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Curated research library of TV news clips regarding the NSA, its oversight and privacy issues, 2009-2014

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Primary curation & research: Robin Chin, Internet Archive TV News Researcher; using Internet Archive TV News service.

Speakers

Barton Gellman
Journalist, contributing to the Washington Post
KQED 10/31/2013
Gellerman: Google and Yahoo! are responding in slightly different ways. Google executives are clearly openly very angry about this and engineers I've talked to who are closely familiar with Google's internals were, as I said in the story, quite profane. They exploded in these very angry reactions when they realized what was being done to them. And Google is now accelerating the efforts to encrypt all the traffic that flows between those data centers. Yahoo! simply gave a statement that it was not aware of and did not cooperate in any of this and it has not announced any efforts efforts to prevent it.
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Barton Gellman
Journalist, contributing to the Washington Post
CSPAN 04/05/2014
Gellman: The crucial thing that's happened here is an increase in transparency. Obviously information is power. Secrecy is very great power especially when coupled with surveillance (makes us transparent and yourself opaque in government?). Because of this transparency you've seen not only journalism building on itself, but all kind of other things happen in the private sector, you have now for the first time in my memory a real marketplace for privacy. There were small outposts of that before, but they were boutiques. you now have large companies competing to demonstrate to consumers because consumers are worried about their privacy, because these revelations.
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Barton Gellman
Journalist, contributing to the Washington Post
KQED 05/13/2014
Narrator: On October 4, in a secret signing with Cheney, the president officially authorized "The Program." Gellman: That order is written by David Addington, the vice president's lawyer. It's not written by the president's lawyer. And this is not only unusual but probably unique in the history of major U.S. intelligence operations: it's written by the Vice President's lawyer and stored in his own safe. Narrator: Addington worked out of a small office next to the White House in the old Executive Office Building. Baker: This order is one of the most closely kept secrets of the Bush/Cheney administration for four years. It's kept so secret that many people involved in national security inside the White House and the government don't know about it.
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Robert Deitz
NSA General Counsel, 1998-2006
KQED 05/13/2014
Narrator: Now General Hayden wanted the sign-off of his top lawyer, Robert Deitz. Deitz: I think he was concerned and wanted my view of whether this program was lawful. I spent a kind of sleepless night pondering the legality of it. This was a very hard call. It was a very hard call. Gellman: The NSA has a general counsel and about 100 lawyers. And they were told, "The President has signed it, it's been certified as lawful, and once all the signatures are there, that's it, we salute. We say, 'Okay, it's lawful, we're going to go ahead.'" Deitz: In the intel world, if a president says to you, "I need this in order to keep the American people safe," you need to try to figure out where that line is constitutionally and march right up to it.
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Jack Goldsmith
Office of Legal Counsel, 2003-2005
KQED 05/13/2014
Goldsmith: The program was an example of the administration going it alone in secret based on inadequate legal reasoning and flawed legal opinions. Narrator: Goldsmith discovered that as part of the program, the government had been tracking data about the emails of tens of millions of Americans. Gellman: He said, "You can't justify the email collection. It is, on its face, a clear violation of the 4th Amendment and perhaps the 1st Amendment as well." Narrator: Addington was furious that Goldsmith would raise questions about "The Program," and he let him know. Goldsmith: He was very tough in making his arguments. He was very sarcastic and aggressive against people with whom he disagreed, and dismissive oftentimes. And he acted with the implicit blessing of the vice president. So all of these things made him a very, very forceful presence.
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Peter Baker
White House Correspondent and Newspaper Reporter, The New York Times
KQED 05/13/2014
Baker: Goldsmith tells him, "We're going to pull back our endorsement of the legality of this program." And Addington roars at him and says, "If you do that, the blood of 100,000 people killed in the next attack will be on your head." Narrator: For Cheney, Addington, Gonzales, Hayden and others, the personal stakes at this moment were extremely high. Gellman: It was a felony to conduct this kind of surveillance in the United States. And everyone was relying on the shield that they were trying to create of having the president order it explicitly and have the attorney general sign off and say, "It's lawful." And as soon as the Justice Department starts to say, "We're not so sure this is lawful," there is a great deal of concern and anxiety.
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Peter Baker
White House Correspondent and Newspaper Reporter, The New York Times
KQED 05/13/2014
Narrator: Goldsmith's boss, deputy attorney general James Comey, delivered the news to John Ashcroft: parts of the program appeared to be illegal. Baker: They go to the attorney general, John Ashcroft. They say, "We don't think this is legal. We think we need to get this changed. We need to stop what's going on because we don't have a solid foundation to go on." Narrator: Ashcroft was supposed to sign a reauthorization of the entire program every 45 days, and for two and a half years, he had. But now he balked. Gellman: Ashcroft gives Comey his verbal assurance that he is not going to go along with this program and that he is going to demand changes or he won't sign. Narrator: Then just hours later, Attorney General Ashcroft collapsed, suffering from severe pancreatitis.
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Barton Gellman
Journalist, contributing to the Washington Post
KQED 05/13/2014
Narrator: James Comey was now the acting Attorney General. Gellman: Comey notifies the White House formally that he's not going to sign, and we're now within 48 hours of expiration of this program. Narrator: With the deadline looming inside the White House, Alberto Gonzales, chief of staff Andrew Card and David Addington headed to Attorney General Ashcroft's hospital room. Gonzales: We went to the West Wing, picked up David, who had the authorization. We get to the hospital and I tell David to stay back because there was history between David and the Attorney General and I didn't want to aggravate the Attorney General needlessly. Gellman: Janet Ashcroft, the Attorney General's wife, is very alarmed. She calls up Ashcroft's chief of staff and says, "Oh my God, they're coming over.
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Barton Gellman
Journalist, contributing to the Washington Post
KQED 05/13/2014
Narrator: In the wake of the hospital confrontation, at the White House, Cheney insisted the president should act on his own: reauthorize all of the program even though the Justice Department said part of it was illegal. Gellman: Cheney and David Addington draft a new order. And this time, it has one subtle difference. Instead of having a signature page for the Attorney General, "I certify the lawfulness of this order," there's a new signature for the White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, who does not have the same legal authority. Gonzales: I satisfied myself that there was sufficient legal authority to move forward. And I felt that the President was not a lawyer, and that it was my job, if I felt comfortable that it was in fact lawful, to provide that signature. I did it because I wanted to protect the President. That's why I signed that document.
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George W Bush
President 2000-2009
KQED 05/13/2014
Narrator: The President then sent for FBI Director Mueller. Gellman: Mueller is waiting downstairs a level, outside the Situation Room. Some aide goes and says, "The President wants to see you right now, get in there." And Bush says to Mueller, "Go tell Jim Comey to fix this. I withdraw the order. You go make it right." Narrator: The warrantless email data collection was shut down. The crisis was averted. But at the White House, they were determined to resume it. Lizza: And so they're sort of sifting through the FISA law, they're sifting through the Patriot Act trying to find existing laws, existing authorities, you might call it loopholes, to justify these programs.
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