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NYT: Bush's NSA Program a Flop

By Jeralyn, Section War on Terror
Posted on Mon Jan 16, 2006 at 08:08:04 PM EST
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The New York Times has another first on the warrantless NSA electronic surveillance program Bush used after 9/11. Turns out, it was a flop.

In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.

But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.

FBI agents complained:

The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of foreign-related phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.

Then FBI Director Robert Mueller questioned the legality of the program but ended up accepting the Justice Department's assurances.

In sum,

President Bush has characterized the eavesdropping program, which focused on the international communications of some Americans and others in the United States, as a "vital tool" against terrorism; Vice President Dick Cheney has said it has saved "thousands of lives."

But the results of the program look very different to some officials charged with tracking terrorism in the United States. More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, including some in the small circle who knew of the secret eavesdropping program and how it played out at the F.B.I., said the torrent of tips led them to few potential terrorists inside the country they did not know of from other sources and diverted agents from counterterrorism work they viewed as more productive.

And what a surprise, Bush exaggerated:

But, along with several British counterterrorism officials, some of the officials questioned assertions by the Bush administration that the program was the key to uncovering a plot to detonate fertilizer bombs in London in 2004. The F.B.I. and other law enforcement officials also expressed doubts about the importance of the program's role in another case named by administration officials as a success in the fight against terrorism, an aborted scheme to topple the Brooklyn Bridge with a blow torch.

Some officials said that in both cases, they had already learned of the plans through prisoner interrogations or other means.

One more:

By the administration's account, the N.S.A. eavesdropping helped lead investigators to Iyman Faris, an Ohio truck driver and friend of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is believed to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Faris spoke of toppling the Brooklyn Bridge by taking a torch to its suspension cables, but concluded that it would not work. He is now serving a 20-year sentence in a federal prison.

But as in the London fertilizer bomb case, some officials with direct knowledge of the Faris case dispute that the N.S.A. information played a significant role.

[graphic created exclusively for TalkLeft by CL.]

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    NYT: Bush's NSA Program a Flop | 17 comments (17 topical)
    Re: NYT: Bush's NSA Program a Flop (none / 0) (#1)
    by ras on Mon Jan 16, 2006 at 08:51:12 PM EST
    Bush sure caught the Left off-guard when the NYT reported the pgm and he reponded by saying, "Sure I did that. And I'll keep doing it, too." I don't think the Left has ever recovered. So, now that the efforts to portray the pgm as illegal have failed, and the efforts to portray it as a massive assault on civil liberties have also failed, the latest, greatest spin is to declare it a flop. That won't work, either, but hey, don't lemme stop you from trying! The Right's gonna gain in the midterms, not cuz it's done anything to raise its game, but simply cuz the Left has lowered its own.

    Re: NYT: Bush's NSA Program a Flop (none / 0) (#2)
    by Edger on Mon Jan 16, 2006 at 08:52:10 PM EST
    So bushco can't even do something stupid and illegal, and do it right?

    Re: NYT: Bush's NSA Program a Flop (none / 0) (#3)
    by scarshapedstar on Mon Jan 16, 2006 at 09:10:10 PM EST
    Shorter Ras: "It's just a flesh wound!"

    Re: NYT: Bush's NSA Program a Flop (none / 0) (#4)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Mon Jan 16, 2006 at 09:13:04 PM EST
    Thousands of tips a month? That's considerably more than the hundreds that Bush spoke of. What we're talking about are false positives being generated by computers capable of data mining electronic traffic. The idea is that the computers are looking for certain words. Tice, whistleblower and former employee of the NSA, has mentioned that a certain amount of human analysis is involved before being passed on to field agents. That could easily involve tens of thousands of more people who are more than just a piece of data; what comes out could involve a name, a phone number and private information about the person that an analyst may view. I have a question and I hope Congress can answer it. If I click on a story from a news organization outside the United States and the story concerns any number of things in the Middle East, certain key words can easily show up. Do the NSA computers record that kind of traffic? If so, journalists, historians, foreign policy experts, students of international affairs can have their names sucked into this secret system. Even a citizen simply trying to be informed can be sucked in. We have a problem. And that's assuming the NSA is not using the same technology for calls that are only within the United States. We clearly need to understand what's going on and why the US Constitution is being ignored. I just listened to Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales on Larry King. He sounds more like a personal lawyer defending Bush than someone working for the American people and trying to uphold our constitution. Disgusting.

