In his letter, Rockefeller said that based on the briefing he had received from General Hayden, he found "no evidence" that there was anything "improper" about how or why Bolton made his 10 requests for the NSA reports in which American names were uncensored. However, Rockefeller said that he was "troubled" by how Bolton had handled the uncensored NSA information after receiving it.
According to a congressional investigator working with Bolton critics, the substance of the NSA intercept report included a discussion between two foreigners who were discussing how an American official-presumably the one Bolton congratulated-had given them a hard time...Rockefeller indicated that he believes Bolton's use of the uncensored NSA information to congratulate a State Department official was "not in keeping" with Bolton's declaration to the NSA that he only wanted the censored information so he could better understand the meaning of the original intelligence report.
Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Chatter: Dispatches From the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping, said at the time that he was troubled that, other than the questions raised by Rockefeller, Congress and the Senate showed little concern over the NSA's practices "beyond the specifics involving Bolton."
"If the National Security Agency provides officials with the identities of Americans on its tapes, what is the use of making secret those names in the first place?" Keefe wrote in an August 10, 2005 op-ed in the New York Times. "We now know that this hasn't been the case the agency has been listening to Americans' phone calls, just not reporting any names. And Bolton's experience makes clear that keeping those names confidential was a formality that high-ranking officials could overcome by picking up the phone."
In the summer of 2001, the NSA spent millions of dollars on a publicity campaign to repair its public image by taking the unprecedented step of opening up its headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland to reporters, to dispel the myth that the NSA was spying on Americans.
In a July 10, 2001, segment on "Nightline," host Chris Bury reported that "privacy advocates in the United States and Europe are raising new questions about whether innocent civilians get caught up in the NSA's electronic web."
Hayden, who was interviewed by "Nightline," said it was absolutely untrue that the agency was monitoring Americans who are suspected of being agents of a foreign power without first seeking a special warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
"We don't do anything willy-nilly," Hayden said. "We're a foreign intelligence agency. We try to collect information that is of value to American decision-makers, to protect American values, America and American lives. To suggest that we're out there, on our own, renegade, pulling in random communications, is is simply wrong. So everything we do is for a targeted foreign intelligence purpose. With regard to the the question of industrial espionage, no. Period. Dot. We don't do that."
But, when asked "How do we know that the fox isn't guarding the chicken coop?" Hayden responded by saying that Americans should trust the employees of the NSA.
"They deserve your trust, but you don't have to trust them," Hayden said. "We aren't off the leash, so to speak, guarding ourselves. We have a body of oversight within the executive branch, in the Department of Defense, in the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which is comprised of both government and nongovernmental officials. You've got both houses of Congress with with very active in some cases, aggressive intelligence oversight committees with staff members who have an access badge to NSA just like mine."
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