Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell has managed to develop a fairly good reputation in DC, which is why it’s all the more curious he made comments like these to the El Paso Times.
Q: Even if it’s perception, how do you deal with that? You have to do public relations, I assume.
A: Well, one of the things you do is you talk to reporters. And you give them the facts the best you can. Now part of this is a classified world. The fact we’re doing it this way means that some Americans are going to die, because we do this mission unknown to the bad guys because they’re using a process that we can exploit and the more we talk about it, the more they will go with an alternative means and when they go to an alternative means, remember what I said, a significant portion of what we do, this is not just threats against the United States, this is war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Q. So you’re saying that the reporting and the debate in Congress means that some Americans are going to die?
A. That’s what I mean. Because we have made it so public. We used to do these things very differently, but for whatever reason, you know, it’s a democratic process and sunshine’s a good thing. We need to have the debate.
It’s hard to even know where to start with comments like these. To hear McConnell tell it, the very discussion of the administration’s surveillance powers will kill an untold number of Americans — but “sunshine’s a good thing.”
And why, pray tell, are Americans going to die as a result of a public debate about presidential power? Apparently, because the bad guys will get a vague sense of the kind of tactics we’ll use to intercept their communications. That might sound vaguely persuasive, but it doesn’t stand up well to scrutiny. Terrorists might figure out that the U.S. will tap phone lines? I think they knew that. Terrorists might figure out that we can monitor email and bank transactions? I think they knew that, too.
Indeed, what are these “alternate means” terrorists will use? Smoke signals? They’re going to stop using phones, computers, and banks?
McConnell went to lament cynicism.
A: The reason that the FISA law was passed in 1978 was an arrangement was worked out between the Congress and the administration, we did not want to allow this community to conduct surveillance, electronic surveillance, of Americans for foreign intelligence unless you had a warrant, so that was required. So there was no warrant required for a foreign target in a foreign land. And so we are trying to get back to what was the intention of ’78. Now because of the claim, counterclaim, mistrust, suspicion, the only way you could make any progress was to have this debate in an open way.
I’m sorry, but whining about a public debate over presidential power is rather offensive. McConnell seems to prefer that Congress secretly turn over secret powers to the president, while the public simply trusts, as a matter of faith, that the government will not abuse its sweeping powers.
Sorry, Mike, but your boss hasn’t exactly earned the benefit of the doubt.
For that matter, as Spencer Ackerman noted, for a guy who’s convinced that discussion of these issues will kill innocent Americans, McConnell had surprisingly loose lips during the interview.
The likelihood of them actually knowing [what procedures they can undertake to avoid detection from the NSA], however, from either the debate or the incredibly complex Protect America Act it produced, is incredibly low — not least of which because not a single NSA surveillance method was disclosed by either. In fact, in his interview with the paper, McConnell gave more details — the effort isn’t “massive data-mining,” or that it takes 200 man-hours to prepare a FISA-warrant request, for instance — about the program’s operation than did the entire Congressional debate.
For all his alleged stature, McConnell came across as a bit of a nut in this interview. As for coverage of his comments, the media seems to have largely overlooked the fact that the DNI believes the FISA debate will itself lead to U.S. deaths, which, given the severity of the demagoguery, should be fairly big news.