page with the headline "Spying Report No Shock to U.N," while the Los Angeles Times emphasized from the outset that U.S. spy activities at the United Nations are "long-standing," Solomon wrote.

Solomon says his research turned up only one story which took the spying seriously -- a Mar. 4, 2003 piece in the Baltimore Sun.

The leaked NSA email which revealed the spying follows.
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To: [Recipients withheld] From: FRANK KOZA, Def Chief of Staff (Regional Targets) CIV/NSA Sent on Jan 31 2003 0:16 Subject: Reflections of Iraq Debate/Votes at UN-RT Actions + Potential for Related Contributions Importance: HIGH Top Secret//COMINT//X1 All, As you've likely heard by now, the Agency is mounting a surge particularly directed at the UN Security Council (UNSC) members (minus US and GBR of course) for insights as to how to membership is reacting to the on-going debate RE: Iraq, plans to vote on any related resolutions, what related policies/ negotiating positions they may be considering, alliances/ dependencies, etc - the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to US goals or to head off surprises. In RT, that means a QRC surge effort to revive/ create efforts against UNSC members Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea, as well as extra focus on Pakistan UN matters. We've also asked ALL RT topi's to emphasize and make sure they pay attention to existing non-UNSC member UN-related and domestic comms for anything useful related to the UNSC deliberations/ debates/ votes. We have a lot of special UN-related diplomatic coverage (various UN delegations) from countries not sitting on the UNSC right now that could contribute related perspectives/ insights/ whatever. We recognize that we can't afford to ignore this possible source. We'd appreciate your support in getting the word to your analysts who might have similar, more in-direct access to valuable information from accesses in your product lines. I suspect that you'll be hearing more along these lines in formal channels - especially as this effort will probably peak (at least for this specific focus) in the middle of next week, following the SecState's presentation to the UNSC. Thanks for your help
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(Note: Slight edit made for clarification purposes.)

December 27, 2005 at 11:10 PM in NSA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report

Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report - New York Times

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
Published: December 24, 2005

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.

The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said.

As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.

The government's collection and analysis of phone and Internet traffic have raised questions among some law enforcement and judicial officials familiar with the program. One issue of concern to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has reviewed some separate warrant applications growing out of the N.S.A.'s surveillance program, is whether the court has legal authority over calls outside the United States that happen to pass through American-based telephonic "switches," according to officials familiar with the matter.

"There was a lot of discussion about the switches" in conversations with the court, a Justice Department official said, referring to the gateways through which much of the communications traffic flows. "You're talking about access to such a vast amount of communications, and the question was, How do you minimize something that's on a switch that's carrying such large volumes of traffic? The court was very, very concerned about that."

Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving people with known links to Al Qaeda.

What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation.

The current and former government officials who discussed the program were granted anonymity because it remains classified.

Bush administration officials declined to comment on Friday on the technical aspects of the operation and the N.S.A.'s use of broad searches to look for clues on terrorists. Because the program is highly classified, many details of how the N.S.A. is conducting it remain unknown, and members of Congress who have pressed for a full Congressional inquiry say they are eager to learn more about the program's operational details, as well as its legality.

Officials in the government and the telecommunications industry who have knowledge of parts of the program say the N.S.A. has sought to analyze communications patterns to glean clues from details like who is calling whom, how long a phone call lasts and what time of day it is made, and the origins and destinations of phone calls and e-mail messages. Calls to and from Afghanistan, for instance, are known to have been of particular interest to the N.S.A. since the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials said.

This so-called "pattern analysis" on calls within the United States would, in many circumstances, require a court warrant if the government wanted to trace who calls whom.

The use of similar data-mining operations by the Bush administration in other contexts has raised strong objections, most notably in connection with the Total Information Awareness system, developed by the Pentagon for tracking terror suspects, and the Department of Homeland Security's Capps program for screening airline passengers. Both programs were ultimately scrapped after public outcries over possible threats to privacy and civil liberties.

But the Bush administration regards the N.S.A.'s ability to trace and analyze large volumes of data as critical to its expanded mission to detect terrorist plots before they can be carried out, officials familiar with the program say. Administration officials maintain that the system set up by Congress in 1978 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does not give them the speed and flexibility to respond fully to terrorist threats at home.

A former technology manager at a major telecommunications company said that since the Sept. 11 attacks, the leading companies in the industry have been storing information on calling patterns and giving it to the federal government to aid in tracking possible terrorists.

"All that data is mined with the cooperation of the government and shared with them, and since 9/11, there's been much more active involvement in that area," said the former manager, a telecommunications expert who did not want his name or that of his former company used because of concern about revealing trade secrets.

Such information often proves just as valuable to the government as eavesdropping on the calls themselves, the former manager said.

"If they get content, that's useful to them too, but the real plum is going to be the transaction data and the traffic analysis," he said. "Massive amounts of traffic analysis information - who is calling whom, who is in Osama Bin Laden's circle of family and friends - is used to identify lines of communication that are then given closer scrutiny."

