More Lies About NSA Surveillance: Read the DOJ IG Report!

As a strong supporter of the NSA metadata program, I was dismayed when a Department of Justice Inspector General report suddenly was released on Friday, May 22 just as the U.S. Senate was about to vote on extending this program.  (For background on the metadata program (also known as the 215 program), see my May 11, 2015 NRO article “NSA Data Collection: Necessary or Constitutional?”)

Opponents of the metadata program and the news media seized on the DOJ IG report as a huge blow for the metadata program, noting that it says: “The agents we interviewed did not identify any major case developments that resulted from use of the records obtained in response to Section 215 orders.”

Senator Rand Paul responded to the report in a May 26 Breitbart article “the Investigator General reported that the FBI has not cracked a single terrorist plot thanks to the invasive spying powers implanted under the PATRIOT Act.  Let me reiterate that: even the most vocal defenders of the spying program have failed to identify a single thwarted plot.”

Alex Abdo, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Associated Press that DOJ IG report is “an indictment of the system of secret oversight.”

I reject such claims and believed last week that the release of this report hours before the Senate was scheduled to vote on extending the metadata program probably was politically motivated.  Then I read the report.

The actual language on the usefulness of the metadata program from page 44 of the report summary reads:

“The agents we interviewed did not identify any major case developments that resulted from the records obtained in response to Section 215 orders, but told us the authority is valuable when it is the only means to obtain certain information.”  (Emphasis mine.)

Wow.  The language in bold appears to destroy claims by Senator Rand Paul and privacy advocates that the metadata program has no value and that any information produced by it can be obtained from other sources

This section of the report goes on to say:

“As described in this section, agents told us that the material produced pursuant to Section 215 orders was used to support other investigative requests, develop leads, and corroborate information obtained from other sources.”

The report also says this on page vi of the introduction:

”Agents and attorneys told us that Section 215 authority continued to be a valuable investigative tool particularly when the material sought by the FBI was not available through other investigative authorities.”

This language confirms what I know about intelligence analysis based on my 19 years as a CIA analyst.  Rarely is one “smoking gun” source behind an intelligence analysis.  I often used over a hundred raw intelligence reports to write an analysis with none being indispensable.  While I continue to believe that metadata was the smoking gun source in stopping terrorist attacks against the United States, this is not an appropriate standard to judge the usefulness of intelligence sources.

The report also said this concerning its evaluation of the usefulness of intelligence reports based on metadata:

“As previously noted, we did not attempt to independently evaluate the value of the materials produced in response to Section 215 orders.”

So despite claims by opponents of the metadata program that the DOD IG report concluded that this program is ineffective, the report specifically says that it did not try to evaluate the program’s effectiveness.

The Department of Justice IG report on the metadata program is a verbose report on how the FBI has used telephone metadata and contains no conclusions or recommendations on the program’s effectiveness or constitutionality.  Its opponents quoted some of the report out of context but failed to mention passages which reflect positively on this program.  As they prepare to vote on whether to reauthorize the metadata program on May 31, senators need to be aware that the manipulation of the DOJ IG report is typical of the misleading and fearmongering campaign being conducted by its opponents to destroy this effective and vital counterterrorism intelligence program.