[Infowarrior] - Eavesdropping: Spy Master Admits Error

[Richard Forno]

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20749773/site/newsweek/

Spy Master Admits Error
Intel czar Mike McConnell told Congress a new law helped bring down a terror
plot. The facts say otherwise.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 6:38 p.m. ET Sept 12, 2007

Sept. 12, 2007 - In a new embarrassment for the Bush administration's top
spymaster, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell is withdrawing
an assertion he made to Congress this week that a recently passed
electronic-surveillance law helped U.S. authorities foil a major terror plot
in Germany.

The temporary measure, signed into law by President Bush on Aug. 5, gave the
U.S. intelligence community broad new powers to eavesdrop on telephone and
e-mail communications overseas without seeking warrants from the
surveillance court. The law expires in six months and is expected to be the
subject of intense debate in the months ahead. On Monday,
McConnell‹questioned by Sen. Joe Lieberman‹claimed the law, intended to
remedy what the White House said was an intelligence gap, had helped to
³facilitate² the arrest of three suspects believed to be planning massive
car bombings against American targets in Germany. Other U.S.
intelligence-community officials questioned the accuracy of McConnell's
testimony and urged his office to correct it. Four intelligence-community
officials, who asked for anonymity discussing sensitive material, said the
new law, dubbed the "Protect America Act,² played little if any role in the
unraveling of the German plot. The U.S. military initially provided
information that helped the Germans uncover the plot. But that exchange of
information took place months before the new ³Protect America² law was
passed.

After questions about his testimony were raised, McConnell called Lieberman
to clarify his statements to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs, an official said. (A spokeswoman for Lieberman
confirmed that McConnell called the senator Tuesday but could not
immediately confirm what they spoke about.) Late Wednesday afternoon,
McConnell issued a statement acknowledging that "information contributing to
the recent arrests [in Germany] was not collected under authorities provided
by the 'Protect America Act'."

The developments were cited by Democratic critics on Capitol Hill as the
latest example of the Bush administration's exaggerated claims‹and
contradictory statements‹about ultrasecret surveillance activities. In the
face of such complaints, the administration has consistently resisted any
public disclosure about the details of the surveillance activities‹even
though McConnell himself has openly talked about some aspects of them.

The Justice Department, for example, just two weeks ago filed a brief
opposing the public release of secret legal opinions about the program‹even
in redacted form‹on the grounds that any disclosure beyond a one-sentence
comment earlier this year by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would ³cause
serious damage to the national security of the United States.² (The
existence of one of those rulings was first disclosed by NEWSWEEK this
summer and publicly confirmed by McConnell in an interview with the El Paso
Times in August. The ACLU last month filed an unprecedented motion with the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court seeking public release of its
rulings about the surveillance program.)

The flap over McConnell¹s latest statements is especially sensitive because
many Democrats have said they felt the White House and the director of
national intelligence stampeded them into passing the new surveillance
law‹claiming it was needed on an ³emergency² basis to protect the country
against a future terror attack. Speaking Wednesday at a meeting of the
Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, Rep. Jane Harman, who was
ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee until she was bumped
from the committee earlier this year, charged that McConnell had politicized
negotiations over the bill. He "appeared to be taking orders from the White
House, negotiating for the White House," said Harman. The role he played,
"whether he intended it or not, appeared to be political," she said.
"Hey‹Jane to Mike," she said, "don't become a political actor."

McConnell's testimony that the new law helped in the German case was
especially striking‹since it seemed to contradict public statements by
American and German officials about how the plot was exposed. About 10
months ago‹long before the new law was put into effect‹guards at a U.S.
military base near Frankfurt noted a suspicious individual conducting
surveillance outside the facility. U.S. military officials tipped off German
authorities, who quickly identified the individual and several accomplices
as militants affiliated with the Islamic Jihad Union, a violent Al
Qaeda-linked group. The Germans kept the group under surveillance for months
and discovered evidence that the militants‹some of whom had been to an
Islamic Jihad Union training camp in Pakistan‹were assembling chemicals for
bombing attacks on American military installations in Germany. (The U.S.
Embassy in Berlin issued a public warning last April that it had received
intelligence reporting about threats against U.S. personnel in that
country.)  One U.S. intelligence official described the law-enforcement
operation as a case of  "good old-fashioned police work."

Yet when McConnell testified before the Senate Governmental Affairs
Committee, he cited the German case as an example of how the new Protect
America Act was working. The law, he started to say, "allowed us to see and
understand all the connections with ..." At that point, Lieberman, the
committee chair, interrupted McConnell. Lieberman expressed surprise that
the law might have contributed to the German counterterror operation. "The
newly adopted law facilitated that during August?" he asked.

"Yes, sir, it did," McConnell responded. ³The connections to Al Qaeda, the
connections specifically to what's referred to as IJU, the Islamic Jihad
Union, an affiliate of Al Qaeda. Because we could understand it, we could
help our partners through a long process of monitoring and observation. And
so at the right time, when Americans and German facilities were being
targeted, the German authorities decided to move."

Counterterrorism officials familiar with the background of McConnell's
testimony said they did not believe the intel czar made inaccurate
statements intentionally as part of any strategy by the administration to
goad Congress into making the new eavesdropping law permanent. Officials
said they believed McConnell gave the wrong answer because he was
overwhelmed with information and merely mixed up his facts. Nonetheless,
some officials said, as news of McConnell's misstatements spread, it would
be in the intelligence director's best interests to correct his
testimony‹advice he is now heeding.

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