Several officials said that after President Bush's order authorizing the N.S.A. program, senior government officials arranged with officials of some of the nation's largest telecommunications companies to gain access to switches that act as gateways at the borders between the United States' communications networks and international networks. The identities of the corporations involved could not be determined.

The switches are some of the main arteries for moving voice and some Internet traffic into and out of the United States, and, with the globalization of the telecommunications industry in recent years, many international-to-international calls are also routed through such American switches.

One outside expert on communications privacy who previously worked at the N.S.A. said that to exploit its technological capabilities, the American government had in the last few years been quietly encouraging the telecommunications industry to increase the amount of international traffic that is routed through American-based switches.

The growth of that transit traffic had become a major issue for the intelligence community, officials say, because it had not been fully addressed by 1970's-era laws and regulations governing the N.S.A. Now that foreign calls were being routed through switches on American soil, some judges and law enforcement officials regarded eavesdropping on those calls as a possible violation of those decades-old restrictions, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court-approved warrants for domestic surveillance.

Historically, the American intelligence community has had close relationships with many communications and computer firms and related technical industries. But the N.S.A.'s backdoor access to major telecommunications switches on American soil with the cooperation of major corporations represents a significant expansion of the agency's operational capability, according to current and former government officials.

Phil Karn, a computer engineer and technology expert at a major West Coast telecommunications company, said access to such switches would be significant. "If the government is gaining access to the switches like this, what you're really talking about is the capability of an enormous vacuum operation to sweep up data," he said.

December 26, 2005 at 01:20 AM in NSA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

British terror plot foiled by the spies from the Puzzle Palace

Adam Nathan, Gareth Walsh and David Leppard
Message intercept linked to Al-Qaeda

THE tip-off arrived in a sterile computer room deep inside the Puzzle Palace one cold morning in February. The machine’s gentle whirring was to spark a sequence of events that led to last week’s cracking of a suspected bomb plot in Britain.
Formally known as Fort Meade, the Puzzle Palace is the Maryland headquarters of America’s National Security Agency (NSA) and is the world’s largest electronic eavesdropping centre.

Its giant computers monitor millions of phone calls and e-mails each day. Most are innocent. A few weeks ago, as the printer fed out an automatic translation of a communication thought to be between Britain and Pakistan, the NSA�s analysts knew they had to act fast.

On the other side of the Atlantic, some of Britain�s most senior terrorist-hunters were alerted. Within hours of the printout, they had gathered in London.

Those present included David Veness, head of special operations at Scotland Yard, and Eliza Manningham-Buller, director-general of MI5, the security service. Also present were a sprinkling of officers from MI6, the foreign intelligence service, and GCHQ, Britain�s own version of the Puzzle Palace based in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

The meeting marked the beginning of Operation Crevice, an international anti-terrorist sweep involving as many as 1,000 police officers in Britain alone.

Detectives from the National Crime Squad (NCS) were redeployed from dealing with organised crime. A large part of the surveillance capability of Scotland Yard was switched to Crevice. �It takes up to 40 officers to keep tabs on one suspect and we pulled in absolutely everyone to make sure we didn�t mess up on this one,� said one Metropolitan police commander involved in the operation.

It resulted last week in the seizure of half a ton of ammonium nitrate fertiliser in a lock-up near Heathrow. The chemical, widely used in home-made terrorist bombs, would have been enough to wreak havoc on the scale of some of the IRA�s most devastating attacks. The operation, which is continuing, has so far led to 10 arrests, including those of nine Britons, eight of Pakistani origin and one from an Algerian family. A tenth arrest was made in Canada.

The reason the original tip, picked up by NSA satellites, had been given such high priority was that it appeared to be instructions for an attack passing between Al-Qaeda commanders in Pakistan and associates in Britain.

The sender was apparently in the circle around Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, one of the world�s most active and feared terrorists. Zarqawi has been blamed for masterminding synchronised attacks on the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and Karbala that killed 280 people during a Muslim religious festival in March.

He has previously been linked to Islamic militants in Britain. For months now, the growing wisdom among intelligence experts has been that the old Al-Qaeda organisation had broken up � still a potent danger, but consisting of loosely linked Islamist groups around the world sharing a similar anti-western agenda.

The old command structure, it was thought, had been scattered by the fall of the Taliban and the destruction of training camps in Afghanistan, together with the worldwide roundup of suspects. Here, 2� years into the war on terror, was evidence that Osama Bin Laden�s lieutenants were issuing orders to militants in Britain.

�We all thought there were cells operating in isolation and had been told that the Al-Qaeda network had been destroyed from the top when suddenly we find a chain of command leading back to Pakistan,� said a senior Scotland Yard source.

Elements of the SAS�s counter-terrorism unit were called up to support the police operation. Eventually, the round-the-clock monitoring � by electronic means and agents on the ground � paid off. Police and MI5 officers picked up information that led them to a self- storage unit in Hanwell, west London.

