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N.S.A. Chief Says Surveillance Has Stopped Dozens of Plots N.S.A. Chief Says Surveillance Has Stopped Dozens of Plots
(about 9 hours later)
WASHINGTON — Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency, said on Tuesday that American surveillance had helped prevent “potential terrorist events over 50 times since 9/11,” including at least 10 “homeland-based threats.” But he said that a vast majority must remain secret to avoid disclosing sources and methods. WASHINGTON — Top national security officials on Tuesday promoted two newly declassified examples of what they portrayed as “potential terrorist events” disrupted by government surveillance. The cases were made public as Congress and the Obama administration stepped up a campaign to explain and defend programs unveiled by recent leaks from a former intelligence contractor.
“These programs are immensely valuable for protecting our nation and securing the security of our allies,” General Alexander said at a rare public oversight hearing by the House Intelligence Committee. One case involved a group of men in San Diego convicted of sending money to an extremist group in Somalia. The other was presented as a nascent plan to bomb the New York Stock Exchange, although its participants were not charged with any such plot. Both were described by Sean Joyce, deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, at a rare public oversight hearing by the House Intelligence Committee.
In addition, the deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Sean Joyce, listed two newly disclosed cases that have now been declassified in an effort to respond to the leaking of classified information about surveillance by Edward J. Snowden, a former N.S.A. contractor. At the same hearing, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency, said that American surveillance had helped prevent “potential terrorist events over 50 times since 9/11,” including at least 10 “homeland-based threats.” But he said that a vast majority of the others must remain secret.
Mr. Joyce described a plot to blow up the New York Stock Exchange by a Kansas City man, whom the agency was able to identify because he was in contact with “an extremist” in Yemen who was under surveillance. Mr. Joyce also talked about a San Diego man who planned to send financial support to a terrorist group in Somalia, and who was identified because the N.S.A. flagged his phone number as suspicious through its database of all domestic phone call logs, which was brought to light by Mr. Snowden’s disclosures. “In the 12 years since the attacks on Sept. 11, we have lived in relative safety and security as a nation,” General Alexander said. “That security is a direct result of the intelligence community’s quiet efforts to better connect the dots and learn from the mistakes that permitted those attacks to occur on 9/11.”
“As Americans, we value our privacy and our civil liberties,” General Alexander said. “As Americans, we also value our security and our safety. In the 12 years since the attacks on Sept. 11, we have lived in relative safety and security as a nation. That security is a direct result of the intelligence community’s quiet efforts to better connect the dots and learn from the mistakes that permitted those attacks to occur in 9/11.” The hearing was aimed at bolstering public support for surveillance programs after leaks by Edward J. Snowden, a former N.S.A. contractor who was one of about 1,000 systems administrators who ran the agency’s networks. Its title: “How Disclosed N.S.A. Programs Protect Americans, and Why Disclosure Aids Our Adversaries.”
The nonadversarial tone of the oversight hearing was captured by its title: How Disclosed N.S.A. Programs Protect Americans, and Why Disclosure Aids Our Adversaries. Both the top Republican and the top Democrat on the committee, Representatives Mike Rogers of Michigan and C. A. Dutch Ruppersburger of Maryland, offered a robust defense of the surveillance programs revealed by Mr. Snowden and expressed anger over the leaks, and all five witnesses were executive branch officials who supported the surveillance activities. The Republican chairman of the committee, Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, and the top Democrat, Representative C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, both defended the surveillance programs revealed by Mr. Snowden and expressed anger over his leaks.
In an apparent reference to Mr. Snowden, for example, Mr. Rogers criticized his actions as “selectively leaking incomplete information” that “paints an inaccurate picture and fosters distrust in our government.” He added, “It is at times like these where our enemies within become almost as damaging as our enemies on the outside.” “It is at times like these where our enemies within become almost as damaging as our enemies on the outside,” Mr. Rogers said.
There was no way to independently verify the claims made by the officials during the hearing. The testimony on Tuesday by General Alexander, Mr. Joyce and three other national security officials focused on two types of surveillance. One was a huge database logging all domestic American phone calls, which Mr. Snowden’s leaks brought to light.
The director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., testified at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in March that the N.S.A. did not collect records on hundreds of millions of Americans. Since the revelation of the phone log database, he has explained that his testimony was the “least untruthful” statement he could make about a classified program. The other was the collection of the contents of certain e-mails and phone calls under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which allows surveillance without individualized warrants if the targets are noncitizens abroad, even if the collection takes place on domestic soil.
The testimony on Tuesday focused on two programs: the collection of the content of e-mails and phone calls of noncitizens abroad who were targeted by the agency without individual court orders under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, and the maintenance of a huge database of domestic phone logs that has been compiled under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. As an example of how the domestic calling log database has been used, Mr. Joyce cited the case of several men convicted by a jury in February of raising and sending about $8,500 to Al Shabab, a terrorist group in Somalia. The N.S.A. had flagged the calling activities of one of the men as suspicious, he said.
