NSA Eavesdropping Data Given to FBI Led to Many Dead Ends
a special feature from the Libertarian Party
In late 2001, the National Security Agency began sending the FBI large amounts of data from intercepted communications garnered from its warrantless wiretapping program. Virtually all of the leads that came from the wiretapping data resulted in dead ends or innocent Americans, the New York Times reported.
The NSA was collecting so much data it was overwhelming FBI investigators, agency officials complained. Many former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials questioned the effectiveness of the NSA program and whether it had a proper legal foundation. After many months, FBI investigators found that very few of the leads provided by the NSA actually led to potential terrorists.
Many FBI agents felt the NSA program was not very productive. One anonymous FBI official explained a lead’s typical outcome - “We’d chase a number, find it’s a schoolteacher with no indication they’ve ever been involved in international terrorism - case closed.” He further added, “After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration.”
In the months after the Sept. 11th attacks, the Bush administration placed heavy pressure on the NSA and the nation’s other intelligence agencies to prevent any further attacks. The NSA aggressively moved into secret domestic eavesdropping with written permission from the president. Due to the secretive nature of the program, the NSA could not even tell FBI investigators why the names or phone numbers came under suspicion, the New York Times reported.
Having little background on why the data it received was important, the FBI complained it could not effectively assess the data’s priority. The NSA responded by ranking its tips on a three-point scale, with 3 being the highest priority and 1 the lowest, according to FBI officials that were interviewed by the New York Times. Even after having the tips being ranked many FBI investigators still saw them as unproductive. One field supervisor joked that a new batch of tips meant more “calls to Pizza Hut.”
Some law enforcement officials questioned the claims made by the Bush administration that the NSA warrantless domestic surveillance program was directly responsible for preventing a terrorist plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge. Officials that were involved in the case told the New York Times that they had already learned of the plan through the interrogation of prisoners and other means.<
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