The Great War of Our Time: The CIA's Fight Against Terrorism--From Al Qa'ida to ISIS (39 page)

Within weeks of the leaks, terrorist organizations around the world were already starting to modify their actions in light of what Snowden disclosed. Communication sources dried up, tactics were changed. Terrorists moved to more secure communication platforms, they are using encryption, and they are avoiding electronic communications altogether. ISIS was one of the terrorist groups that learned from Snowden, and it is clear his actions played a role in the rise of ISIS. In short, Snowden has made the United States and our allies considerably less safe. I do not say this lightly: Americans may well die at the hands of terrorists because of Edward Snowden’s actions.

The damage caused by Snowden is not limited to terrorists’ adjusting their tactics. Foreign intelligence services have been studying the tremendous amount of intelligence data now available to them in the media and deriving work-arounds to thwart US collection efforts. You can bet that outfits like the Iranian MOIS—Iran’s CIA—have cells of smart young people studying the news articles and working on countermeasures. What is more, we know that foreign intelligence services will export their lessons learned. Outfits like the Russians and Chinese will study our tactics and then go to other, less sophisticated foreign intelligence services and offer tips about how to frustrate the American collection effort. In return they will be given access and influence that will only add to our woes.

One of the most troublesome leaks in this regard was the publication in the
Washington Post
of the intelligence community’s Congressional Budget Justification Book (CBJB) for Fiscal Year 2013. This is the IC’s so-called black budget. It lists where we are putting our priorities, where we think we are having our greatest intelligence successes, and where we still need to do more work. For our enemies, having it is like having the playbook of the opposing NFL
team. I guarantee you that the SVR, the Russian foreign intelligence service, would have paid millions of dollars for such a document. Instead they didn’t even have to invest $1.25, the cover price of the
Washington Post
, since the document is available free online. To its credit, the
Washington Post
, at the request of the DNI, did not publish the document in its entirety—protecting the most sensitive secrets—but still the damage was enormous.

This just refers to the material that has been disclosed. We don’t know what other documents Snowden and his media allies have in their possession that they will publish at some point. It is a good bet that there is more to come—and therefore more damage (material from the Snowden leaks was still being published at the writing of this book—in early 2015—eighteen months after Snowden walked away from the United States). And we do not know what information foreign intelligence services have already acquired of what was stolen but not yet disclosed.

One more word about damage and that relates to the earlier point about a loss of trust on the part of foreigners in American products. As a result of that lack of trust, US information technology companies have lost hundreds of millions of dollars in sales overseas. People now shy away from US IT products over a concern that the US government is using those products to collect intelligence. This will be the hardest loss of trust to restore. Apple’s move in the fall of 2014 to encrypt all data on its products so even Apple can’t get at it is a response to that loss of trust. We can only hope, for the sake of the American economy, that US firms will win that trust back.

What were Snowden’s motives? One thing I am sure of is that he was not acting out of a simple desire to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans or even citizens overseas. And this takes any idea that he was a whistle-blower off the table. The vast amount of information he stole and disclosed to journalists had nothing to do with privacy. Legitimate arguments can be had about how far
our intelligence community should go in collecting information that potentially could touch US citizens. I would suggest, however, that the appropriate place for those discussions to occur is before the congressional oversight committees. Every one of the hundreds of thousands of people who have access to classified information cannot be allowed to individually decide to disclose information just because they do not like a particular program. If Snowden felt that privacy rights were being trampled, there were avenues available for him to make his concerns known to our elected representatives of Congress. If he didn’t trust congressional overseers, departmental ombudsmen, and inspectors general to act, he could have easily taken one or two documents that solely addressed the privacy issue, put them in a plain brown envelope, and mailed them to the
Washington Post
(an action I am in no way endorsing, by the way). Instead he backed up a virtual tractor trailer and emptied a warehouse full of documents—the vast majority of which he could not possibly have read and few of which he would likely understand. Then he delivered the documents to a variety of international news organizations and God only knows who else.

So if is his primary motivation was not the protection of privacy and civil liberties, what was it? I don’t know for sure, but I strongly suspect that his actions were all about his favorite subject: Edward J. Snowden. It is clear that Snowden has an enormous ego—one that had to be quite large for him to convince himself that he knew better than two presidents (of different parties), the intelligence committees of multiple congresses, the Justice Department of two administrations, and tens of FISA court judges appointed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court. That is arrogance.

A full answer to the question of why he did what he did would require that he sit down for months with counterintelligence debriefers and top-notch psychologists. But my hunch is that Snowden is someone who felt underappreciated and insufficiently recognized
for his self-perceived brilliance while working for CIA and the NSA, a feeling that left a huge chip on his shoulder. This is a classic attitude that intelligence officers try to exploit among the enemy. You find someone working for the other side and tell him that he is not receiving the recognition, pay, and honors due him, and you provide those in return for the individual’s betrayal of his country. This was the psychology that led Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen to commit espionage. Let me stress that I am not suggesting here that Snowden was encouraged by a foreign intelligence service to act as he did—only that the same psychological dynamic can motivate someone to act alone and still do as much damage. In short, I think he wanted to show the world how smart he was by crippling the agencies that did not recognize his brilliance.

As big as his ego was in June 2013, it must have grown exponentially since. The media and international organizations have relentlessly pumped hot air into his inflated self-esteem. Institutions ranging from the European Union to politicians musing about putting him forward for the Nobel Peace Prize have undoubtedly added to his sense of worth. Some news organizations have awarded him icon status. I recall seeing one media outlet seek his wisdom on what foreign intelligence targets would be appropriate for the United States to collect against. The absurdity of this is stunning. It would be like going to the equipment manager for the Dallas Cowboys and asking him what plays the team should run on Sunday.

