By Max Ehrenfreund
The secret documents describing U.S. surveillance operations that Edward Snowden gave to journalists have focused new attention on the National Security Agency and its director, Gen. Keith Alexander. Alexander has worked tirelessly since taking charge of the agency in 2005 to expand its capabilities: In his eight years at the helm of the country’s electronic surveillance agency, Alexander, 61, has quietly presided over a revolution in the government’s ability to scoop up information in the name of national security. And, as he did in Iraq, Alexander has pushed hard for everything he can get: tools, resources and the legal authority to collect and store vast quantities of raw information on American and foreign communications.His successes have won accolades from political leaders of both parties as well as from counterterrorism and intelligence professionals who say the NSA chief’s efforts have helped foil dozens of terrorist attacks. His approach also has drawn attack from civil rights groups and a bipartisan group of lawmakers. One Democrat who confronted Alexander at a congressional hearing last month accused the NSA of crossing a line by collecting the cellphone records of millions of Americans.“What authorization gave you the grounds for acquiring my cellphone data?” demanded Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), waving his mobile phone at the four-star general. . .As portrayed by supporters, Alexander is animated by a spymaster’s awareness of serious, overlapping threats arrayed against the United States. They include foreign and homegrown terrorists. They also include a host of adversaries who are constantly probing the country’s cyberdefenses, looking for opportunities to steal secrets or unleash mayhem by shutting down critical infrastructure. Like many national security officials of his generation, Alexander’s sensibilities were shaped by a series of painful intelligence lapses leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks.To some of Alexander’s most vociferous critics, Snowden’s disclosures confirm their image of an agency and a director so enamored of technological prowess that they have sacrificed privacy rights.“He is absolutely obsessed and completely driven to take it all, whenever possible,” said Thomas Drake, a former NSA official and whistleblower. The continuation of Alexander’s policies, Drake said, would result in the “complete evisceration of our civil liberties.”Alexander frequently points out that collection programs are subject to oversight by Congress as well as the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, although the proceedings of both bodies are shrouded in secrecy. But even his defenders say Alexander’s aggressiveness has sometimes taken him to the outer edge of his legal authority.Some in Congress complain that Alexander’s NSA is sometimes slow to inform the oversight committees of problems, particularly when the agency’s eavesdroppers inadvertently pick up communications that fall outside the NSA’s legal mandates. Others are uncomfortable with the extraordinarily broad powers vested in the NSA chief. In 2010, he became the first head of U.S. Cyber Command, set up to defend Defense Department networks against hackers and, when authorized, conduct attacks on adversaries. Pentagon officials and Alexander say the command’s mission is also to defend the nation against cyberattacks.“He is the only man in the land that can promote a problem by virtue of his intelligence hat and then promote a solution by virtue of his military hat,” said one former Pentagon official, voicing a concern that the lines governing the two authorities are not clearly demarcated and that Alexander can evade effective public oversight as a result. Ellen Nakashima and Joby Warrick
Snowden, a former contractor at the NSA, said Friday he plans to apply for asylum in Russia and hopes eventually to travel to Latin America. He is wanted in the United States on criminal charges after he copied material from NSA databases:
Glenn Greenwald, a columnist with The Guardian newspaper who first reported on the intelligence leaks, told The Associated Press that disclosure of the information in the documents “would allow somebody who read them to know exactly how the NSA does what it does, which would in turn allow them to evade that surveillance or replicate it.”He said the “literally thousands of documents” taken by Snowden constitute “basically the instruction manual for how the NSA is built.”“In order to take documents with him that proved that what he was saying was true he had to take ones that included very sensitive, detailed blueprints of how the NSA does what they do,” the journalist said Sunday in a Rio de Janeiro hotel room. He said the interview was taking place about four hours after his last interaction with Snowden.Greenwald said he believes the disclosure of the information in the documents would not prove harmful to Americans or their national security, but that Snowden has insisted they not be made public.“I think it would be harmful to the U.S. government, as they perceive their own interests, if the details of those programs were revealed,” he said.He has previously said the documents have been encrypted to help ensure their safekeeping.