CNN's Peter Bergen Probes Claim NSA Halted "Dozens" of Attacks - Finds It Mainly Hype

[Hissyspit]

http://gregmitchellwriter.blogspot.com/2013/06/about-those-dozens-of-terror-attacks.html

About Those 'Dozens' of Terror Attacks

Terrorism expert Peter Bergen of CNN with lengthy new piece up on their site with evidence that the official claims of NSA snooping halting "dozens" of terror attacks on the U.S. is wildly overblown. He actually--refreshing!--demands evidence and produces what he can find, that suggests that the few known serious plots were stopped by other methods. Perhaps, he allows, we will learn about attacks disrupted abroad. But he remains skeptical that the claims overall are not just defensive hype. Key line: "This suggests that the NSA surveillance programs are wide-ranging fishing expeditions with little to show for them."

- snip -

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/17/opinion/bergen-nsa-spying/index.html

updated 1:28 PM EDT 06.17.13

Bergen: Did NSA stop dozens of attacks?

By Peter Bergen and David Sterman

Editor's Note: Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst and a director at the New America Foundation. David Sterman is a graduate student at Georgetown University's National Security Studies Program.

(CNN) - Testifying before Congress on Wednesday, Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, asserted that his agency's massive acquisition of U.S. phone data and the contents of overseas Internet traffic that is provided by American tech companies has helped prevent "dozens of terrorist events."

On Thursday, Sens. Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, Democrats who both serve on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and have access to the nation's most sensitive secrets, released a statement contradicting this assertion. "Gen. Alexander's testimony yesterday suggested that the NSA's bulk phone records collection program helped thwart 'dozens' of terrorist attacks, but all of the plots that he mentioned appear to have been identified using other collection methods," the two senators said.

Indeed, a survey of court documents and media accounts of all the jihadist terrorist plots in the United States since 9/11 by the New America Foundation shows that traditional law enforcement methods have overwhelmingly played the most significant role in foiling terrorist attacks.

This suggests that the NSA surveillance programs are wide-ranging fishing expeditions with little to show for them.

- snip -

Homegrown jihadist extremists have mounted 42 plots to conduct attacks within the United States since 2001. Of those plots, nine involved an actual terrorist act that was not prevented by any type of government action, such as the failed attempt by Faisal Shahzad to blow up a car bomb in Times Square on May 1, 2010. Of the remaining 33 plots, the public record shows that at least 29 were uncovered by traditional law enforcement methods, such as the use of informants, reliance on community tips about suspicious activity and other standard policing practices.

MORE

[Posteritatis]

1. That's unusually vertebrate of CNN. (nt)

[Hissyspit]

3. Bergen is good. His only problem is he works for CNN, but

they're not the only one he has worked for:

Wikipedia:

Bergen is the director of the National Security Studies Program at the New America Foundation, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C. He is also a research fellow at New York University's Center on Law and Security and CNN's national security analyst. In 2008, he was an adjunct lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and an Adjunct Professor at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University (2003–07).

Bergen is on the editorial board of Studies in Conflict and Terrorism and has testified before several congressional committees, including the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee and the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is a member of the National Security Preparedness Group, a successor to the 9/11 Commission, and is the co-editor of the AfPak Channel, a joint publication of Foreign Policy and the New America Foundation.[3]

In 1994, he received the Overseas Press Club's Edward Murrow Award (OPC). Holy War, Inc. (2001) and The Osama bin Laden I Know (2006) were named among the best non-fiction books of the year by The Washington Post. Documentaries based on both books were nominated for Emmys in 2002 and 2007.[4] His third book is The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda (2011), an overview of the War on Terror.

Bergen has reported on al-Qaeda, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and counterterrorism and homeland security for a variety of American newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Time, The Nation, The National Interest, Mother Jones, Newsweek, and Vanity Fair. He is a contributing editor at The New Republic. His story on extraordinary rendition for Mother Jones was part of a package of stories nominated for a 2008 National Magazine Award.[5] He has also written for newspapers and magazines around the world such as The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, International Herald Tribune, Prospect, El Mundo (Spain), la Repubblica, The National (Abu Dhabi), and Die Welt. He has worked as a correspondent for National Geographic Channel and Discovery Channel, and CNN. On May 2, 2011, shortly after it was reported that Osama bin Laden had been killed, Bergen stated on CNN: "Killing bin Laden is the end of the War on Terror. We can just sort of announce that right now."[6]

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. The press right one is not happy

And the AP has all to do with it

[Eddie Haskell]

19. How many of these were FBI initiated stings?

[Ednahilda]

34. Precisely

what I asked on another thread yesterday.

It's not hard to thwart a plot that you've set up.

[Puzzledtraveller]

43. I like your use of "vertebrate".

[Posteritatis]

45. It might overstate things a bit, but hey, there's hints of a notochord at least! (nt)

[Kolesar]

2. And that is a reason to quit spying on China and the Wahhabi fundamentalists?

Quit it now??

