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Then 83 makes it easy for you to keep an eye on whats happening in washington. Now from book tv Investigative Reporter discusses the history of National Security agencies buying. And as a surveillance of american citizens since 9 11, and the edwards known leaks. This is an hour and 15 minutes. [applause] thank you very much. I appreciate everybody coming here. This is a great event. There is this is only the second greatest event i have had here. So this has to take second place to that, i think. Among the people at my wedding, which i discovered later was the major russian spy, bob hansen. I had known him for years as one of my sources. I did not realize what his application was. But it is really good to have you all here. I was very happy that the president decided to hold off on his announcements until tomorrow so that he could hear what i had to say tonight. It was very nice of him. I dont think he will agree with most of what i have to say, but i will be interested to hear what he has to say tomorrow. One of the things that is fascinating is how many people actually know about the nsa today. I mean, when i first heard the puzzle power back in a june 82i was doing a book tour. One of the people on the book tour or at least in a limousine telling the studio was senator bill bradley from new jersey. He said, well, what is your book about . Well, the National Security agency. Was that . So we got on the said. He was there to talk about the economy. I was there talk about the nsa. I just could not resist it when i asked how secret it is. Even senator bradley said he had never heard of it. You get really angry. He took a separate car back to the hotel that night. The next day his aide called up and said, that was below the belt. I said, no, below the belt, he probably confused with the nba. [applause] so i hear he went on the Intelligence Committee after our get together. He knew a lot more about the nsa after that. One other thing that was really funny when the book first came out was that the book was picked by a bookofthemonth club. So at the New York Times book review. On the back to have all these are pictures of these little books that make little pictures of the books that make the bookofthemonth club. I saw mind. The name was there. The picture was different. It was a picture of a rocket taking off for something. Then we called up and they said, well, what was the idea of doing this. They said, well, we the you were talking about nasa. They actually change the cover of my book on the bookofthemonth club because they thought i had made a mistake. So but john wanted me to keep his shirt because we a lot of people with a lot of questions. The questions going to be far more interesting than the talks. I thought i would run through the few interesting things here. First of all, im happy to be in the press club. The press club has been by been a member here for over 30 years now. I was actually a member actually not at the time, later on, this was actually an all mans place until 1971, i think it was. But the person upon out there that has a deck of cards in front of him was an alltime press club member. He would hang at year during the 1950s. He became a really fascinating card shark. He wrote a book called education of a poker player. That is the ers still in the original building. He may have been playing cards year. Before he became a card shark yet another job. That was being a founding father of the National Security agency. And the nsa actually got its start in that little Apartment Building there. July 21920. And the chief of the black chamber, that is what it was called. He lived on the top floor with his family. The first floor was of farming company. It was accompanied a supposedly made commercial codes, but it was just a front. The actual code breaking was done on the two middle floors. So as you can imagine, the nsa has grown a fair amount since those days. But what some of us, at least some people have been saying right now. Afros actually in 1929. That was the secretary of state to came along, secretary of state simpson. Did not want to tell him that there was a thing called the black chamber even though his state department was paying for. Did not know what his reaction would be that there was a secret office in new york that was eavesdropping on carry vacation. He did finally tell him. Simpson was erased. The gentleman did not read each others mail, and he immediately close down the black chamber. Well, that put yardley out of work. So then yardley went from being the head of the black chamber, the head of the organization that was the first predecessor of the nsa to becoming the basically Edward Snowdon of his state. Snowden, who today has become the object of is he a hero or a trader. My answer to that is always he is a very heroic was a blur. There is no connection between snowden as far as im concerned, as buys. I had one in my weddings that i mentioned. Hes not selling secrets to the russians. He did not go there themselves seekers to the russians. He went there because the u. S. Canceled his passport halfway between hong kong and ecuador. The way before there was an ever snowden there was Herbert Yardley. And Herbert Yardley, after the close the black chamber, they decided to it is such a write a book about it which was the very first to expose a of american cripple logic community and there were not very happy, obviously, what when his book came out and they try putting him in jail. They could not find a lot, so they actually created a new part of the espionage law to prosecute him with. A lot of that is what theyre prosecuting or were trying to prosecute, trend to prosecute snowdon with red now. Ironically the first head of the nsa became also the first whistleblower. Now, this is something that i think every word would be very interested in. There is