    Re: NYT: Bush's NSA Program a Flop (none / 0) (#5)
    by ras on Mon Jan 16, 2006 at 09:20:43 PM EST
    SSS, No, no flesh wound at all. If it is, it's on the Left. They're the ones whose first two attacks failed and have therefore been forced to try a third approach. First two didn't work out very well, did they? That's why the NYT made the change. If they'd been landing blows, they wouldda kept punching, but that wasn't what happened.

    Re: NYT: Bush's NSA Program a Flop (none / 0) (#6)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Mon Jan 16, 2006 at 09:47:31 PM EST
    Frankly, I am very suspicious of this news item, with its not-so-subtle use of the past tense to describe what the NSA is doing. It sounds like the latest line of Bushco spin to be floated out through the NYT. And of course, along with the story comes the neocon spin from the likes of ras -- annoying and irrelevant as always -- the only purpose of which is to shift the focus of public debate and so to distract people from noticing from the real point. No doubt the next piece of NYT investigative journalism will report that the domestic surveillance program was an experiment that never amounted to much and was abandoned. A likely story! What are all those NSA employees doing now -- has anyone heard rumors of massive layoffs at the NSA?

    Re: NYT: Bush's NSA Program a Flop (none / 0) (#7)
    by ras on Mon Jan 16, 2006 at 10:09:32 PM EST
    Padfoot, I had a similar thought, that with that many tips/month, it sounded a lot more like an automated pattern-matching system ... but why so many? Even the most cursory of design sessions will see the scope of the tips estimated, and I have yet to meet a manager or a bureaucrat who doesn't l-o-v-e to discuss "scope." It's not something they'd be likely to miss. So I wonder if what the pgm did/does is to pattern-match the possibilities, then - similar to Google - order it according to a relevance algorithm, with the highest priority cases at the top. That would appeal to a bureaucracy that had to deal with other bureaucracies. They just tell the other bureaucracies to "look into what you can from this list." Their own cya is in place, in that they sure did flag every possibility. If, in hindsight, any overlooked item becomes significant (i.e. after an attack), well, hey, don't blame us, we flagged it as a danger, y'know. Almost as good, manpower complaints are somebody else's prob, too. Thus, the NSA does a good job at what it's supposed to do (seriously) but also manages to fob off the blame for the inevitable mistakes onto another agency. Smooth.

    Re: NYT: Bush's NSA Program a Flop (none / 0) (#8)
    by scarshapedstar on Mon Jan 16, 2006 at 10:10:14 PM EST
    No, no flesh wound at all. If it is, it's on the Left. They're the ones whose first two attacks failed and have therefore been forced to try a third approach. First two didn't work out very well, did they? That's why the NYT made the change. If they'd been landing blows, they wouldda kept punching, but that wasn't what happened.
    So, your argument is that as a scandal gets worse and more charges pile on... that shows the accusers' position is weakening? In that case, let me add to my previous post: "C'mere, I'll bite yer legs off!"

    Re: NYT: Bush's NSA Program a Flop (none / 0) (#9)
    by ras on Mon Jan 16, 2006 at 11:48:56 PM EST
    SSS, In that case, let me add to my previous post: "C'mere, I'll bite yer legs off!" Well, a little kinkier than I expected, actually, but alright!

    Re: NYT: Bush's NSA Program a Flop (none / 0) (#10)
    by roger on Tue Jan 17, 2006 at 05:14:53 AM EST
    The FBI agents thought that the program was illegal, but that's ok, ras has given his blessing. I am sure that everyone feels much better now

    Re: NYT: Bush's NSA Program a Flop (none / 0) (#11)
    by Edger on Tue Jan 17, 2006 at 05:31:43 AM EST
    Roger: that's ok, ras has given his blessing. What ras has forgotten is that his masters lie. To everyone. About everything. Every time they speak. And when they told ras his opinion mattered, well... they lied.

