WASHINGTON (AP) Years before Edward Snowden sparked a public outcry with the disclosure that the National Security Agency had been secretly collecting American telephone records, some NSA executives voiced strong objections to the program, current and former intelligence officials say. The program exceeded the agencys mandate to focus on foreign spying and would do little to stop terror plots, the executives argued.
The 2009 dissent, led by a senior NSA official and embraced by others at the agency, prompted the Obama administration to consider, but ultimately abandon, a plan to stop gathering the records.
The secret internal debate has not been previously reported. The Senate on Tuesday rejected an administration proposal that would have curbed the program and left the records in the hands of telephone companies rather than the government. That would be an arrangement similar to the one the administration quietly rejected in 2009.
The now-retired NSA official, a longtime code-breaker who rose to top management, had just learned in 2009 about the top secret program that was created shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He says he argued to then-NSA Director Keith Alexander that storing the calling records of nearly every American fundamentally changed the character of the agency, which is supposed to eavesdrop on foreigners, not Americans.
Alexander politely disagreed, the former official told The Associated Press.
The former official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because he didnt have permission to discuss a classified matter, said he knows of no evidence the program was used for anything other than its stated purpose - to hunt for terrorism plots in the U.S. But he said he and others made the case that the collection of American records in bulk crossed a line that he and his colleagues had been taught was sacrosanct.
He said he also warned of a scandal if it should be disclosed that the NSA was storing records of private calls by Americans - to psychiatrists, lovers and suicide hotlines among other contacts.
Alexander, who led the NSA from 2005 until he retired last year, did not dispute the former officials account, though he said he disagreed that the program was improper.
An individual did bring us these questions, and he had some great points, Alexander told the AP. I asked the technical folks, including him, to look at it,
By 2009, several former officials said, concern about the 215 program, so-called for the authorizing provision of the USA Patriot Act, had grown inside NSAs Fort Meade, Maryland, headquarters to the point that the programs intelligence value was being questioned. That was partly true because, for technical and other reasons, NSA was not capturing most mobile calling records, which were an increasing share of the domestic calling universe, the former officials said.
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Before Snowden, a debate inside NSA
