by Shane Harris
CHAPTER 23: THE BREAKTHROUGH
This account of the NSA’s foray into in-memory databases comes from the following sources. First, a private-sector individual with direct knowledge of the NSA’s surveillance efforts and the technology underpinning them, who requested anonymity when speaking about intelligence programs. This individual spoke with me at length in 2008 about these efforts and pointed me toward a number of publicly available sources that amplified the account. These included press releases from companies that had sold the NSA the computers and servers necessary to build the in-memory system. This individual also supplied me with an internal e-mail from an NSA employee describing some of these efforts.
I was able to independently verify with a number of other sources that the NSA was exploring in-memory databases. These included former intelligence officials and experts on the technology who verified that my characterizations in this chapter—which are meant to make the technology understandable to lay readers—are an accurate reflection of how these systems work. I also conducted a background interview with a researcher who had done work on in-memory databases for the NSA and who requested anonymity.
In this chapter I use the phrase “logic layer” to describe a kind of vocabulary that told a computer what the cacophony of phone records and e-mails, words and numbers running through its brain actually meant, and more important, what they meant in relation to one another. The meaning of logic layer deserves a bit more explanation here. Computer engineers use the word “ontology” for a complete set of terms, definitions, and often explanations of how objects relate to one another. (Ontology is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of being.) When engineers speak of a logic layer they mean the application of an ontology to a computer system. So, while the terms “ontology” and “logic layer” are not interchangeable, they are linked to each other. I use the latter term in this chapter, which is all about putting the ontology to use.
267 Back in the late 1990s officials had started to worry about whether the power would run out: See “NSA Risking Electrical Overload,” by Siobhan Gorman, Baltimore Sun, August 6, 2006.
267 In 2001 a group of database builders in Washington State decided to test the speed of a disk-based database and one built entirely in memory: The company in question is called McObject, and research papers detailing these experiments are available on its Web site, mcobject.com.
CHAPTER 24: EXPOSED
271 Not long after Townsend moved into her new West Wing office, an NSA employee came to see her: Interview with Fran Townsend in 2009. Unless otherwise noted all statements, thoughts, and actions attributed to Townsend in this section come from the interview.
271 Before a meeting in the Oval Office, which was also attended by Mike Hayden, Comey asked Townsend, who was still a deputy, if she had ever heard of the code name Stellar Wind: Barton Gellman recounts this exchange in Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency (New York: Penguin Press, 2008), but he does not use the code name Stellar Wind. I insert it here because I have confirmed with a former administration official that this was the name.
272 But Alexander also had a contentious relationship with Mike Hayden: Former officials who have known and worked with both men described this conflict. They described both men as having different views about how the NSA should work with other intelligence officials. Alexander was more open to sharing, they said.
274 Curt Weldon had been hearing things: In interviews conducted in 2005 and 2006, Weldon described for me the process by which he became aware of the Able Danger program, as well as what he believes was a cover-up by the administration.
274 In October 2003, some staffers flew to Bagram, Afghanistan, where Shaffer was stationed, and they interviewed him: The Defense Department inspector general’s report on Able Danger documents this meeting (“Alleged Misconduct by Senior DoD Officials Concerning the Able Danger Program and Lieutenant Colonel Anthony A. Shaffer, U.S. Army Reserve,” case number H05L97905217, dated September 18, 2006). The 9/11 Commission has also verified that it occurred.
276 Hadley had taken a look at the chart, and he seemed impressed. “I have to show this to the big man,” he said, meaning Bush: The Defense Department inspector general also cites this exchange, which Weldon writes about in his book, Countdown to Terror: The Top-Secret Information That Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on America . . . and How the CIA Has Ignored It (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2005).
277 The story was far more complex, and more disheartening, than the one Weldon was telling. Erik Kleinsmith sure thought so: Interviews with Kleinsmith in 2005 and 2008. He also felt that plenty of others, not just Weldon, were trying to distort the Able Danger story or hadn’t understood it. Kleinsmith felt that the program was not about finding and preventing the next attack so much as finding “actionable intelligence” and using new forms of analysis. The distinction might seem minor to some, but to Kleinsmith it was important.
277 “I myself do not remember seeing either a picture or his name on any charts”: Kleinsmith testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 21, 2005.
279 Weldon later dismissed Kleinsmith as a know-nothing: In a phone conversation in December 2005, Weldon told me that Kleinsmith didn’t know much about the Able Danger program and insisted that he was a marginal player in the operation.
CHAPTER 25: REASONABLE BELIEFS
282 the former director of the NSA, now the second most senior spy in government, joined President Bush in an Oval Office meeting with Bill Keller, the Times’s executive editor: Keller described the meeting in detail to PBS’s Frontline, in interviews for its documentary News War, which aired February 13, 2007. The producers interviewed Keller on three occasions in 2006.
New York magazine also recounted the Oval Office meeting, from an interview with Keller, in an article published on September 11, 2006, called “The United States of America vs. Bill Keller.”
