The Watchers (60 page)

134
McCarthy, as part of the professional staff, agreed to stay on board temporarily. But as she prepared to head back to the CIA, she worked up a memo for the new national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice:
Interview with McCarthy.

134
McCarthy asked Poindexter whether he had any advice for Rice, one adviser to another:
Interviews with McCarthy and Poindexter.

135
The Pentagon chiefs had assured themselves that the IDC's methods were unsound. Their reports to Able Danger certainly weren't actionable:
In my interview with Hamre he made clear that he and others felt that the methods and results of the IDC couldn't be trusted entirely. This work had always been experimental. Pentagon officials gave a similar assessment years later in public when the Able Danger program was first exposed.

All statements, thoughts, and actions attributed to John Poindexter in this chapter come from interviews conducted in 2004 and 2008 unless otherwise noted.

142
Across Washington millions of workers and tourists retreated via the only mode of transportation still functioning dependably—their feet:
The accounts of life in Washington that day are drawn from voluminous newspaper and television reports on the events of that day as well as on my own discussions with friends and colleagues.

142
Agents screamed at the crowd to run, take off your shoes if you have to, but run, as fast as you can:
This account was chronicled in various newspaper articles, but it was also relayed to me by a White House staffer days after the attacks; she had to take off her shoes and run from the building.

143
Mary McCarthy would not forgive herself, then and years later, for not finding the right signal in that ceaseless chatter that crossed her desk in the summer of 2001:
Interview with McCarthy. I add that this is a sentiment shared by many of the government officials who were working on Al Qaeda before the 9/11 attacks. They will be forever haunted by the memories of what they believed they failed to do.

All statements, thoughts, and actions attributed to John Poindexter in this chapter come from interviews conducted with him in 2004 and 2008 unless otherwise noted.

As in the previous chapter, accounts of the events of the days immediately following the attacks were chronicled in many newspaper articles and television broadcasts.

144
“That's funny,” Brian Sharkey told his old friend when he rang. “I was just thinking about calling you”:
Interviews with Poindexter. I also spoke with Sharkey in 2004 about his recollections of that day.

145
Sharkey had introduced the phrase two years earlier in Denver during a speech at the annual DARPATech conference:
A copy of his remarks is available at www.darpa.mil/darpatech99/ Presentations/Scripts/ISO/ISO_TIA_Sharkey_Script.txt.

149
He just wasn't prepared to come back, and Poindexter didn't want to force him:
Interview with Poindexter.

150
Poindexter found himself sitting in Tether's office, suit-clad, a PowerPoint briefing on his laptop, ready to explain TIA:
Poindexter provided me with the original TIA briefing he gave to Tether. All the passages cited here come directly from the briefing. Others I interviewed—notably a number of leading civil liberties activists—saw a later version of this briefing and still recalled many of the slides verbatim, without being prompted by me.

153
Poindexter told Tether that he would build “privacy-protection” technologies into TIA's design:
The question of when Poindexter envisioned a privacy component to TIA has been a subject of some controversy. Did he imagine this as part of the system from the outset or was this component added later to appease privacy advocates? I conclude that it was the former. The early briefings clearly show that Poindexter envisioned some role for privacy, and this is fleshed out in subsequent briefing slides that he wrote not much later. My interviews with his staff, and with some of his most vocal critics, corroborate this. Also, some of the early research contracts awarded by the Information Awareness Office, before the TIA program became publicly well-known, contemplate this privacy research.

155
Mike Wertheimer was looking forward to some quiet time with his wife:
Mike Wertheimer told me about the 2001 Columbus Day weekend, as well as the meeting in the NSA's conference room, during a conversation we had in Chicago on September 6, 2007, at a conference called “Analytic Transformation,” sponsored by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, where he was employed. At this time, the NSA's warrantless surveillance program had already been disclosed and acknowledged by President George Bush. Also, on May 18, 2006, Michael Hayden, the director of the NSA at the time the program was conceived, testified about the meeting before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The matter came up in response to questioning during Hayden's confirmation hearing to become the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Wertheimer recalled the story about his family and his father during our conversation. He also spoke about it later that evening when he gave a speech to the conference attendees. A transcript of the speech is available on the Web site of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

I also interviewed Wertheimer for a profile in
National Journal
, “The Liberator,” published on September 22, 2007.

157
Hayden explained to his employees that four days earlier the president had granted the agency new authorities that allowed the NSA to greatly expand its surveillance net:
See Hayden's May 2006 testimony.

157
The agency could now target the communications of anyone reasonably suspected of being a terrorist, or those associated with them, without a warrant:
Bush acknowledged this much after the
New York Times
revealed the warrantless surveillance program in December 2005.

157
But now the analysts could listen in and determine if the conversation, or the parties involved, had any “nexus to terrorism”:
In interviews with two very senior Bush administration officials I was told that “nexus to terrorism” became the key phrase used for deciding when to monitor the content of communications.

My reporting on how the surveillance program actually worked, in terms of how analysts probed communications and made decisions about whom to monitor, involved interviews with government officials—at mid and senior levels—as well as private-sector individuals. No one would agree to be quoted by name in describing the mechanics of the system. Where possible and necessary, I will illuminate key insights into the program with mention of specific sources.

159
“We're going to do exactly what he said,” Hayden told his staff, referring to Bush. “Not one photon or one electron more”:
Hayden made this statement in his May 2006 confirmation hearing.

