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WASHINGTON -- One of the staunchest critics of government surveillance
programs
said Tuesday that the national intelligence director did not give him a
straight answer last March when he asked whether the National Security
Agency collects any data on millions of Americans.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., called for hearings to discuss two recently revealed NSA programs that collect billions of
telephone
numbers and
"The
American people have the right to expect straight answers from the
intelligence leadership to the questions asked by their
representatives," Wyden said in a statement.
He
was referring to an exchange with Clapper during a Senate Intelligence
hearing in March about threats the U.S. faces from around the world.
Wyden
said he wanted to know the scope of the surveillance programs, and
privately asked NSA Director Keith Alexander for clarity. When he did
not get a satisfactory answer, Wyden said he alerted Clapper's office a
day early that he would ask the same question at the public hearing.
"Does
the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of
millions of Americans?" Wyden asked Clapper at the March 12 hearing.
"No, sir," Clapper answered.
"It does not?" Wyden pressed.
Clapper
quickly and haltingly softened his answer. "Not wittingly," he said.
"There are cases where they could, inadvertently perhaps, collect - but
not wittingly."
Wyden said he also gave Clapper a chance to amend his answer.
The
programs that do sweep up such information were revealed last week by
The Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers, and Clapper has since
taken the unusual step of declassifying some of the previously
top-secret details to help the administration mount a public defense of
the surveillance as a necessary step to protect Americans.
One
of the NSA programs gathers hundreds of millions of U.S. phone records
to search for possible links to known terrorist targets abroad. The
other allows the government to tap into nine U.S. Internet companies and
gather all communications to detect suspicious behavior that begins
overseas.
A senior U.S. intelligence official
on Monday said there were no plans to scrap the programs. Despite
backlash from overseas allies and American privacy advocates , the programs continue
to receive widespread, if cautious, support within Congress as an
indispensable tool for protecting Americans from terrorists. The
official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive
security issue.
Wyden said lawmakers must have
clear and direct answers to questions in order to conduct oversight.
"This job cannot be done responsibly if senators aren't getting straight
answers to direct questions," he said in the statement.
A spokesman for Clapper could not immediately be reached for comment.
The
Justice Department is weighing whether to charge the American man who
claims to have given documents about the classified programs to
journalists. The whereabouts of Edward Snowden, 29, were not immediately
known. He was last in Hong Kong, where he hopes to avoid being
extradited to the United States for prosecution.
The
NSA contractor for whom he worked, Booz Allen Hamilton, announced
Tuesday that they had fired Snowden after less than three months on the
job.
Meanwhile, the European Parliament
planned to debate the spy programs Tuesday and whether they have
violated local privacy protections. EU officials in Brussels pledged to
seek answers from U.S. diplomats at a trans-Atlantic ministerial meeting
in Dublin later this week.
The global
scrutiny comes as other lawmakers including Senate intelligence
chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California accuse Snowden of
committing an "act of treason" that should be prosecuted.
Officials
in Germany and the European Union issued calm but firm complaints
Monday over two National Security Agency programs that
target
suspicious foreign messages - potentially including phone numbers,
email, images, video and other online communications transmitted through
U.S. providers. The chief British diplomat felt it necessary to try to
assure Parliament that the spy programs do not encroach on U.K. privacy
laws.
And in Washington, members of Congress
said they would take a new look at potential ways to keep the U.S. safe
from terror attacks without giving up privacy protections that critics
charge are at risk with the government's current authority to broadly
sweep up personal communications.
"There's
very little trust in the government, and that's for good reason," said
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who sits on the House Intelligence
Committee. "We're our own worst enemy."
House
Speaker John Boehner, however, said he believes President Barack Obama
has fully explained why the program is needed. He told ABC's "Good
Morning America" Tuesday that "the disclosure of this information puts
Americans at risk. It shows our adversaries what our capabilities are
and it's a giant violation of the law." He called Snowden a "traitor."
Sen.
Angus King, I-Maine, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee,
said he was considering how Congress could limit the amount of data spy
agencies seize from telephone and Internet companies - including
restricting the information to be released only on an as-needed basis.