history of this. There is history which i will show you a little bit. At one point being a really big villain for the nsa, and the next minute being a hero to the nsa. It took a while. It took almost seven years, but they finally put Herbert Yardley in the hall of honor at the nsa. So maybe there is still a chance for every seven at some point. But like us said, this is an yardley wrote the very first book on the organization of the crypt illogic organization, the predecessor of the nsa. The next one to write was david connecticut hero of book called the code breakers and 1967 which still lot about the nsa has the most the biggest expos a of the nsa that had never happened since Herbert Yardley. And the nsa went to a lot of trouble to get rid of the book. I mean, they even considered this came out in and senate Intelligence Committee report, surreptitious entry into this house to steal the manuscript, Clandestine Service supplication , whenever that is, kidnapping, termination. Worst of all, there were going to plant some disparaging press reviews about his book commodes as an author you take every other option before that one. So like yardley david connecticut was rehabilitated in the 1995 that made him an official the First Official scholar in residence at the nsa. They took all his books, including the one that there were trying to ban and put it in a library. So, again, more hope for edwards no near. And then mine was an excellent, the puzzle palace. And there they accused me of putting the country at risk. They threatened me to rise with prosecution. That said they forced me to give up documents college and never gave up rrated a library or did the research, ripped a lot of stuff of the library, they threatened some of my sources, including a former nsa director with prosecution and jail time and everything. They had to they have a guy follow me. That is why wore a costume or rye went. So they actually that was eileen party at john henrys house. But they did actually have somebody in every audience or i give a talk taking notes justin cases of japan said something that they could put me in jail with. They put all file cabinet of papers to get around me. Fl ia, the free information request. We dont have anything on the. Thats impossible. A been writing a benefit three years. Even of a single piece paper. And then i saw on one paper in the sub defense of the word esquire. So i sent a request for everything on the file im gonna holds or. Then i get rehabilitated. So after after about 20 years the agency yes, i just when that picture up. They actually had a book signing. The nsa. They did have a line going up the door. A lot of the people were actually carrying the puzzle palace was there were forbidden. Anyone his book of the National Group the largest school, but im really recalcitrant i became a bad guy and wrote the book about the nsa and eavesdropping. I no longer on their official tour listening more. But anyway, there is possibility here that this could be really. You get general alexander of saying snowdon is a hero are wearing a hero tshirt. It is all possible. But before those are the people that i really admire, people that helped me in writing some of the books i did, some of the articles i did. Tom drake, occur week, all the people who defined the nsa. These are people who were working there for almost 40 years. Tom drake it works their is a contractor for a long time. Before that he was in the military. And toms to cut hundreds firstever job at nsa was september 11 to those among. But these are the people that i really and mired because their people who have a conscience. And when 9 11 came along and the nsc began hes tapping domestic is the people that spoke up. They left the agency, quit the agency because it did not want to see the system they work on turned into a vehicle for use germanamerican citizens and the u. S. So i have a lot of aberration. In all have the honor of attention that is no national what they did an awful lot of work to help get the message out in a few of the mayor here tonight actually. Well, the nsa is, longways since herbert l. Yardley in the town house. Now its an entire city. Have been to their a few times. And it is just a mammoth location. People have no idea how much that agency has grown just in the last ten years. It is the complex, the headquarters complex itself, you could put the u. S. Capital and therefore times over and have space left over. And the whole purpose is eavesdropping. It is an agency that really needs to have a one and released have a close eye on which is why were here, why this controversy is, because there has not been a close eye and a. Here is the nsa budget. For years the nsa this is one of the topsecret documents released. For years the nsa was the largest budget item in the Intelligence Community, but that changed more recently because of the advent of drones with the cia and so forth. So it is an enormous amount of budget. You can see how it is budgeted. And it is very widespread. This is one of the more revealing slides i have seen from the 9 11 group that shows where they do all of their they plan all of their mall where, the computers around the world, 50,000 places the plan now where. Of the places with a tap into fiberoptic cables and so forth. So for somebody has been writing about the nsa for a very, very long time this was an extremely informative slide. Matted data. No one ever heard of that word before last june, i think. But it has become really the key one of the key issues were talking about now. I dont know about you, whenever give the u. S. Government, particularly the nsa, the authority to have, you know, every time i pick up the telephone to keep a record of that and to keep it for five years. So that is one of the big issues that will be talked about tomorrow and the president s talk, whether he will go a long with the committees recommendation