283 On January 23, 2006, he addressed a crowd of journalists and a few activists at the National Press Club: I was present for that address. The accounts of Hayden’s demeanor and his facial tic are mine. The latter is something I have observed on the numerous occasions I’ve been in Hayden’s presence while covering him.
288 A USA Today poll taken not long after the Times story appeared: The results of the poll were published on May 14, 2006. In response to the question “Based on what you have heard or read about this program to collect phone records, would you say you approve or disapprove of this government program,” 51 percent of respondents said they disapproved, 43 percent said they approved, and 6 percent said they had no opinion. Of those who approved, 69 percent agreed that they felt that way because “investigating terrorism is the more important goal, even if it violates some Americans’ civil liberties.” Those who opposed the program were asked, “Do you think there would ever be circumstances in which it would be right for the government to create a database of telephone records, or would it not be right for the government to do this under any circumstances?” Sixty percent answered, No, it wouldn’t be right under any circumstances. But 34 percent of those who opposed the program said, Yes, there are circumstances under which it would be right.
The USA Today poll, cosponsored by Gallup, had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. It also differed from a poll released three days earlier by ABC News and the Washington Post, which found that 63 percent of respondents said the program was an acceptable means of investigating terrorism. In covering its own poll USA Today noted, “The findings may differ because questions in the two polls were worded differently.” The ABC-Post poll asked, “It’s been reported that the National Security Agency has been collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans. It then analyzes calling patterns in an effort to identify possible terrorism suspects, without listening to or recording the conversations. Would you consider this an acceptable or unacceptable way for the federal government to investigate terrorism?” The USA Today-Gallup poll included m
ore respondents and, as the paper noted, “was taken after Americans had a day or two to hear and think about the program.”
In my personal experience, which is hardly scientific, people are genuinely divided over the question. Clearly it depends on how the question is asked, but I think it’s a fair characterization to say that reasonable people have different views on whether it’s appropriate for the NSA to collect and analyze the communications of Americans for the purposes of detecting terrorism. However, I doubt they would support such covert intelligence gathering if the purpose was to identify political opponents—which would be illegal—or even common criminals.
CHAPTER 26: BETRAYAL
293 “Do you have any contact with journalists?” one interrogator asked a thirty-year intelligence officer working at the agency: This account comes from a discussion in 2006 with said intelligence officer, who asked not to be quoted.
294 Amid the internal probes Goss imposed new, tighter restrictions on the books, articles, and opinion pieces published by former employees who were still working for the agency under contract: I wrote about this new policy for National Journal in “Silencing the Squeaky Wheels,” published on April 27, 2006.
294 Careerists at the agency thought that Goss had been sent to clean house and to whip them into shape: I base this view on my own background conversations with career officers at the CIA, including some who worked for Goss and approved of his mission.
294 the Post revealed a global network of CIA-run prisons in foreign countries: See Dana Priest’s “CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons,” Washington Post, published on November 2, 2005.
294 Senior operations officials . . . were devastated. . . . The Post story also put on ice a plan to open a new, more sophisticated prison that the agency had built from the ground up in a friendly country: Interview with a former senior operations official with direct responsibility for the terrorist detention and interrogation program, who asked not to be identified.
295 What McCarthy learned in the course of her investigation made her a target: This assessment, with which I concur based on my own reporting, is expressed in R. Jeffrey Smith’s Washington Post article “Fired Officer Believed CIA Lied to Congress,” published on May 14, 2006. McCarthy’s dismissal was covered by most of the major news organizations as well. In our interviews, McCarthy did not speak about her views on what anyone at the CIA had told Congress about its detention and interrogation programs.
296 McCarthy told Poindexter she was not the source of that prisons story: The account of Poindexter and McCarthy’s meeting comes from an interview with McCarthy and an electronic exchange with Poindexter in 2006, shortly after McCarthy was dismissed from the CIA.
297 Some of her friends thought that Goss was looking to scare the spy workforce: In background conversations, some of McCarthy’s friends and former associates told me this. These individuals didn’t want to be quoted but shared their opinions after McCarthy was dismissed from the agency. Also see Smith’s piece, in which people who are reported to know McCarthy share their views.
298 He once threw a cocktail party for his new friends at the Ritz-Carlton, not far from the Pentagon, and entertained them with a professional “mentalist,” who performed card tricks and sleights of hand: I attended this party on May 6, 2008.
298 During the lunch break he found himself standing in line for a sandwich next to a guy he’d never met, but who’d also grown up in the Bay Area: Interview with Jim Harper in 2008.
299 Harper suggested that they write a paper together: Interviews with Harper and Jeff Jonas in 2008.
299 In December 2005, he spoke before a meeting of the Homeland Security Department’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee: A transcript of the proceedings is available at the Homeland Security Department’s Web site. The meeting took place on December 6, 2005, in a ballroom at the J. W. Marriott Hotel in Washington, D.C. www.dhs.gov/xoig/assets/mgmtrpts/privacy_advcom_12-2005_mins_am.pdf.
300 Poindexter read the paper and found it both flawed and misguided: Interview with Poindexter.
301 The paper was only ten pages long, but it was a watershed: The paper, “Effective Counterterrorism and the Limited Role of Predictive Data Mining,” was published by the Cato Institute on December 11, 2006, at www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6784.