Both programs are used to try to identify any co-conspirators of terrorism suspects. In recent days, intelligence officials and lawmakers have been disclosing details about safeguards built into the systems, including that the phone logs are destroyed after five years and that fewer than 300 terrorism-related numbers were approved for searching in 2012. Representative Mac Thornberry, Republican of Texas, pressed Mr. Joyce to say more, asking, “But there was some connection to suicide bombings that they were talking about, correct?”
The witnesses clarified other details on Tuesday. James M. Cole, the deputy attorney general, said that while the 702 program can capture the contents of e-mails and phone calls when an overseas target communicates with people in the United States, if officials then want to eavesdrop on purely domestic phone calls or e-mails by anyone in the ring of acquaintances of the overseas target, they must get an individualized warrant from a court. Mr. Joyce replied, “Not in the example that I’m citing right here.”
“If they make a call to inside the United States, that can be collected, but it’s only because the target of that call outside the United States initiated that call and went there,” he said. “If the calls are wholly within the United States, we cannot collect them. If you’re targeting a person who is outside of the United States and you find that they come into the United States, we have to stop the targeting right away.” Speaking of the calling log program, the deputy director of the N.S.A., John C. Inglis, said that “only 20 analysts at N.S.A. and their two managers, for a total of 22 people, are authorized to approve numbers that may be used to query this database.” The N.S.A. has said that it searched for links to fewer than 300 numbers in 2012.
In addition, General Alexander said that every query to the domestic phone log database was audited by supervisors, and that so far there had been no willful abuses or discipline carried out. And his deputy, John C. Inglis, said that under court orders, “only 20 analysts at N.S.A. and their two managers, for a total of 22 people, are authorized to approve numbers that may be used to query this database.” Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, pressed General Alexander to explain why the F.B.I. could not simply get the relevant logs of calls linked to a suspicious number without keeping a database of all domestic calls.
In a rare note of skepticism, Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, pressed General Alexander about why the F.B.I. could not use subpoenas to get the necessary domestic phone logs surrounding a suspicious number without the government’s obtaining logs of everyone’s calls. General Alexander said he was open to discussion, but added, “The concern is speed in a crisis.” General Alexander said he was open to discussing doing it that way, but added, “The concern is speed in crisis.”
As a newly disclosed example of how the FISA Amendments Act surveillance authority has been used, Mr. Joyce described a case in which he said the authorities had discovered and disrupted a plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange.
Monitoring a terrorist in Yemen, the N.S.A. discovered that he was talking to a man named Khalid Ouazzani in Kansas City, Mo. After applying for a separate warrant for Mr. Ouazzani’s communications, they identified two additional conspirators and discovered they were “in the very initial stages” of the stock exchange bomb plot, he said.
Mr. Ouazzani pleaded guilty in 2010 to sending money to Al Qaeda but was not charged with any domestic plots. Later on Tuesday, law enforcement officials said Mr. Joyce had been referring to Sabirhan Hasanoff and Wesam El-Hanafi, two Brooklyn men who pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorism.
A sentencing memorandum filed by prosecutors contends that in 2008, “at the direction of a senior terrorist leader,” Mr. Hasanoff conducted surveillance of the New York Stock Exchange and sent the leader a one-page report on it.
“The report was rudimentary and of limited use” for any terrorist operation, the memo acknowledges, while nevertheless contending that Mr. Hasanoff’s willingness to conduct such surveillance bolstered the case for giving him a 20-year sentence.
At the hearing, Mr. Thornberry asked Mr. Joyce whether the stock exchange attack was a “serious plot” or just “something that they kind of dreamed about.” Mr. Joyce replied, “I think the jury considered it serious, since they were all convicted.”
However, Joshua L. Dratel, a lawyer for Mr. Hasanoff, called Mr. Joyce’s portrayal “astonishing” because none of the defendants was charged with the stock exchange allegation and there was no jury trial in any of the cases. Mr. Joyce also invoked two cases officials have previously linked to surveillance conducted under the FISA Amendments Act — a plot to bomb the New York City subway and the discovery that David Headley, a Chicago man, was working on a plot to bomb a Danish newspaper that published cartoon depictions of the Prophet Muhammad.
Representative Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut, told General Alexander that he was “more troubled” by the domestic calling log program, which he called “historically unprecedented in the extent of the data that is being collected on potentially all American citizens,” than with the gathering of foreign data. He pressed the officials to say how many attacks were stopped by it.
Mr. Joyce replied that it was “an almost impossible question,” but that “I can tell you, every tool is essential and vital. And the tools, as I outlined to you, and the uses today have been valuable to stopping some of those plots.”

Benjamin Weiser contributed reporting from New York.