    Re: NYT: Bush's NSA Program a Flop (none / 0) (#12)
    by jimakaPPJ on Tue Jan 17, 2006 at 06:27:19 AM EST
    Et al - What you are missing is this, from the post:
    But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.
    What that says is X number were valuable in investigations and preventing terrorists attacks. That is what you want, isn't it?

    Re: NYT: Bush's NSA Program a Flop (none / 0) (#13)
    by The Heretik on Tue Jan 17, 2006 at 06:34:21 AM EST
    I would jump in here to say something about the logical flaws of stating a premise as proof of premise re: Ras, but I am falling down laughing a little too much to get my fingers back up on the keyboard. This thread has been cited for the just a fleshwound comments in the roundup at A Whole Lot of Nothing.

    Re: NYT: Bush's NSA Program a Flop (none / 0) (#14)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Tue Jan 17, 2006 at 09:06:24 AM EST
    What that says is X number were valuable in investigations and preventing terrorists attacks. That is what you want, isn't it?
    No Jim, that is called a fishing expedition by the executive branch of the government.

    Re: NYT: Bush's NSA Program a Flop (none / 0) (#15)
    by Slado on Tue Jan 17, 2006 at 10:06:22 AM EST
    If you take 5minutes to actually read the article you will notice that the article is actually good journalism and doesn't reflect the tag line. The artcile should have been titles "Some Security officials question quality of NSA leads". But in typical NYT style a flasy headline that doesn't reflect the story is better because it relfects the NYT's bias. The article goes on to quote NAMED officials... "I can say unequivocally that we have gotten information through this program that would not otherwise have been available," General Hayden said. The White House and the F.B.I. declined to comment on the program or its results. "It isn't at all surprising to me that people not accustomed to doing this would say, 'Boy, this is an awful lot of work to get a tiny bit of information,' " said Adm. Bobby R. Inman, a former N.S.A. director. "But the rejoinder to that is, Have you got anything better?" So there appears to be a beurocratic grudge match over this issue. Imagine that? But other then some UNNAMED officials we have no proof other then inuendo that the program was a flop. The bigger point is how much information would we have had to filter through to find out the the 19 terrorists were living in the U.S. How many phone callse etc.... I thought we were supposed to be getting better about communicating and sifting through info? Not complaining about having to do our jobs.

    Re: NYT: Bush's NSA Program a Flop (none / 0) (#16)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Tue Jan 17, 2006 at 04:11:57 PM EST
    Actually, the bigger question is that if bush wasn't on (perpetual) vacation he might have responded to "Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside The United States." It didn't take illegal wiretaps, it didn't take spying on Americans, it just took an ability to read and understand simple declaritive sentences. And just like when the Clinton admin stopped the Y2K plot, Americans would have applauded.

    Re: NYT: Bush's NSA Program a Flop (none / 0) (#17)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Tue Jan 17, 2006 at 04:38:37 PM EST
    The discussion of whether the program was a flop, whether it found any substantive new information or terrorists, whether it was efficient use of NSA or FBI time, etc. is all interesting in characterizing just what has been done, but is secondary. The bottom line is that the program was A) illegal, B) without ANY accountability, and C) the president and others in the administration are unapologetic. We have no way to actually know the scope of the investigations. Such unchecked power is so clearly unconstitutional, its boggling. That such a program would be run when a dedicated court exists, from which authorization can be obtained up to 3 days after a wiretap, indicates that there was NO intent to follow the law. That these undisputed facts are being shrugged off by so many, and that outrage is not the media tone, just underlines to me the partisan tunnel vision of the public and most media. The undercurrent of outrage is clear on the left, but Democrats appear to be politically beholden to the middle. "Concern" not outrage has taken the wind from the attack. And we are left discussing the efficacy of the trampling of the Constitution. When is violating the constitution not news? That Gonzales (and the like) "... sounds more like a personal lawyer defending Bush than someone working for the American people and trying to uphold our constitution" and the Congress, as well, not doing their duty to the law are the undemocratic and unAmerican practices that we all should be outraged against.

    NYT: Bush's NSA Program a Flop | 17 comments (17 topical)