Read Online Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror by Michael V. Hayden - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Michael V. Hayden
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times. Half as many landlines were laid in the last six years of the 1990s as in the whole previous history of the world. In that same decade . . . international telephone traffic went from 38 billion minutes to over 100 billion. This year [2002], the world’spopulation will spend over 180 billion minutes on the phone in international calls alone.”
I admitted that I had under-resourced the counterterrorism mission when it came to linguists and analysts but pointed out that “if these hearings were about a war that had broken out in Korea or a crisis in the Taiwan Straits, if we had been surprised by conflict in South Asia, if we had lost an aircraft over Iraq, or if American forces had suffered casualties in Bosnia or Kosovo—in any of these cases I would be here telling you that I had not put enough analysts or linguists against the problem.”
I ended by congratulating the committee for prompting a needed national dialogue on the balance between security and liberty. It was an oblique reference in open session to the challenges created by the Stellarwind program, a secret collection effort (see chapter 5) then under way but known to fewer than ten people in the crowded committee room. “I am not really helped by being reminded that I need more Arabic linguists or by someone second-guessing an obscure intercept sitting in our files that may make more sense today than it did two years ago. What I really need you to do is to talk to your constituents and find out where the American people want the line between security and liberty to be.”
There, in October 2002, I summed up the question of a decade later pretty well: “In the context of NSA’s mission, where do we draw the line between the government’s need for CT [counterterrorism] information about people in the United States and the privacy interests of people located in the United States?”
After Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 (chapter 21), NSA was accused of indifference to and wanton violations of American privacy. Neither accusation was true. By the way, my 2002 question to the Congress went unreported (and largely unanswered).
I was pretty defensive; after all, the subtext of the questioning was pretty clearly, How did you guys let this happen? But I needn’t have been as defensive as I was. They were really going after George Tenet.
They were hammering George hard over CIA’s losing lock on a terrorist pair who had attended a meeting in Kuala Lumpur and thencontinued on to San Diego. The pair had lived in California in true name and ended up being two of the muscle guys on the American Airlines flight that hit the Pentagon. The record wasn’t clear about who knew what, or when and what CIA did or did not pass to the FBI. A few members were pressing George for the name of the analyst who had been most involved. George refused. At one point he feigned leaning over to reach into his briefcase, which was on the floor between us, and as his mouth passed by my ear, whispered, “I’m not giving her up. I’m not giving her up.”
It was a daylong hearing. No breaks. For us, anyway. Members came and went. Some got sandwiches from the cafeteria, brought them back, and ate them at the dais. At two o’clock, George turned to his legislative liaison chief and complained, “Are they ever going to feed us?”
They weren’t, so the chief sent out for egg salad sandwiches from the Senate cafeteria. When he delivered them to the three of us still at the witness table and still testifying, it seemed that every cameraman in Washington suddenly appeared in the well between our table and the dais ready to snap a potentially classic shot of witnesses chowing down. The sandwiches remained unopened and we remained unfed.
On the way out from the long day, I was intercepted by a family member of a 9/11 victim. She was still visibly grieving, and the day’s events surely gave her no comfort. I chatted with her for a short while, saying something like we
I admitted that I had under-resourced the counterterrorism mission when it came to linguists and analysts but pointed out that “if these hearings were about a war that had broken out in Korea or a crisis in the Taiwan Straits, if we had been surprised by conflict in South Asia, if we had lost an aircraft over Iraq, or if American forces had suffered casualties in Bosnia or Kosovo—in any of these cases I would be here telling you that I had not put enough analysts or linguists against the problem.”
I ended by congratulating the committee for prompting a needed national dialogue on the balance between security and liberty. It was an oblique reference in open session to the challenges created by the Stellarwind program, a secret collection effort (see chapter 5) then under way but known to fewer than ten people in the crowded committee room. “I am not really helped by being reminded that I need more Arabic linguists or by someone second-guessing an obscure intercept sitting in our files that may make more sense today than it did two years ago. What I really need you to do is to talk to your constituents and find out where the American people want the line between security and liberty to be.”
There, in October 2002, I summed up the question of a decade later pretty well: “In the context of NSA’s mission, where do we draw the line between the government’s need for CT [counterterrorism] information about people in the United States and the privacy interests of people located in the United States?”
After Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 (chapter 21), NSA was accused of indifference to and wanton violations of American privacy. Neither accusation was true. By the way, my 2002 question to the Congress went unreported (and largely unanswered).
I was pretty defensive; after all, the subtext of the questioning was pretty clearly, How did you guys let this happen? But I needn’t have been as defensive as I was. They were really going after George Tenet.
They were hammering George hard over CIA’s losing lock on a terrorist pair who had attended a meeting in Kuala Lumpur and thencontinued on to San Diego. The pair had lived in California in true name and ended up being two of the muscle guys on the American Airlines flight that hit the Pentagon. The record wasn’t clear about who knew what, or when and what CIA did or did not pass to the FBI. A few members were pressing George for the name of the analyst who had been most involved. George refused. At one point he feigned leaning over to reach into his briefcase, which was on the floor between us, and as his mouth passed by my ear, whispered, “I’m not giving her up. I’m not giving her up.”
It was a daylong hearing. No breaks. For us, anyway. Members came and went. Some got sandwiches from the cafeteria, brought them back, and ate them at the dais. At two o’clock, George turned to his legislative liaison chief and complained, “Are they ever going to feed us?”
They weren’t, so the chief sent out for egg salad sandwiches from the Senate cafeteria. When he delivered them to the three of us still at the witness table and still testifying, it seemed that every cameraman in Washington suddenly appeared in the well between our table and the dais ready to snap a potentially classic shot of witnesses chowing down. The sandwiches remained unopened and we remained unfed.
On the way out from the long day, I was intercepted by a family member of a 9/11 victim. She was still visibly grieving, and the day’s events surely gave her no comfort. I chatted with her for a short while, saying something like we
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