"It's a little unsettling to have this massive data in the government's possession," King said.
Snowden
is a former CIA employee who later joined Booz Allen, where the papers
said he gained access to the surveillance. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine
said, it was "absolutely shocking" that a 29-year-old with limited
experience would have access to this material.
FBI
agents on Monday visited the home of Snowden's father, Lonnie Snowden,
in Upper Macungie Township, Pa. The FBI in Philadelphia declined to
comment.
The first explosive document Snowden
revealed was a top secret court order issued by the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court that granted a three-month renewal for a massive
collection of American phone records. That order was signed April 25.
The Guardian's first story on the court order was published June 5.
Snowden
also gave the Post and the Guardian a PowerPoint presentation on
another secret program that collects online usage by the nine
Internet providers
. The U.S. government says it uses that information only to track foreigners' use overseas.
It was unclear when or if Snowden would be extradited.
"All
of the options, as he put it, are bad options," Guardian journalist
Glenn Greenwald, who first reported the phone-tracking program and
interviewed Snowden extensively, told The Associated Press on Monday. He
said Snowden decided to release details of the programs out of shock
and anger over the sheer scope of the government's privacy invasions.
"It
was his choice to publicly unveil himself," Greenwald told the AP in
Hong Kong. "He recognized that even if he hadn't publicly unveiled
himself, it was only a matter of time before the U.S. government
discovered that it was he who had been responsible for these
disclosures, and he made peace with that. ... He's very steadfast and
resolute about the fact that he did the right thing."
Greenwald said he had more documents from Snowden and expected "more significant revelations" about NSA.
Although
Hong Kong has an extradition treaty with the U.S., the document has
some exceptions, including for crimes deemed political. Any negotiations
about his possible handover will involve Beijing, but some analysts
believe China is unlikely to want to jeopardize its relationship with
Washington over someone it would consider of little political interest.
Snowden
also told The Guardian that he may seek asylum in Iceland, which has
strong free-speech protections and a tradition of providing a haven for
the outspoken and the outcast.
The Justice
Department is investigating whether his disclosures were a criminal
offense - a matter that's not always clear-cut under U.S. federal law.
A
second senior intelligence official said Snowden would have had to have
signed a non-disclosure agreement to gain access to the top secret
data. That suggests he could be prosecuted for violating that agreement.
Penalties could range from a few years to life in prison. The official
spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the process of accessing
classified materials more frankly.
The leak
came to light as Army Pfc. Bradley Manning was being tried in military
court under federal espionage and computer fraud laws for releasing
classified documents to WikiLeaks about the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, among other items. The most serious charge against him was
aiding the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence. But the
military operates under a different legal system.
If
Snowden is forced to return to the United States to face charges,
whistle-blower advocates said Monday that they would raise money for his
legal defense.
Clapper has ordered an
internal review to assess how much damage the disclosures created.
Intelligence experts say terrorist suspects and others seeking to attack
the U.S. all but certainly will find alternate ways to communicate
instead of relying on systems that now are widely known to be under
surveillance.
White House spokesman Jay Carney
said Obama was open for a discussion about the spy programs, both with
allies and in Congress. His administration has aggressively defended the
two programs and credited them with helping stop at least two terrorist
attacks, including one in New York City.
Privacy
rights advocates say Obama has gone too far. The American Civil
Liberties Union and Yale Law School filed legal action Monday to force a
secret U.S. court to make public its opinions justifying the scope of
some of the surveillance, calling the programs "shockingly broad." And
conservative lawyer Larry Klayman filed a separate lawsuit against the
Obama administration, claiming he and others have been harmed by the
government's collection of as many as 3 billion phone numbers each day.
Army records indicate Snowden enlisted in the Army around May 2004 and was discharged that September.
"He attempted to qualify to become a Special Forces soldier but did not complete the requisite
training
and was administratively discharged from the Army," Col. David H.
Patterson Jr., an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, said in a statement
late Monday.
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