[Hissyspit]

4. Maybe, but who called for that?

[leveymg]

5. While this is largely solid and factual, the Time Square bomber was known to CIA/NSA by his Awlaki

connection, as were virtually all the other bombing attempts since 9/11, as was 9/11 . . . http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2010/0507/US-born-cleric-inspired-Times-Square-bomber-Faisal-Shahzad

Shahzad has reportedly told investigators that he was inspired to violence by Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-Yemeni cleric whom the CIA recently put on a hit list, reports the New York Times. Awlaki, on the run in Yemen, is also linked to the Fort Hood shooter and the alleged Christmas Day underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

According to one account, Shahzad told investigators that he actually met with Awlaki – as well as Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, and even Abdulmutallah, who tried to blow up a Northwest airliner landing in Detroit on Christmas Day.

[avaistheone1]

9. Lovely, but the attack was foiled when two street vendors discovered a car bomb .

So much for being known to the CIA/NSA! Sounds like the CIA/NSA pour millions of names in their databases and are not very effective in working with their own data to protect the American people. Similiar intelligence failure was experienced with the Boston Marathon bombers.

[leveymg]

10. The bomb was a dud, like most of the ones designed by Awlaki's "genius" bomb maker.

The '93 WTC bomb was also supposed to have been made with inert materials, but the FBI and CIA got careless with that one. For 20 years, it's been one long series of "controlled" operations involving double-agents they too frequently discover are triple agents after innocent people get killed and it's too late.

[NoMoreWarNow]

33. yep!

fucked up all the way around.

[Cha]

7. Oh yeah, "it's a toss up" cnn

[KittyWampus]

8. Lumping all NSA 'programs' together & then dismissing them as fishing expeditions is a mistake.

[leveymg]

11. Can you name one NSA/CIA/FBI operation that actually deterred a real foreign terrorist attack?

They don't seem to be able to. Not with all the King's horses and all the King's men.

[Eddie Haskell]

21. None here .

http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/media/investigative-report-criticizes-counterterrorism-reporting-waste-at-state-and-local-intelligence-fusion-centers

[leveymg]

22. They can't even pin down how much they've spent on JTTF "Fusion Centers" to the nearest $billion

It might even seem funny if it were happening to some adversary nation state:

The Department of Homeland Security estimates that it has spent somewhere between $289 million and $1.4 billion in public funds to support state and local fusion centers since 2003, broad estimates that differ by over $1 billion. The investigation raises questions about the value this amount of funding and the nation’s more than 70 fusion centers are providing to federal counterterrorism efforts:

• The investigation found that DHS intelligence officers assigned to state and local fusion centers produced intelligence of “uneven quality – oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already-published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism.”

• DHS officials did not provide evidence to the Subcommittee showing unique contributions that state and local fusion centers made to assist federal counter terrorism intelligence efforts that resulted in the disruption or prevention of a terrorism plot.

[pscot]

13. What, exactly, are you defending/

[kentuck]

14. That is the big secret they want to hide.

Cost-benefit analysis.

[JDPriestly]

23. Thank you.

We know the cost-benefit analysis of food stamps and medical care, but this surveillance program provides very little benefit compared to its cost. That is unless you are a democratic government and you want to become a dictatorship.

[formercia]

39. People protecting their fiefdoms

I've seen it first-hand, even assigned to work in a program that was nothing but smoke and mirrors. I told them what they were doing would not work. After I left, the Israelis confirmed what I had been saying and the program manager was demoted from a GS-14 to a GS-13. These people are terrified that someone might pull them off their teat.

[burnodo]

29. Do you work for the government?

Nt

[Catherina]

12. Lol. The trainwreck is fascinating to watch, funny and sad at the same time. Bittersweet

Regardless of what they tried to pretend, they did NOT see Snowden coming lol.

[Fearless]

15. Like they care about silly things like facts

[ctsnowman]

16. Thanks for the post.

[DallasNE]

17. By All Means Quantify Results

I have been saying this from the outset. The problem is that the first contact must be from a foreign source so this program is mostly worthless against domestic terrorist networks. The one high profile case broken up was the New York subway bomb plot and that was lucky because the guy in Colorado emailed a know al Qaeda bomb expert because he was not successful in getting a bomb to explode and want to know the "recipe" so they used PRISM to track him down with a FISA court order and intercepted him en route to New York City with 9 bombs to be seeded around the NYC subway system. But is that the only success? And how do you go about performing a cost benefit analysis on privacy versus safety. The issue is complex and the answer is not completely obvious.

[Eddie Haskell]

18. Funny, I can't find any.

http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/170479.pdf

[marmar]

20. I could smell the manure the minute the official claims hit the press.

nt

[blkmusclmachine]

24. Hype, or hope. Either way, they're both phony lies.

We're all Germans now

[indepat]

25. But even if one American life were saved through spending $100s of billions annually in violating

almost every Americans' 4th Amendment rights, it would be worth it. On the other hand, Americans must accept that thousands of Americans will be killed annually by guns, 'cause there ain't no way any American's 2nd Amendment rights will be inadvertently violated through sensible gun regulation. No siree!

