Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama's Washington

by Sharyl Attkisson

  Oddly enough, most of my colleagues have been avoiding the whole topic of my computer intrusions. It seems they don’t want to think about it or talk about it or know about it. As if it’s somehow contagious. I haven’t offered up much information, but several of them are aware that the CBS analyst has confirmed my intrusion. Yet the natural curiosity you might expect from fellow journalists, the outcry, seems strangely absent. If the shoe were on the other foot, I’d be outraged that anyone had illegally entered the CBS computer system. If I were them I’d want to find out as much as possible to see if the same thing might be happening to me, potentially compromising my story information and sources. I’d wonder if the infiltrators had peered in my home computer, too, and if they’d rifled through my private files.

  The new revelations about AP and FOX seem to trigger the first spark of interest from some colleagues.

  “Is this what’s happening to you?” one of them dares to ask. Another ventures a little deeper.

  “How does it make you feel to know the administration is going after you like that?”

  I think for a moment.

  “Effective.”

  They don’t want to linger on the topic. They broach it, ask a question, make a joke, and move on. Like a butterfly lighting for a moment and then, thinking better of it, fluttering off.

  | SNOWDEN AND CLAPPER: HARD TRUTHS

  It’s hard to imagine there are more shoes to drop. But the next one is a bona fide rubber-soled size 14 extra wide. So large and damaging, it stands to undermine the credibility of the nation’s entire intelligence infrastructure.

  On Wednesday, June 5, 2013, the Washington Post and the Guardian begin exposés that vault an unknown National Security Agency (NSA) contract employee named Edward Snowden into cult status as an American Patriot, Public Enemy #1, or both, depending on your viewpoint. Snowden’s information reveals a shocking government effort to watch over, or spy on, its own citizens—depending on your viewpoint.

  Snowden reveals how the NSA has obtained direct access to the systems of all the trusted Internet giants that Americans commonly use, such as Google, Apple, and Facebook, as part of a program called Prism. Through Prism, government officials can collect the search histories, emails, file transfers, and live chats of ordinary, law-abiding citizens. The depth and breadth of the surveillance is mindboggling. The implied privacy violations and government overreach confound normal alliances. Some Democrats strongly question the initiatives. Many Republicans defend it.

  Drip, drip becomes gush, gush, gush as a rolling wave of Snowden revelations washes up one sensitive and embarrassing government secret after another. Like the government’s controversial April 2013 order from the clandestine Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court. The order compelled Verizon to provide the NSA, on an ongoing basis, all of its call detail records, or “telephony metadata.” Not only for calls that go abroad, but also for ones that take place wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls. The initiative is supposedly to protect us from foreign terrorist threats. But casting the net so widely—even applying to next-door neighbors calling one another here in the U.S.A.—arouses shock and outrage. The authority was first granted in 2001 under the PATRIOT Act. As Congress debated renewal of the act in 2011, two Democrats, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, foreshadowed the controversy to come. Both members of the Intelligence Committee, which oversees the intelligence community, the senators were privy to the surreptitious ways in which the government was granting itself and expanding authority, and pushing the bounds of the definition of “metadata”—which refers to impersonal data about data—to include more information, and compiling it in such a way that it can reveal personal details that were intended to be protected.

  “I want to deliver a warning,” Wyden stated during the 2011 congressional debate over renewal of the PATRIOT Act. “When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the PATRIOT Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry.”

  Wyden’s words sound much like those of my sources the previous fall.

  The average American would be shocked at the extent to which this administration is spying on its own private citizens.

  Patel continues his examination of my computers but it seems to stall and languish. Weeks. Months. CBS managers are conspicuously silent on the issue of a possible connection between what’s happened to me and what we’re learning about the government’s overreach through the cases of AP, FOX, and Snowden. As if it hasn’t occurred to them. As if they’re not even a little outraged—or at least curious. In fact, they seem extremely uncomfortable with the fact that I’ve discovered unauthorized trespassers in my computers. I can’t explain it, but I’m now getting a vibe from CBS as if I’m the one who’s done something wrong for learning that my computers were infiltrated.

  The strange vibe persists when I seek out an update on Patel’s computer forensics work. I find myself suddenly cut out of the loop. The computer firm had been communicating directly with me. But now, they won’t readily respond to phone calls and emails. It’s as if they’ve been instructed to slice me out of the communications channel. As I continue to press to find out what has become of the investigation, I eventually learn secondhand that Patel provided CBS a near-final draft report on May 9, but CBS hasn’t provided me with a copy or even told me that the report has been sent. I can’t explain why, other than intuition, but I get the eerie feeling that CBS wants to downplay what’s happened—maybe even try to advance a narrative that there was no computer intrusion. Why am I not in the loop on the findings of incidents that happened to me in my home?

  To me, the pieces are starting to fit together. My case and that of AP and FOX are enough to suggest that the government had a coordinated effort at least by 2012, and probably beginning earlier, to target the leakers and reporters who were perceived as making the administration’s life difficult. Snowden’s revelations tie it all together.

