Interview with National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell

Schneier is reporting that Mike McConnell, U.S. National Intelligence Director, recently gave an interesting interview to the El Paso Times. "I don't think he's ever been so candid before. For example, he admitted that the nation's telcos assisted the NSA in their massive eavesdropping efforts. We already knew this, of course, but the government has steadfastly maintained that either confirming or denying this would compromise national security."

Comments

Dupe!

[A beautiful mind]

Dupe.

Re:Every time Congress debates, terrorists kill US

[sepluv]

FTR, that's actually the same interview. (Doh!)

See Wikipedia: Enemy of the State if you haven't seen it (good film). Although, the NSA murder a senator in that case (not a congressman) who refuses to vote for increased warrantless surveillance.

Re:That's what I'm wondering

[monkey_dongle]

Not a sworn statement. Unless it gets put in an affidavit or elicited at deposition (or trial) it's irrelevant. Many public statements have been made, but there's no accounting for the veracity of them unless they're sworn according to the legal standard. The 9th Cir. Court of Appeals specifically said this at the AT&T (EFF) class action hearing on the Govts. motion to dismiss a couple of weeks ago.

Transcript here
www.ca9.uscourts.gov/ca9/media.nsf/D654A11D7A675 986882573380083A50C/$file/06-17132.wma?openelement

Video here
http://www.archive.org/details/gov.courts.ca9.20 07.08.16

EFF here.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005408.php

Re:We're all aiding the terrorists

[sumdumass]

You have a few factual problems with your statement. Fist, the FISA court (not courts seeing how there is only one) hasn't told Bush this was illegal. The only court to do so had their ruling over turned and that isn't getting into the fact of accusations of conflict in interest that could have influence the overturned ruling.

Now the judges of the secrete "FISA court" have expressed their outrage but none of them have put it into a ruling or anything legal. I also don't see this as anyone with their backs against the wall. It is just another round of going on the offense. Unfortunately, for this administration, it seems like that is something new so I can understand your misinterpreting it.

Industry Ties

[jkonrad]

Earlier this year, Salon had an article detailing McConnell's extensive private sector connections with the very telecommunication companies for which he is now demanding immunity:

McConnell, a retired vice admiral and former director of the National Security Agency, is the current director of defense programs at Booz Allen Hamilton.

With revenues of $3.7 billion in 2005, Booz Allen is one of the nation's biggest defense and intelligence contractors. Under McConnell's watch, Booz Allen has been deeply involved in some of the most controversial counterterrorism programs the Bush administration has run, including the infamous Total Information Awareness data-mining scheme. As a key contractor and advisor to the NSA, Booz Allen is almost certainly participating in the agency's warrantless surveillance of the telephone calls and e-mails of American citizens...

Booz Allen, along with Science Applications International Corp., General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, CACI International and a few other corporations, is one of the dominant players in intelligence contracting. Among its largest customers are the NSA, which monitors foreign and domestic communications, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, an amalgamation of the imagery divisions of the CIA and the Pentagon that was established in 2003. . . .

Buried deep on the company's Web site, however, I recently found an explanation of a Booz Allen I.T. contract with the Defense Intelligence Agency, which carries out intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense. It states that the Booz Allen team "employs more than 10,000 TS/SCI cleared personnel." TS/SCI stands for top secret-sensitive compartmentalized intelligence, the highest possible security ratings. This would make Booz Allen one of the largest employers of cleared personnel in the United States.

Among the many former spooks on Booz Allen's payroll are R. James Woolsey, the well-known neoconservative and former CIA director; Joan Dempsey, the former chief of staff to CIA Director George Tenet and recently executive director of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board; and Keith Hall, the former director of the National Reconnaissance Office, the super-secret organization that oversees the nation's spy satellites. . . . .

And in a relationship that has been completely missed in media coverage of his appointment, McConnell is the chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, the primary business association of NSA and CIA contractors. As INSA chairman, I've been told, McConnell is presiding over an initiative to enhance ties between the intelligence agencies and their contractors and domestic law enforcement agencies.

Greenwald comments: "McConnell's ties to these companies are so deep and numerous that it really rises to the level of conflict of interest for him to demand -- on national security grounds, no less -- that they be granted full immunity from liability for past illegal acts. He is, in essence, demanding immunity for vast numbers of his former partners, clients, associates and scores of business interests in which he had, if not still has, a substantial stake. This conflict is glaring and extreme, but Democrats said nothing about it when granting prospective immunity to this industry at his insistence. Thus far, they have also said nothing in the face of McConnell's demands that this immunity now be made retroactive as well."