[DontTreadOnMe]

26. First, let me state that I feel the NSA budget is way too much money that could be spent on other...

...like food programs or education or rebuilding infrastructure.

BUT people are trying to make the argument here that there is a "cost analysis" for the NSA - and that we are not getting any value from the NSA Program.

It could be EASILY argued that "even if they have not prevented one single attack so far", it is the next "911-type major attack" that is what they are trying to prevent. 911 was the most costly economic attack in the history of mankind. I am not sure you can even put an accurate dollar figure on it. And put into perspective, a "trillion dollar NSA budget" is tiny compared to the total cost of 911. The economic hit the world took from 911 was staggering.

The NSA Project is a long term prevention program, and should not be cost analyzed on a "quarterly basis".

I am not in total agreement with everything the NSA is doing, but the last time I looked in the mirror my hair was not on fire.

I am starting to see a pattern where everything wrong with America is blamed on Obama. There are two other branches of our government that deserve equal blame for everything involved with the NSA.

[L0oniX]

27. Breaking: NSA leak lowers toilet use.

[Life Long Dem]

28. He is talking about homegrown jihadist extremists

And adds ..."but government officials may be able to point to a number of attacks that were averted overseas."

"Homegrown jihadist extremists have mounted 42 plots to conduct attacks within the United States since 2001."

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/17/opinion/bergen-nsa-spying/index.html

[dbackjon]

30. So, is CNN good journalism or a bunch of hacks

DU is so confusing on who we are supposed to dismiss as a source to verify our already made up minds.

[spicegal]

31. How would Bergen know how many plots may or may not have been thwarted?

Sorry, but I think this stuff with the NSA is being a tad overblown. They've been surveilling phone data for years. The techniques have just become far more sophisticated as technology has advanced. They're not listening in on conversations or reading personal emails, which would be impossible given their resources and an absurd waste of time even if they could. As I understand it, they're using the data to cross reference, look for patterns and connections. It's perfectly legal based on our current law.

[treestar]

32. So we can just forget about spying ?

Let's just do away with the CIA then. We don't need all that stuff, right? It is always abused anyway and has no use. Why doesn't someone come out and call for this?

[Demeter]

35. There have been such calls for 50 years--nothing ever comes of it

The Political, Military industrial Complex Elite are too enthralled at the thought of control to consider any cost too high, even to the loss of democracy.

[Catherina]

36. Say it ain't so! n/t

[AzDar]

37. The first thing I thought of when this claim was trotted out: Bush/Cheney's "Library Tower" Plot...

LIE.

[frylock]

38. "Liberty Tower" as shrub referred to it..

and yes, it was a load of shit then just as it's a load of shit now.

[libdude]

40. The real problem

with any claims is that there is no independent way of checking these claims. If anything is discussed in a closed hearing dealing with classified information, those present can not directly speak on the information, note Sen. Udall's questioning of Dir. Clapper, even forming the question elicited a lie, or a non answer answer. Possibly the least untruthful answer.
No, the answer is not to abolish the CIA, but they need strict and intense oversight. If they are found to be involved with internal anything, directly or indirectly, e.g. working with NYPD on intelligence regarding Occupy Wall Street. Anyone involved with internal issues, they are arrested and put on trial, from the Director to anyone that has been involved.
The NSA is part of the DOD, military, as such they should be barred by law in collecting, retaining any information on U.S. citizens.
No classified information by any government agency should be available to any contractors.
If such are a need to know, that should be approved through a request submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Having worked in a large government organization, there is this drive to build a kingdom, to become indispenable, etc. I find Gen. Alexander's claims of success, very convenient and somewhat self-serving for a bureaucrat in charge of the NSA.
I reject the idea that the private activities and information must be held without a warrant for collection based on probable cause, is necessary in order for the nation to be secure. I reject the violation of my 4th Amendment rights in order for a gradiose and potentally dangerous to freedom fishing pod to be created and maintained. Now is the time to say no and stop this.

[backscatter712]

41. This is how the three-letter-agencies foil a terrorist plot.

1. FBI agents seek out a group of the stupidest dumbfucks they can possibly find.
2. When they find a few people that are sufficiently mentally challenged, they start manipulating them. They cajole, egg-on, push and even threaten these people to get them to go along with a "terrorist" plot.
3. They arrange for these mental midgets to get "materials" such as fake bombs and the like, and when they claim the "bomb-making" materials, they get busted, thrown in prison.
4. The feds brag to the world about how they thwarted a dangerous group of Eeeeeeeevil Terrorists!
5. They profit when the fear-mongering increases their power and drives more money to the intel-industrial complex.

[Civilization2]

42. well of course, it has little to do with "terror",. and much to do with dissent,.

what they are looking for is dissent against the corporate-military power grab,. the rising fascism.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

44. It's like that U.S. / Canada border guard who was a complete asshole...

Some ordinary Canadian citizen was pushed around by this clown and asked, "Just how many terrorists do you guys ever stop?" and the guy said about five a day.