which is his panels recommendation which is basically taking the nsa out of the business of storing all of these records and instead putting the data where it is supposed to be, the companies are the collected it. And then using legal authority, getting a warrant from a judge to search through the data and not just going through it without any oversight. Anyway. Meditated is a really big problem. One of the things that has come up more recently was these two decisions on the issue of mad at data. One was judge richard leon, a federal judge in washington. The other was judge William Pauley in new york and none of it made any difference, but i grew up with judge lyonnais went to law school with them. But we never agreed on anything in 30 years. He is a very conservative judge. Periods judge leon came to a very conservative conclusion which happens to be the same conclusion i came to which was the conclusion that the government should not be able to do this kind of activity with the data. Judge william paleoindian came to the office opposite conclusion. You had that split decision. In my opinion provides that whole idea of the government collecting netted data. I mean, the snowden case is a perfect example of why. Here was at risk snowdon. The was a contractor. He was in his 20s. And yet he was able to spend almost a year, it seems like, exfiltrating all of those well, over onehalf million secret documents. And without even knowing about it until the inception on gone. So do you want to trust his agency with all of your data . I dont particularly want to do that. You can see what happens with target. There are people out there that really one data that will pay a lot of money for it. And as somebody at the nsa said to him, the honorable thing, being a whistleblower, wanted to be a criminal, they have all that data. The lessee keep in the hands of the government, the better it is pretty darn of the key issues which is an issue will talk about, which is somewhat of a complex issue but it is a key issue in the entire meditated discussion. It is the issue that judge pauley sort of hung his hat on on his decision. And it all centers on this house in human and this person appeared. I will guarantee you i am the only person in this room that has actually been to that house. This was the Operations Center in the men. It was very controlled of his plots from. I went there because i did a documentary for pbs. We did a documentary and the nsa and 9 11. So i went to that house, and we saw it, and that was where the first hint of 9 11 came from. Again, these were all the issues that feed into judge paulis decision, the comments of the director of the nsa. This is what i am about to talk about here is the key excuse for having limited data program. What happened was in december of 1999 the nsa while, the nsa had been listening to this house for years because it was the house where he would call to set up his terrorist operations. It is the house where they attacked the u. S. Set up a plan for the u. S. S. Cole, the u. S. Embassies and so forth. The nsa was listening to that house. December of 1999 it picked up the communication, and it was from afghanistan that said send khalid for the meeting. So we know that the nsa knows at this point that there will be a big meeting in kuala lumpur. Well, they nsa passes that to the cia and to the other intelligence agencies. The cia says people to kuala lumpur. They get the cooperation of the government, the malaysian government. And theyre watching these guys. And then all of a sudden they get to the airport and they get on a plane. And they fly out of the country with all of the cia being good intelligence people they figure theyre flying to bangkok because that is where the plan was going. The problem was, like all of the station in bangkok to let them and it happens to be a saturday and nobody was working. So that the terrorists got the plane and disappeared into bangkok. But the cia did know that there were going to the United States because they had a copy of their passports with the visa and it. So what happened was the two of them flew from yemen to kuala lumpur. California. And since nobody had been tipped off by the cia, no one was there to watch them arrive. They went down to san diego. Then managed to get this house here. It was a house in san diego. Done by somebody, muslim and san diego and needed a place to stay, let them stay there. The guy happens to be an fbi informant which was very interesting. You had to terrorists there were on their way year. The cia knew about it, did not tell anybody, and theyre living in a house that is owned by an fbi informant. Then his wife was pregnant in yemen. So he caught her calder fairly often. The nsa was eavesdropping and everything in that house, everything going in and coming out. So what happened was that the cia wanted information from that house. It wanted to say, well, give us the transcripts, give us with these people saying. The nsa would not give the cia and the information that they were picking up from the house. They went up three times asking senior officials at the nsa for that information and they would not give it to a. The cia is a building near on a listening post the communications announced. The problem is, theyre only getting the downlink. They dont have the satellite, so they are not getting the uplink of the communication. So they go back to the nsa and say, look, you know, we get the downlink. We have our listening posts. Can you just give us the appalling . Tsa says no well, that is the that is one of the key issues right now. This is another case that is coming. Let me back up to this one. He accepted the argument that the nsa command even know for two years there were listening to everything going in and out of the house, there were not able to pick up to five theyre inedible to find out that the calls from that house are