Reporter defends release of NSA spy program

Andrea Mitchell Chief foreign affairs correspondent • Profile

New York Times reporter James Risen first broke the story two weeks ago that the National Security Agency began spying on domestic communications soon after 9/11. In a new book out Tuesday, "State of War," he says it was a lot bigger than that. Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell sat down with Risen to talk about the NSA, and the run-up to the war in Iraq. Following is an edited transcript of the interview.

Andrea Mitchell: The president has said that the NSA only intercepted a few people — a few numbers — that if the enemy, the bad guys are calling, we want to know what they're saying. What's wrong with that?

James Risen: There's nothing wrong with that except there are laws that govern the way in which the United States and the intelligence community can eavesdrop on people inside the United States. Both American citizens and other people who are physically in the United States and the people who came forward to discuss this with Eric Lichtblau and myself felt that the Bush administration was at best skirting the laws — the existing laws — that govern the way in which the NSA and the intelligence community is supposed to operate in the United States.

Mitchell: But the president is saying that we are at war. This is the enemy. If the enemy is calling people to make plans to attack Americans, why wouldn't we want to listen in?

Risen: I think we probably would, but the question is, should we follow the laws that exist, should we adhere to court decisions and the will of Congress? And I just think that I'm a reporter and I just felt that this was an issue that deserved public debate. Perhaps in the end the public will agree with the president, but I think it's something that should be discussed by Congress and the courts and by the people.

Mitchell: Is the president correct when he tells the American people that the NSA was only intercepting "a few numbers?"

Risen: Well, what we've been told is that they were eavesdropping on roughly 500 people in the United States every day over the past three or four years. That adds up to potentially thousands of people, and so because this program has been so classified, it's difficult to determine exactly who they were listening  to. It started out relatively small, going after numbers they had taken from captured al-Qaida prisoners and then expanded out in kind of a large data mining operation. What they got was access to main telecommunication switches that go in and out of the United States, which carry huge volumes of telecommunication traffic. And that, in effect, gave them access to the main bulk of communications in and out of the United States. So without oversight, it's difficult to tell how many people and to what degree they were really listening to people.

Mitchell: Once they got access through agreement from the telecommunications companies, correct? Once the companies gave them access, they were able, by using super computers, to pull up potentially threatening calls or interesting calls or possible leads?

Risen: Well, they were doing data mining. They were going thru the entire system looking for patterns of phone numbers and other information. So, there was both the actual eavesdropping on some numbers and a more sophisticated pattern analysis. It's difficult to tell how those two things worked together, but all of this was being done without search warrants which in the past had always been required.

Mitchell: But isn't this exactly what everyone criticized the administration and Bill Clinton and other administrations for not doing? The president and his administration was criticized for not connecting the dots. Isn't this eavesdropping a very sophisticated way of connecting the dots?

Risen: Yeah, certainly that's part of it. The question really is not whether or not this program could be effective — you could listen to all 250 million Americans and that would be a very effective counter-terrorism tool. The question is, where is the balance between security and civil liberties? And that's something I think the American people should debate. And it's not up to me to decide. It's just, I'm just reporting on what happened.

Mitchell: The White House argues that they didn't have time to get warrants and that they could lose valuable leads by waiting to get warrants. Are they correct in that?

Risen: Well, you can under FISA, the law that's been in place for 30 years. In an emergency you can listen in on a phone number without a warrant for 72 hours before you have to then go get a warrant. So there were means with which you could — legal means — with which you could go after individual phone numbers without a warrant. What I think that the administration really felt was the volume of phone numbers they wanted to listen to was so large that they felt that it would have been difficult to get enough search warrants in fast enough time to make this program work. I also think that they wanted to do it in secret. They believed that it was better to keep this secret, obviously, than to make sure no one knew about it.

Mitchell: Were they worried that the court would not agree to such a broad search?

Risen: Well, the fact that when they started this, they notified the chief judge of the FISA court -- the foreign intelligence act surveillance court — but they didn't ask for his permission or authorization and they didn't tell the other judges on the court and they didn't seek changes in the laws in Congress. They notified a key few members of Congress, but they didn't ask their permission. And so, I think the question really is, did that provide for a sufficient authorization or notification or oversight And those are the issues I think that Congress and the people and the courts should decide.

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