* * *

On June 21, 2013, the US Department of Justice charged Edward Snowden with espionage. If I could have a conversation with Snowden, I would ask him only one question. That question would be, “Edward, you had enough trust in the American people that you thought they could and should judge for themselves the right balance between liberty and security. If you really believe that,
then surely you must believe that those same Americans could and should judge your behavior with regard to the disclosures you made possible. So why don’t you come home and be judged before a jury of your peers?”

I know some readers will think, “Of course you say bad things about Snowden because he exposed systemic wrongdoing by the intelligence community, a place you worked for thirty-three years.” My answer is that the programs he disclosed were legal and approved at the highest levels of the US government and that the damage he did was huge. As someone who was uniquely positioned to evaluate that damage, I can tell you that the costs of Snowden’s actions will be enormous. If he truly thought his actions were those of civil disobedience, the honorable approach would have been to take his stand and then accept the consequences.

* * *

Throughout this entire affair, the people I have worried most about are the men and women of the National Security Agency. The media and some politicians have demonized the organization for which they work and, to an extent, the officers of the NSA themselves. They do not deserve this. They go to work every day for a government salary, they work long hours for no public acclaim, and they execute tasks that keep the country safe and that literally save lives. They are talented, professional, and dedicated.

In collecting intelligence, the NSA and its officers in no way did anything wrong. The NSA never undertook a program without the approval of the executive branch and the oversight of the congressional intelligence committees or the courts. The NSA never broke the law and never abused the power that it had been given in the 215 program. In short, the NSA and its officers were doing the job that they had been asked to do.

NSA officers are patriots. Edward Snowden is a traitor.

CHAPTER 13

The Long War Ahead

O
n the morning of September 11, 2001, the chaplain of the New York City Fire Department, Father Mychal Judge, was told that a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center. He changed from his Franciscan habit into his chaplain’s uniform, donned his fire helmet, and joined the rush of brave men and women to the Twin Towers. When he arrived, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani saw him. The mayor grabbed Father Mychal by the arm and asked him to pray for the city. Father Mychal looked at the mayor with his usual big grin and said, “I always do.” Only moments later, as Father Mychal was heading straight into danger to minister to his firemen, falling debris from the collapsing South Tower struck him down. An iconic photograph captured the moment when firemen and first responders carried Father Mychal’s limp body from the debris. Father Mychal was the first victim recovered at the scene, making him the city’s first officially recorded fatality of the attacks.

At almost exactly the same time that Father Mychal fell, Kevin Shaeffer, a young officer in the Naval Operations Center in the Pentagon, was following the terrible events in New York. With no warning, his workplace exploded in an orange fireball as Flight 77 crashed through the building. At the moment of impact, Kevin was
thrown across the room. He would later learn that all twenty-nine of his coworkers had perished in that instant. The intense heat melted his name tag, but, perhaps foreshadowing what was to come, did not touch the ribbons on his uniform. Remembering his emergency training, Kevin smothered the flames engulfing his clothes and hair. Breathing in jet fuel and thick black smoke, Kevin crawled through water gushing from pipes and past live electrical wires toward the blue sky he glimpsed through gaps in the wreckage. He called out for help, and, at first, no one answered.

Nearby, an army sergeant first class named Steve Workman heard the explosion and ran toward the burning Ops Center. He found Kevin and immediately recognized the severity of his injuries. Steve helped Kevin to safety, and he prevented Kevin from going into shock by raising his legs. Steve helped Kevin into one of the first ambulances on the scene and rode with him to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Along the way, Steve asked Kevin about his life, his family, and his hobbies, anything to keep him conscious. At the hospital, the best trauma doctors on the planet gave Kevin a fifty-fifty chance of surviving. He had third-degree burns over almost half his body and extreme difficulty breathing. In the following weeks, Kevin battled infections, fluid buildup in his lungs, and the pain of the burns. During surgery in early October, Kevin went into cardiac arrest and died twice on the operating table, but he was brought back to life each time. After many months, seventeen operations, and countless hours of torturous physical therapy, Kevin recovered. He was among the last of those injured on 9/11 to be released from the hospital.

* * *

Why tell these stories? Because they underscore two extremely important points: one, the world is a very dangerous place, and two,
it takes heroes to protect us from those dangers—US diplomats, intelligence officers, military personnel, and federal law enforcement officers, not to mention local police officers and fire fighters. And there is little doubt in my mind that the world is going to become an even more dangerous place in terms of international terrorism, and that our need for heroes—like Father Mychal, Kevin, and Steve—is, unfortunately, only going to continue to grow.

* * *

In February 2013, as President Obama was considering options for a US military presence in Afghanistan after 2014, Tom Donilon, the president’s national security advisor, had a request for Matt Olsen, the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, and me, the acting director of CIA. He asked that we have a conversation with the president about what the threat from international terrorists—primarily al Qa‘ida—would look like in the years ahead, so that the president could think about Afghanistan in a broader context. It was a great question, and to prepare for the meeting I huddled for two hours in my office with CIA’s best and brightest experts on international terrorism.

As always, the smartest and most insightful person in the room was the director of the Counterterrorism Center, Roger (because he is undercover I cannot use his real name). Roger is the hardest-working and most dedicated officer with whom I have worked at the Agency. He has run the center for several years—longer than anyone before him—and he has produced results. He is tough to work with because he sets the bar very high, but there is no better person to be protecting the country from al Qa‘ida. My last official act—literally five minutes before my successor took over as deputy director—was to call Roger and simply tell him that I thought he was the most talented operations officer with whom I had ever
worked. There was a long silence on the other end of the phone, then a quiet “Thank you.”