These are the opening and a couple of additional remarks made by the Director of National Intelligence, James R. Clapper, during an extensive interview with Andrea Mitchell, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent in Tysons Corner, Va., on June 8 2013.
For the entire interview, please click here.
Andrea Mitchell, NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent: Director Clapper thank you very much for letting us come out here and interview you on the subject of all these leaks and how it has affected American intelligence gathering. Does the Intelligence Community feel besieged by the fact that these Top Secret documents are getting out?
James R. Clapper, Director of National Intelligence: Well I think we are very, very concerned about it. For me it is literally, not figuratively, literally, gut-wrenching to see this happen, because of the huge, grave damage it does to our intelligence capabilities. And of course, for me, this is a key tool for preserving and protecting the nation’s safety and security. So, every one of us in the Intelligence Community most particularly the great men and women of NSA, are very – are profoundly affected by this.
Ms. Mitchell: How has it hurt American intelligence?
Director Clapper: Well, while we’re having this debate, this discussion, and all this media explosion, which, of course, supports transparency — which is a great thing in this country, but that same transparency has a double edged sword — and that our adversaries, whether nation-state adversaries or nefarious groups – benefit from that transparency. So as we speak, they’re going to school and learning how we do this. And so, that’s why it potentially has — can render great damage to our intelligence capabilities.
Ms Mitchell: At the same time, when Americans woke up and learned because of these leaks that every single telephone call made in the United States, as well as elsewhere, but every call made by these telephone companies that they collect is archived, the numbers, just the numbers and the duration of these calls, people were astounded by that. They had no idea. They felt invaded.
Director Clapper: I understand that. But first let me say that I and everyone in the Intelligence Community who are also citizens, who also care very deeply about our privacy and civil liberties, I certainly do. So let me say that at the outset. I think a lot of what people are reading and seeing in the media is hyperbole. A metaphor I think might be helpful for people to understand this is to think of a huge library with literally millions of volumes of books in it, an electronic library. Seventy of those books are on bookcases in the United States, meaning that the bulk of the world’s infrastructure, communications infrastructure, is in the United States. There are no limitations on the customers who can use this library. Many of millions of innocent people, doing millions of innocent things, use this library, but there are also nefarious people who use it — terrorists, drug cartels, human traffickers, criminals also take advantage of the same technology. So the task for us in the interest of preserving security and preserving civil liberties and privacy, is to be as precise as we possibly can be. When we go in that library and look for the books that we need to open up and actually read, you think of them, and by the way, all these books are arranged randomly, they are not arranged by subject or topic matters, and they are constantly changing. And so when we go into this library first we have to have a library card, the people that actually do this work, which connotes their training and certification and recertification. So when we pull out a book, based on its essentially electronic Dewey Decimal System, which is zeros and ones, we have to be very precise about which books we are picking out, and if it is one that belongs or was put in there by an American citizen or a U.S. person, we are under strict court supervision, and have to get strict, have to get permission to actually look at that. So the notion that we’re trolling through everyone’s emails and voyeuristically reading them, or listening to everyone’s phone calls is on its face absurd. We couldn’t do it even if we wanted to, and I assure you, we don’t want to.
Ms. Mitchell: Why do you need every telephone number? Why is it such a broad vacuum cleaner approach?
Director Clapper: Well, you have to start someplace. If and over the years this program has operated we have refined it and tried to make it ever more precise and more disciplined as to which things we take out of the library. But you have to be in the chamber in order to be able to pick and choose those things that we need in the interest of protecting the country, and gleaning information on terrorists who are plotting to kill Americans, to destroy our economy, and destroy our way of life.
Ms. Mitchell: Can you give me any examples where it has actually prevented a terror plot?
Director Clapper: Well, two cases that come to mind, which are a little dated, but I think in the interest of this discourse, should be shared with the American people, they both occurred in 2009, one was the aborted plot to bomb the subway in New York City in the fall of 2009. And this all started with a communication from Pakistan to a U.S. person in Colorado. And that led to the identification of a cell in New York City who was bent on a major explosion, bombing of the New York City subway. And a cell was rolled up and in their apartment we found backpacks with bombs. A second example, also occurring in 2009, involved one of those involved, the perpetrators of the Mumbai bombing in India, David Headly. And we aborted a plot against a Danish news publisher based on the same kind of information. So those are two specific cases of uncovering plots through this mechanism that prevented terrorist attacks.
Ms Mitchell: Now Americans might say, “Yes, but terrorists succeeded in Boston at the marathon. Terrorists have succeeded elsewhere and not been thwarted despite all this information gathered by the NSA?”