301 Jonas’s admiration for Poindexter never dimmed: Interview with Jonas in 2008.
CHAPTER 27: BOJINKA II
302 “probably the most sustained period of severe threat since the end of the Second World War”: British home secretary John Reid’s comments were reported by the Guardian in “Anti-terror Critics Just Don’t Get It, Says Reid,” published on August 10, 2006.
302 Agents kept close watch on Ali: The British government presented the narrative of their investigation at Ali’s trial. Other excellent sources of UK reporting include BBC News, which published a helpful and detailed summary called “Airlines Plot: The Allegations” on its Web site during the trial in 2008. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation also provided detailed coverage of the plot and the trial. In particular, see the article “Montreal, Toronto Flights Targeted in Alleged British Bomb Plot” that it published on April 3, 2008, on its Web site. Also see the analysis of Times (London) reporters Sean O’Neill and Michael Evans, “How the Plan Was Put Together: Little Did Ahmed Ali and His Cohorts Know That They Were under Round-the-Clock Surveillance While Plotting Their Attacks,” published on September 9, 2008.
303 Undercover officers observed Ali as he paid cash for a £138,000 flat: See “Terror Mastermind Abdulla Ahmed Ali Guilty of Bombing Plot,” by Nico Hines, Times (London), September 8, 2008.
303 Back in Washington, senior intelligence and security officials had been watching developments across the pond since late June: In 2009, I interviewed Fran Townsend and Michael Jackson, the former deputy homeland security secretary, about the planes bombing plot. I conducted multiple interviews with Jackson on the subject.
Jackson told me that throughout late June and all of July it wasn’t clear that the suspects were targeting airliners. “There was some concern” of that, Jackson said, but he noted that given past bombings in the UK, authorities had reason to suspect the individuals under surveillance might target the ground transportation system, or build a car bomb.
306 Keith Alexander, the NSA director, had been giving daily briefings at the White House that summer: Interview with Townsend.
306 Townsend thought the intelligence advanced the government’s understanding of the plot: Ibid.
307 Jackson sketched out the first notions of a passenger-profiling system: Interview with Jackson in 2008.
308 Jackson and others could see this was potentially as big a plot as the United States had faced since 9/11: Ibid.
308 Precisely what prompted the Brits to make their move on August 10 would remain a subject of speculation: Jackson declined to say whether the surveillance of Ali checking flight timetables was the signal that told investigators that this was an aviation-centered attack. But there were “clear and multiple reinforcing data streams” that indicated this, he said. Jackson informed Kip Hawley, the director of the Transportation Security Agency, of a threat to airliners two days before the surveillance at the Internet café occurred. The record as expressed in news reports and in evidence at trial shows that Ali’s visit to the café signaled to investigators that the plot had progressed into a definite targeting stage.
310 After the British tipped off the Americans, the NSA was able to intercept e-mails that Ali sent to an apparent terrorist minder in Pakistan, an Al Qaeda operative named Rashid Rauf: See my piece “E-mails Help Convict Would-Be Bombers,” published in National Journal’s blog Tech Daily Dose, on September 9, 2009.
312 Ali, who denied the breadth of the plot at his trial, nevertheless admitted that he at least planned to set off a bomb in Heathrow Airport: On September 8, 2008, Ali and two other men were found guilty of conspiracy to murder. One man was found not guilty, and the jury fa
iled to reach a verdict on four others. For a concise wrap-up of the verdicts, see Hines’s London Times article, noted above.
312 U.S. law enforcement officers arrested seven men in Florida on the dubious charge that they were plotting to blow up the Sears Tower: The first trial in the case ended in December 2007 with the acquittal of one defendant, Lyglenson Lemorin. The jury deadlocked on the other six defendants, Narseal Batiste, Patrick Abraham, Stanley Grant Phanor, Rotschild Augustine, Burson Augustin, and Naudimar Herrera. After a second trial in 2008, the jury also failed to reach verdicts. Finally, in May 2009, Herrera was acquitted; Augustine, Phanor, and Augustin were convicted on two counts of providing material support to a terrorist organization; Abraham was convicted on three charges; and Batiste was convicted on four charges. He was the only defendant to be convicted of all the charges that made up the government’s indictment. For a complete synopsis of the case, see “Five Convicted in Plot to Blow up Sears Tower,” by Damien Cave and Carmen Gentile in New York Times, May 12, 2009.
CHAPTER 28: INHERIT THE WINDS
316 a team that had formed to run Homeland Security’s ADVISE program and build a working prototype huddled at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory: The detailed notes and minutes of this meeting were provided to me by a private-sector source who asked not to be identified. I had been aware of the ADVISE program for some time in the course of my reporting on intelligence and homeland security. Also see the Homeland Security Department inspector general’s report on the program, “ADVISE Could Support Intelligence Analysis More Effectively,” released July 2, 2007. OIG-07-56. www.dhs.gov/xoig/assets/mgmtrpts/OIG_07-56_JUn07.pdf.