Silenced Page #2

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of the united state of america.

-i went to college

in new england, and law school.

i dreamed of working

at the justice department.

you go into court

and you have the imprimatur

of the united states behind you.

and you get to wear

the white hat,

and you get to always be

on the right side

of whatever you're arguing.

so, when i got the job

at the justice department

right out of law school,

for me, that was

my dream job.

-i was mostly interested

in the middle east

because when i was

in high school,

the iran hostage crisis

was ongoing.

and i thought, "i'm gonna go

to george washington university.

it's two blocks

from the white house."

-i made a choice

that i would join the air force

for a few years

as a cryptolinguist.

and a cryptologic linguist

is someone

who listens to communications

of other countries

in different languages.

and the country that i

specialized in was east germany.

-my advisor, it turned out,

was undercover as a professor.

he was actually a cia officer

acting as what was then called

a spotter.

and he asked me

if i was interested

in working at the cia.

i said, "sure. why not?"

and i went through the process

and found myself at the cia.

-i went to the cia

for a short stint.

and then i became

a government contractor,

systems software engineering,

from mid '89

all the way through until 2001.

february of 2001,

i just happened

to be going through the sunday

edition of the washington post.

and it's like,

"oh. interesting."

nsa was actually looking to hire

people in from the outside.

well, it's the call

to serve your country.

and here was an opportunity

at a very senior level,

so i applied.

i was offered a position.

took the oath to support

and defend the constitution

for the fourth time.

and the first day

that i reported

to the national security agency,

to my duty station,

was 9/11.

-i ended up joining

a newly created ethics unit

called the professional

responsibility advisory office.

we were there

to keep you out of trouble.

rather than opr,

the office of professional

responsibility,

that disciplines you

when you do something bad,

we were there

to render advice prospectively

to help keep you

from doing something unethical.

the first couple of years

were really amazing,

to get to form

and grow this office,

but after 9/11, there was

definitely a sea change.

-there's pre-9/11...

[ people screaming ]

...there's post-9/11.

and what took place

in those weeks and months

just after 9/11

established the basis for

everything else that happened.

everything.

-everything changed

in the intelligence community

on september 11th.

-it took a few years

for it to unwind,

and much of what was going on

inside the country

was done in absolute secrecy

for the first four-plus years.

no one knew.

[ radio chatter ]

-"we're gonna kill all of them."

that was very much the feeling

in the cia after september 11th.

now, for many people, that

wore off after a period of time,

but for others inside the cia,

they never lost that feeling,

that belief that this was

a war to the death,

that there was no gray area

between black and white.

-there was a lot

of cutting corners.

there were a lot

of shortcuts going on.

there were a lot

of creative gymnastics going on.

and that can be seen in,

like, the torture memos

and the reasoning in those

by my law school classmate

john yoo.

-after 9/11, it became

even more important for nsa

just to get all the data it

could, no matter where it was.

"we just need it."

and i was told that.

"we just need it, tom.

we just need the data."

it was crisis.

but it became clear within

the space of a few days

that this was not

a normal crisis.

i was in a meeting with...

with the person i reported to,

said that 9/11

was a gift to nsa.

"9/11's a gift.

we're finally gonna get

all the money we've ever wanted

from congress --

all of it and more."

their whole

counterterrorism effort,

which was extraordinarily small

prior to 9/11,

all of a sudden grew

by leaps and bounds after 9/11.

george tenet,

who, at the time,

was the director

of central intelligence,

he issued an intelligence-

community-wide memo,

said,

"whatever you got in the labs --

it's a prototype, test bed --

put it into the fight

'cause we need it."

so, i was tasked

to go out to the ends of nsa

to find those systems,

bring them to the attention

of senior leadership

so we could

actually deploy them.

one that i brought to their

attention shortly after 9/11

was called thinthread.

thinthread, i have to say,

was an extraordinary program.

they had a system ready

for operational deployment

well prior to 9/11,

which, by the way,

had built into it the fisa rules

that absolutely protected

u.s. person information.

absolutely.

okay?

it was designed that way.

that solution was rejected.

and i said,

"why is nsa rejecting

the thinthred solution?"

and i wasn't gonna give up

'cause i knew

something was amiss.

i wrote a formal memo

expressing my greatest alarm.

i also had informed her

that i was hearing

very disturbing information

that nsa could be

in probable violation

of fisa

and the fourth amendment.

i had people who came to me

in private,

who were telling me, "tom,

why are we taking equipment

that we use to monitor

the communications

of foreign nations

and turning it on ourselves?

i thought we can't surveil

americans without a warrant."

i was told,

"if you have a problem,

speak to the office

of general counsel."

-yes.

-i have a phone conversation

with the senior attorney

assigned to the office

of general counsel.

and then i heard

the following words --

"nsa has become the executive

agent for the program.

it's been reviewed

by all the attorneys.

the white house

has approved it.

it's all legal."

as soon as he said,

"it's all legal,"

the hair stood up

on the back of my neck.

what i didn't know

at that time

is that nsa, under general

michael v. hayden,

had entered into a secret

agreement with the white house.

a very small number of people

even knew about it.

but what's crucial here

is that equipment

that was traditionally

foreign-facing, outward-facing,

was now being turned

on our own country,

that pandora's box

had been opened up.

we would now instrument

the united states of america,

and we would treat

this nation

as the equivalent

of a foreign country

for the purposes of dragnet,

blanket electronic surveillance

on a vast scale.

-when i was arrested,

it was national front-page news.

fox news even put

on their ticker,

"ex-cia officer

gives intelligence to al qaeda."

-this morning,

a former cia officer

is accused of repeatedly leaking

classified secrets to reporters.

-investigators say

he potentially put the lives

of covert officers at risk.

-these are very serious charges

for the ex-cia intel officer.

-prosecutors say

he told three journalists

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