Director Clapper: Right, Well, that’s true and I find it a little ironic that several weeks ago after the Boston bombings, we were accused of not being sufficiently intrusive. We failed to determine the exact tipping point when the brothers self-radicalized. And then it was, we weren’t intrusive enough. I don’t mean to be a smart guy here, it’s just emblematic of the serious debate that goes on in this country between the two poles of security, and civil liberties and privacy. And what we must, and I thought the President spoke really articulately about this yesterday in California. And he is exactly on the money. The challenge for us is navigating between these two poles. It’s not a balance, it’s not an either or. There has to be that balance so that we protect our country and also protect civil liberties and privacy.
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Ms. Mitchell: Let me ask you about the content.
Director Clapper: This has to do of course, somewhat of a semantic perhaps some would say too cute by half, but there are honest differences on the semantics when someone says “collection” to me, that has a specific meaning, which may have a different meaning to him.
Ms Mitchell: Well, what do you say also, I should ask you what do you say to the other senators who are not on the committees? Not on the intelligence committees who have been invited in to read before these laws are reauthorized, and now are criticizing. Is there enough information available to the rest of the United States Senate and the rest of the members of Congress who are not expert when they go in before they vote?
Director Clapper: Well…
Ms. Mitchell: Do they know what they are voting on?
Director Clapper: I trust so. Obviously our primary two interlocutors are two intelligence oversight committees, both in the House and in the Senate. And so they are used to operating in a classified environment. Their staffs are, so that is primarily with whom we will do business. But on a piece of legislation say in this case the FISA Amendment Act, we provided detailed briefings and papers on this to explain the law, to explain the process it was governing. Now, I can’t comment on whether senators and representatives were all able to avail themselves, but that material was made available and certainly if any member whether on the intelligence committee, the Judiciary Committee or any other committee would, who had asked for a specific briefing or follow up questions we certainly would respond, would have responded.
Ms. Mitchell: There were slides and details about the other programs. Programs on Internet providers. It has been referred to as “Prism” but technically it is 702 programs and according to The Washington Post report on that, it was a disgruntled intelligence officer who provided that Top Secret information to The Guardian and The Washington Post. How do you feel about that?
Director Clapper: Well, I think we all feel profoundly offended by that. This is someone who for whatever reason, has chosen to violate a sacred trust for this country. So we all look upon it no matter what his or her motivation may have been, the damage that these revelations incur are huge. And so I hope we are able to track down whoever is doing this because it is extremely damaging to, and it affects the safety and security of this country.
Ms. Mitchell: Can I assume from that, can I infer that there has been a referral to track down the leak?
Director Clapper: Absolutely. NSA has filed a crimes report on this already.
Ms. Mitchell: And some people would regard this person, he or she, as a whistleblower and a hero for letting the American public know that their emails are being tapped into and that their privacy is being invaded.
Director Clapper: There are legitimate outlets for anyone within the Intelligence Community who feels that some law is being violated, for reporting fraud, waste and abuse, and there are legitimate mechanisms for reporting that both within the Executive and in the Congress without damaging national security. And for whatever reason, a person or persons doing this chose not to use those legitimate outlets.
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Ms. Mitchell: Now there’s been another leak, in the last couple days. This one is another Top Secret order, ordering — from the President – ordering senior intelligence officials to draw up a list of potential overseas targets for cyber attack. How do you deal with a situation where there is a leak a day it seems of Top Secret information?
Director Clapper: Well, it’s hard to deal with. It is again as in the case of this Presidential Directive an egregious violation of a sacred trust. That anyone who would have access to this would choose on his or her own, to violate that trust and disseminate this to the media. I would be surprised if anyone else were surprised if we weren’t at least thinking about our behavior in the cyber domain. And so what this does is lay out a conceptual framework to include some definitions, for how we think about that.
Ms Mitchell: At a time when we’re telling the Chinese you have invaded our businesses and our weapons systems, and you have to take responsibility for what’s coming from your territory, don’t these leaks undercut our arguments?
Director Clapper: Well they, perhaps, I think there is an understanding among nation states that we are going to monitor each others behavior. We do it. Other major nationstates do it as well. But I also think that there are limits, and just how aggressive that is and that’s the reason for, I think, discussion among certainly industrialized nations for rules of the road for how we behave in cyber land.
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Ms. Mitchell: Finally, your message to those who say, ACLU and others, we feel invaded, we don’t know when you are looking at us or listening in on our conversations, and what is the real benefit? Why should we give up so much privacy? Can it be done better?
Director Clapper: We’re trying to minimize those invasions of privacy and keep them to an absolute minimum and only focus on those targets that really do pose a threat and to not invade anyone’s privacy, communications, telephone calls, emails if they are not involved in plotting against the United States. And so, as we, as the technologies changes that we were just talking about, we have to adapt as well to both provide that security and also ensure civil liberties and privacy.
Ms. Mitchell: Thank you very much Director Clapper.
Director Clapper: Thank you for having me.
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.