  If CBS is blind to the connection, it’s nonetheless occurred to some members of Congress and their staff. A number of them in the House and Senate approach me and ask if they can help me in the effort to hold the perpetrators in my case accountable. For the moment, I’m looking for answers in a way that keeps the conversation out of the spotlight.

  CBS finally agrees to provide me a copy of Patel’s draft report. I’ve had further conversations that lead me to conclude my company may try to spin my computer intrusions as something dubious and indefinite. I’m given additional pause for thought when I learn that some CBS managers are quietly implying to selected colleagues, who are happy to spread it around, that the computer intrusions might be a figment of my “paranoid” imagination. I can’t figure out why they would say such a thing when their own analyst had long ago confirmed the intrusions verbally and in writing, in no uncertain terms. Why would some in my own company now attempt to discredit the computer issue and their own forensic expert? Weren’t they as alarmed as I was to learn that unauthorized parties were in the CBS system?

  As if enough weren’t going on, this all was happening against the backdrop of my trying to separate myself from CBS contractually for reasons discussed elsewhere in this book—an effort that would end with my agreeing to remain on staff for about another year. But the discussions caused a great deal of stress and tension between me and some of my bosses.

  Even more disturbing, word came to me that a CBS manager had convened a private meeting with a colleague asking him to turn over the name(s) of the inside confidential source(s) who had first helped me identify the computer intrusions back in January. The colleague didn’t have that information.

  Weird.

  Although I’ve pretty much been frozen out of the investigation into my own computer intrusions at this point, I don’t give up until I finally reach Patel personally on the phone and ask him what’s going on. He says he’s preparing his final r
eport. I tell him that I’m getting the feeling that some at CBS might try to bury the computer intrusion.

  “That’s impossible,” he tells me. “They can’t deny it happened. The facts are clear.”

  While preparing his final report for CBS on June 10, 2013, Patel makes an additional breakthrough and sends a direct message that will make it impossible for anyone to legitimately soft-pedal my computer intrusions. He writes an email to CBS managers marked “URGENT” and states that his analysis using a special investigative tool has revealed definitive evidence of one or more invaders attempting to remotely run commands on my computer. Additionally, he explicitly makes clear there’s proof that the entity deliberately removed evidence of its handiwork, tried to cover up its tracks during that mid-December time frame in which I had noticed the frenetic nights of computer activity had slipped into quiet slumber. The infiltrator ran commands that nobody should have run. It collected my passwords and contacts with a special program. It securely erased entries and histories of certain commands. Other clues left behind: the cyber-spies changed the internal clock of my work laptop not once, not twice, but 1,358 times, possibly in an attempt to disrupt any temporal analysis we might try to do. If this had been a legal tap, they wouldn’t have needed to tamper with the evidence.

  Everything Patel has found serves to confirm my January source and analysis. Patel tells me that only a few entities possess these highly specialized skills. One of them is the U.S. government. I already know this from Number One. But now CBS knows it, too. And it will all be in his final report to the network.

  On June 15, 2013, Isham telephones me after work and asks me to meet him the next morning in his Washington office. When I arrive, I enter his office to discover not only Isham but also CBS News president David Rhodes from New York. Isham closes the door and I sit. Rhodes and Isham take turns telling me Patel has completed his final forensics report more than four months after he began investigating. They say the report confirms the computer intrusions in some detail. I’ve been living with the knowledge for five months, but getting CBS management officially on the same page is a positive step. Their mood is markedly different than in the past few weeks. They’re smiling and appear happy. They tell me this is all good news in the sense that they now have solid, documentary evidence from their own independent expert. They say they’re “a thousand percent” behind me in all matters of support and in pursuing the perpetrator(s). I don’t know what seems to have turned them around, but they say that they also think we should begin covering this as the news story that it is. They hand me a piece of paper containing a brief statement that’s been prepared for public release as soon as our meeting ends:

  A cyber security firm hired by CBS News has determined through forensic analysis that Sharyl Attkisson’s computer was accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions late in 2012. Evidence suggests this party performed all access remotely using Attkisson’s accounts. While no malicious code was found, forensic analysis revealed an intruder had executed commands that appeared to involve search and exfiltration of data. This party also used sophisticated methods to remove all possible indications of unauthorized activity, and alter system times to cause further confusion. CBS News is taking steps to identify the responsible party and their method of access.

  The next morning, CBS This Morning briefly interviews me about the case. It’s generating a great deal of interest and requests for interviews from other news media. The only non-CBS entity that the company wishes me to speak with is Bill O’Reilly from The O’Reilly Factor on FOX News. I fly to New York and appear on his evening program.

  Meanwhile, during this very same time period, Senator Wyden stokes the embers of another controversy that would keep the Obama administration set back on its heels. He accuses Director of National Intelligence James Clapper of not giving a “straight answer” to the Senate Intelligence Committee three months before.

