The Intelligence Community Congress And The Administration

â€Å"My personal view is that the intelligence community is bamboozling Congress and the administration†¦You can have both (civil liberties and national security),† says Binney. He estimates that the data from â€Å"99.99% of all (domestic) communications† is useless to the NSA and should be erased. â€Å"There’s no probable cause or any indication that the data that they’re collecting on the vast majority of U.S. citizens is in any way related to terrorism,† says Binney. The message from these whistleblowers carries tremendous credibility as they’ve sacrificed lucrative, prestigious careers, along with risking their reputations and freedom. On the other hand, the government has demonstrated that these top secret programs are untrustworthy. After all,†¦show more content†¦He thought Wyden asked a loaded question or a â€Å"when are you going to start/stop beating your wife kind of question†¦So I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful, manner by saying ‘no.’† In addition, the NSA’s Director Gen. Keith Alexander lied to Congress stating that their telephone surveillance programs had thwarted 54 terrorist plots. He later admitted those statistics weren’t accurate after Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) confronted him. Alexander then retreated by suggesting that one or maybe two had been thwarted through those programs. However, the NSA’s bulk data collection programs haven’t prevented a single terrorist plot, according to a group of thoroughly vetted Senators, Ron Wyden, Mark Udall (D-CO), and Martin Heinrich (D-NM). Those three Senators are members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, meaning they have higher security clearances than nearly everyone in Congress. That group has extensively reviewed these programs and found â€Å"no evidence that the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records has provided any intelligence of value that could not have been gathered through less intrusive means.† Why is the intelligence community fighting tooth and nail to defend these programs that clearly violate the constitution and are poor national defense strategies? The answer lies in Kirk Weibe’s colleague who wanted to â€Å"milk† the 9/11 crisis until 2015. In fact, that was an accurate assessment