A specialist Scotland Yard team was given orders to break into the building, but to leave no trace of its presence. Inside, the team found the half ton of ammonium nitrate. The IRA used it as explosive, but it has also been used in attacks such as last year�s suicide bombs in Istanbul, which killed the British consul and many others.

A decision was made to ensure the explosives could not blow up, said a Scotland Yard source, who would not specify how this was achieved. �Let�s just say we did something to make it safe for the public no matter what happened,� he said.

Finally, the order was given for the swoop that brought the first phase of Operation Crevice to a spectacular close. The first move was in Ottawa. Mohammad Momin Khawaja, 29, a software developer who was born to Pakistani parents but brought up in Canada, was arrested at work while police smashed down the door of his home.

Investigators claim he had a �pivotal role� in the alleged plot, as well as links to Saudi Arabian extremists.

About 12 hours after Khawaja was pulled in, the main phase began in Britain at dawn on Tuesday. Officers launched a series of raids across southeast England.

All of those picked up are now being held under anti-terrorism legislation at Paddington Green, the high-security police station in west London. Police are trying to determine who was actually involved in the bomb threat, who bought the bomb material and what was the intended target.

Since the arrests, attention has turned to the backgrounds of those arrested and fears of �home-grown� terrorism. More than half the suspects come from the Crawley area of West Sussex, mainly from Langley Green, an apparently innocuous suburb.

Langley Green has one of the highest percentages of ethnic minority inhabitants south of London. Almost a quarter of residents described themselves as Asian or British Asian in the 2001 census.

The growth in numbers from the subcontinent has led to some tensions with the white population � and the minority communities are themselves divided by heroin and crack cocaine on the one hand and Islam on the other.

�There is a big split here between the religious and the druggies. You are either in one camp or the other,� said one local Pakistani youth.

Most of the men picked up are thought to have been far too young to have been to Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.

One of those arrested, a teenager, was hoping to go to university. All were described by bemused locals as models of suburban respectability. Most of those detained were British citizens, who had gone to local secondary schools and in some cases gained good GCSE results.

By Thursday evening, four-strong forensic teams were continuing to trawl through at least six properties in Langley Green. At one address, the patio was being dug up.

Sources close to the investigation said the searches were part of an effort to locate detonators and boosters that would be needed to set off a bomb. Ground was also being dug up in woodland near Crawley police station.

Omar Bakri Mohammed, leader of the radical Muslim group al-Muhajiroun, last week claimed 40 of his organisation�s members had, in 2000, formed an ultra-radical splinter group in Crawley after complaining that he and his followers were not sufficiently hardline. The al-Muhajiroun extremists are believed to have infiltrated the Langley Green mosque near the men�s homes.

�There were rumours that people in Crawley were being encouraged by someone at Langley Green mosque to go on jihad and for terrorism,� said one Muslim youth.

Last week, the mosque denied the allegations.

Less than a week before the raids, websites operated by some members of the British arm of al-Muhajiroun were taken offline, apparently without the group�s co-operation.

Anyone trying to visit the pages was confronted with a message telling them that access was forbidden and giving a stern warning that their request �should not be repeated�.

Just hours after the arrests, however, one of the sites displayed a warning suggesting a repeat of the Madrid bombing �is promised in the UK�.

Some of those arrested are believed to be computer experts. During the raids, police seized eight laptops and five desktop computers from an internet cafe in Langley Green.

Police computer experts are scouring e-mail records from the cafe for links between the arrested suspects and senior militants in Pakistan, as the intelligence agencies try to establish links between nine British terror suspects and senior militants in Pakistan.

As detectives continued to question the young men suspected of plotting a huge bomb attack in Britain, MI5 and MI6 pressed on with their investigations into influential foreign figures who might have been advising them.

�More will surface on the external aspects of this alleged plot,� said a source familiar with the operation. Officials made it clear that Pakistan was in their sights.

Several of the suspects had visited Pakistan and one had been to disputed region of Kashmir. Of those arrested on Tuesday, one is 32, but the others are all under 22 � three of them teenagers. They are not particularly religious, intelligence sources say.

As Operation Crevice progressed, news came through of the Madrid bombings on March 11, in which 191 people were killed.

Shortly afterwards, Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said a similar attack on this country was �inevitable�.

Police said that there would be arrests in Britain shortly in connection with the financing of the Madrid attacks.

Police believe that Al-Qaeda had been planning to hit �soft� targets in Britain such as nightclubs, buses and shopping centres.

Scotland Yard said there were concerns that a truck filled with explosives could be parked unnoticed near a busy nightspot and called for greater public vigilance. �We urge anyone who sees something suspicious to phone the anti-terrorist hotline,� said a spokesman.

Copyright 2004 Times Newspapers Ltd.

April 7, 2004 at 11:29 PM in NSA | Permalink | TrackBack (169) | Top of page | Blog Home