159
To Wertheimer, it seemed like the right thing to do:
Conversation with Wertheimer in Chicago.

159
“I will play in fair territory. But there will be chalk dust on my cleats”:
This became a favorite phrase of Hayden's, and was cited by lawmakers and journalists. Speaking at the Duquesne University commencement ceremony on May 4, 2007, Hayden repeated the phrase and noted that he'd used it in the past.

159
On the morning of 9/11, Hayden had been working for two hours already when news reached him that a plane had struck the North Tower:
Hayden recalled his experience on the morning of the attacks before a joint inquiry of the House and Senate Intelligence committees. His statement for the record was delivered on October 17, 2002. Also see James Bamford's
Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency
(New York: Anchor, 2002) and
The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America
(New York: Doubleday, 2008).

160
The image popularized in Hollywood productions like
Enemy of the State,
which premiered the year before Hayden took over, had made the agency seem stronger and more independent than it really was:
Over the years intelligence officials have repeatedly pointed to this film as an example of how Hollywood distorted their capabilities—at least before the 9/11 attacks. Some of them said they only wished the NSA had been as sophisticated as it was portrayed on-screen.

161
Immediately after the attacks he ordered the agency to “go up on,” or monitor, a set of hot targets, foreign entities that the agency believed were connected to terrorism:
This account is based on an interview with two NSA officials in 2005. They were not authorized to be quoted by name.

161
Hayden broadened the reach of his signals-gathering agency in those first days after 9/11:
The interview with the NSA officials made clear this had occurred. And subsequently, five inspectors general who reviewed the NSA's surveillance program corroborated the account. The unclassified version of their “Report on the President's Surveillance Program” was released on July 10, 2009. They wrote, “In the days immediately after September 11, 2001, the NSA used its existing authorities to gather intelligence information in response to the terrorist attacks.” Those existing authorities, the inspectors general noted, were the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Executive order 12333.

161
They handed over leads about potential targets inside the country to the FBI:
See the aforementioned inspectors general report. Also see the
New York Times
's report of January 17, 2006, “Spy Agency Data After Sept. 11 Led F.B.I. to Dead Ends,” by Lowell Bergman, Eric Lichtblau, Scott Shane, and Don Van Natta, Jr. Hayden also remarked on the flow of information to the FBI in remarks at the National Press Club, on January 23, 2006. He said, “Now, as another part of our adjustment, we also turned on the spigot of NSA reporting to FBI in, frankly, an unprecedented way.”

162
As Hayden saw it, all these hot communications constituted
foreign
intelligence:
Hayden explained this logic in detail during his remarks noted above at the National Press Club. For more explanations on how the Bush administration believed that the NSA's surveillance program comported with laws and the president's constitutional authorities, see the Justice Department's white paper titled “Legal Authorities Supporting the Activities of the National Security Agency Described by the President,” dated January 19, 2006.

164
After the briefing wrapped up, Pelosi thought about what Hayden had said:
A redacted version of a letter Pelosi wrote to Hayden, which was later released publicly, states in part, “During your appearance before the committee, you indicated that you had been operating since the September 11 attacks with an expansive view of your authorities with respect to the conduct of electronic surveillance.” The letter indicated that NSA was “forwarding” information to the FBI. As the
Washington Post
's Dafna Linzer reported on January 4, 2006, “Two sources familiar with the NSA program said Pelosi was directly referring to information collected without a warrant on U.S. citizens or residents.”

164
Not long after the attacks, George Tenet made the rounds to the various intelligence agency chiefs, and he asked Hayden a question: “Is there anything more you can do?” “Not within my current authorities,” Hayden replied:
Hayden recounted this story at his May 2006 confirmation hearing, and he also reminded the senators that he had “briefed the committee in closed session” about it. The inspectors general report on NSA's surveillance program reiterates this account. They write, “When Director of Central Intelligence Tenet, on behalf of the White House, asked NSA Director Hayden whether the NSA could do more against terrorism, Hayden replied that nothing more could be done within existing authorities.”

164
Hayden had in mind a far more aggressive role for his agency, and one that mirrored the plan Poindexter was hatching at precisely the same time. Hayden wanted to build an early-warning system for terrorist attacks:
Again, see Hayden's 2006 testimony, his National Press Club speech, and the report of the inspectors general.

164
Well before the attacks, Hayden understood his agency was still collecting intelligence with a cold war mind-set:
A frank assessment of NSA's challenges and priorities at the dawn of the twenty-first century is contained in a once classified report that the agency prepared in December 2000 for the incoming Bush administration. Titled “Transition 2001,” it warned officials that they “must understand that today's and tomorrow's mission will demand a powerful, permanent presence on a global telecommunications network that will host the ‘protected' communications of Americans as well as targeted communications of adversaries.” This report, as well as other documents that shed light on internal NSA thinking, is on the Web site of the National Security Archive, at
www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB24/index.htm
.

For another useful source of insight into the NSA's mind-set before the 9/11 attacks, see Hayden's testimony before the House Intelligence Committee delivered April 12, 2000. Hayden said, “NSA is not authorized to collect all electronic communications. NSA is authorized to collect information only for foreign intelligence purposes and to provide it only to authorized government recipients.” The subject of the hearings centered on allegations that the NSA had engaged in industrial espionage, providing intelligence on European corporations to their American competitors. Hayden reminded lawmakers that the rules governing surveillance grew out of the abuses of an earlier generation, and that the agency had surely learned its lesson. His testimony gives a thorough account of how Hayden thought FISA and Executive order 12333 governed his agency's actions.