  “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Wyden had asked Clapper at the March 12, 2013, hearing.

  “No, sir,” Clapper replies, quickly shaking his head and pressing the fingers of his right hand against his forehead, almost shielding his eyes from making direct contact as he looks down, up, down, up, down, all inside of about two seconds.

  “It does not?” Wyden repeats, eyebrows raised.

  “Not wittingly.” Clapper continues shaking his head and begins stroking his forehead with the four fingers. “There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect—but not wittingly.” Clapper looks up and down fifteen times, by my count, in the span of that brief answer.

  Call it a mistake, a misunderstanding, or a lie—depending on your viewpoint—but Clapper’s testimony was wrong. The whole world now knows what Senator Wyden, with his access to classified information knew, when he posed the question: NSA programs collect data belonging to hundreds of millions of Americans from U.S. phone call records, online communications, and Internet companies.

  Now Wyden wants public hearings “to address the recent disclosures” and says “the American people have the right to expect straight answers from the intelligence leadership to the questions asked by their representatives.”

  You might think everyone would agree that giving bad information to Congress, under oath, is improper.

  But this is Washington.

  Clapper’s defenders say that Wyden “sandbagged” him. That by asking a loaded question at a public hearing, Wyden forced Clapper to either tell the truth, thus divulging top-secret information, or tell a lie.

  The sandbag argument doesn’t stand up, factually. Wyden says he sent the question to Clapper’s office a day in advance of the hearing so that he’d be prepared for it. In any event, Clapper should have been able to produce a better and honest answer. In 2006, then–attorney general Alberto Gonzales apparently did when asked a similar question at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Rather than mislead or divulge secrets, Gonzales found a third option. He told Congress: “The programs and activities you ask about, to the extent that they exist, would be highly classified.”

  As damage control for Clapper’s misstep, the Obama administration mounts an outreach effort on Capitol Hill. Clapper is now sent to defend the very programs he swore didn’t exist. Senators get three classified briefings in a week’s time. NSA director Keith Alexander joins Clapper’s PR campaign to exalt the controversial intelligence-gathering methods. They explain, behind closed congressional doors, that they’ve thwarted dozens of attack plots and saved the lives of countless Americans. (This is a claim that would later be roundly debunked by an independent committee investigating the policy.) America should be grateful, not critical. Perhaps in those private briefings, the senators urge Clapper to clear the air with a formal, public apology. Whatever the genesis, he writes a letter on June 21, 2013, to Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Democrat Dianne Feinstein admitting that his March testimony was “clearly erroneous.” He indicates that he had misunderstood Wyden’s question. That seems to differ with his earlier June 9 interview with NBC News, in which he’d said that he’d given “the least untruthful” answer that he could give.

  Wyden isn’t moved by the apology. A week later, on June 28, 2013, he leads a group of twenty-six senators in asking Clapper to publicly provide information on the “duration and scope” of the intelligence collecting as well as examples of how it’s provided unique intelligence “if such examples exist.” Twenty-one Democrats, four Republicans, and an Independent sign the letter.

  During this time, I hear and read a lot of opinions from colleagues, viewers, friends, and strangers about the government’s secret collection of data. Many of them say they don’t mind if the government collects their information.

  “They’re welcome to look at anything I have,” says one acquaintance. “I’m not breaking any laws.”

  Part of that s
entiment may come from the fact that we long ago began trusting nearly every aspect of our private lives to credit card companies, banks, electronic mail, and Internet connections. Despite the dire warnings we hear every day about identity theft and other serious threats, such problems account for a relatively small proportion of the number of transactions we conduct. Every day, without giving it a second thought, we expose ourselves to dozens of opportunities for our personal information to be compromised, but for the most part we suffer few serious consequences. Also, many Americans have come to accept the idea that for the government to help keep us safe in a post-9/11 reality, it must be able to use diverse tools and methods, even if that means sacrificing some measure of our privacy and liberty. On top of that, the social media culture has dramatically faded privacy boundaries. We post everything from the embarrassingly inappropriate to the intensely private. Some view privacy as having become an old-fashioned, overrated notion.

  By implication, the people who are happy to trust their personal communications to the government are conferring trust upon whoever and whatever the government may become in the future. What’s more, they fully trust each and every person who may gain access to the information. These people don’t foresee a time when there may be facets of the government that aren’t benevolent. They don’t envision the possibility of dishonest players in the mix. To them, the motivations of the government and all those who are in it will always and forevermore be good: their government would never break the law, violate ethics, or exploit private information for inappropriate use.

  I’m not quite there.

  History and experience lead me to be more circumspect. There are thousands of examples over the decades, but one need look no further than Fast and Furious to find government misconduct, bad actors, and false information all wrapped up in one. Or consider the 2013 IRS scandal in which the government got caught targeting nonprofit groups for political reasons after insisting it would never do such a thing.