With the White House angered by revelations this week of classified information about U.S. eavesdropping the day before the Sept. 11 attacks, leaders of Congress’ intelligence committees on Thursday requested a Justice Department investigation of the leak.
The National Security Agency, which monitors electronic communications across the globe, reportedly had picked up Arabic conversations on Sept. 10 apparently foreshadowing the attacks. One comment was, “The match is about to begin,” a possible reference to the next day’s attacks.
The existence of the intercepts was shared with lawmakers during closed-door sessions this week with NSA director Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden. Television and newspaper reports cited congressional sources for the leaks.
On Thursday, leaders of the joint congressional panel investigating intelligence lapses prior to the terrorist attacks sent a letter to U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft seeking a probe of the leaks after Vice President Dick Cheney telephoned them to express White House outrage over the disclosure.
Some national security experts said such unauthorized disclosures are a threat to America’s safety. Leaks might help terrorists change their behavior to reduce their susceptibility to U.S. surveillance, they said, and could undermine foreign governments’ trust in U.S. intelligence officials abroad.
Other experts said taxpayers have the right to learn how well or poorly the war on terror was being waged on their behalf, even if that knowledge comes from leaked information. They expressed suspicion about the Bush administration’s motives amid its tendency toward secrecy, even on issues unrelated to national security.
The White House made its unhappiness clear Thursday. President Bush “does have very deep concerns about anything that would be inappropriately leaked that could in any way endanger America’s ability to maintain sources and methods and anything that could interfere with America’s ability to fight the war on terrorism,” said press secretary Ari Fleischer.
`Sources and methods’
“Sources and methods” refer to the specific ways intelligence is gathered, whether by humans or electronically.
Meanwhile, Cheney phoned the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees that are jointly investigating the work of the nation’s spy agencies before Sept. 11 to determine what fixes are needed.
“The vice president was not a happy man,” said Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), co-chairman of the congressional investigation with Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.). “He emphasized the fact that the administration was attempting to be cooperative with our investigation, providing us with a very large amount of material, that the understanding was that it would be handled with discretion.
“I told him . . . we understood our responsibilities and shared his deep distress and concern whenever those responsibilities were not met and that we would . . . initiate action,” Graham said.
The Justice Department said it would “expeditiously review this matter and take any appropriate action.”
Some former U.S. intelligence officials said such an investigation is essential to stop more leaks. The White House is “right to be upset about this,” said Stewart Baker, the NSA’s former general counsel and a Washington lawyer.
Baker likened the situation to World War II, when the Chicago Tribune revealed in the days after the Battle of Midway in 1942 that the U.S. had broken the Japanese naval code before the battle. The government considered filing treason charges against then-Publisher Robert McCormick but decided that such a move would have brought more unwanted publicity.
“These kinds of capabilities are very fragile,” Baker said. “The higher the stakes, the more fragile they are and the more damage that can be done by irresponsibly talking about what our sources and methods are.”
During his briefing, Fleischer cited a more recent example. In 1998, it was leaked that the U.S. had gotten a fix on the satellite phone of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and was listening in. “As soon as it was publicly revealed . . . we never again heard from that satellite phone,” Fleischer said.
John Gannon, a former assistant director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said such leaks raise doubts in the minds of allies about the discretion of U.S. officials.
“When you leak information about intelligence capabilities, you demonstrate that your government overall lacks discipline,” Gannon said. “The bottom line: I would say, as a former intelligence officer, what I care about most is trust . . .
“And when it is demonstrated in Washington that at the senior levels of our branches of government that you can’t keep a secret, then that’s very damaging to the intelligence business,” said Gannon, vice chairman of Intellibridge, a company that provides information and analysis to corporations and government agencies.
Skepticism on the other side
The Bush administration’s near-obsession about secrecy on even non-security matters, such as its energy policy, makes Wayne Madsen suspicious. “This is typical of them,” said Madson, a staffer of the Electronic Privacy Information Center who once worked at the NSA.
Madsen also expressed skepticism that the leak about the Sept. 10 intercepts revealed much about intelligence sources and methods not already widely known. “There are tons of books written about this stuff,” he said.
The NSA has shown off its capabilities in ways that could have compromised secrecy, he said. There are reports, for instance, that it played recordings for visitors to the agency it made of bin Laden talking to his mother. “It was part of their sales pitch” to impress guests from Congress and elsewhere that their budgets were being well-spent, Madsen said.
