Category Archives: NSA

When shes not leaking government secrets shes crushing it at the gym and cursing out the Leader of the Free World.

Reality Leigh Winner, the 25-year-old contractor accused of leaking classified NSA documents, is a die-hard CrossFit competitor who once called President Trump a piece of st, according to reports Tuesday.

Winner who allegedly leaked a classified intelligence report containing Top Secret Level defense info worked out five times a week at a gym in Georgia, according to TMZ.

The Texas-born Air Force vet, who faces up to 10 years in prison, also competed in the 2016 CrossFit Games Southeast regionals and could deadlift heavy weights, the gossip site reported.

She often pumped iron at Epic Ultimate Results in Augusta, GA, where owner Glen Whelan said shes welcome back for now.

Until proven guilty, shes not a leper, he said.

Outside of the gym, Winner often posted passionate left-leaning rants on social media, according to Fox News.

In one Facebook tirade, she slammed Trump over Dakota Pipeline access.

There have been protests for months, at both the drilling site and outside the White House. Im losing my mind. If you voted for this piece of st, explain this, she blasted in February.

Hes lying. Hes blatantly lying and the second largest supply of freshwater in the country is now at risk. #NoDAPL #NeverMyPresident #Resist, she added.

Under the Twitter handle Sara Winners, she followed NSA leaker Edward Snowden, Wikileaks and the hacking group Anonymous.

Winner called Trump an orange fascist in response to a Trump tweet about allowing refugees into the U.S.

She also slammed the president for his immigration policies, tweeting, Have you ever met an Iranian?

She added, Why burn a flag? Donald Trump thinks crosses burn much better.

And on election night , when it became clear Trump would win, she tweeted, Well. People suck.

Raised in Kingsville, Texas, Winner served as an airman first class with the 94th Intelligence Squadron at Fort Meade, Maryland, according to the veteran news site Task & Purpose.

She served in the Air Force as a linguist from 2013 to 2016 and speaks Pashto, Farsi and Dari, according to her mother, Billie Winner-Davis.

Outside of work she works as a yoga instructor. Shes just a normal person, her lawyer, Titus Nichols, told CNN.

Winner was a federal contractor with top secret security clearance. She had been assigned to a US government agency facility in Georgia since February.

She is now being held at a facility in Lincolnton, Georgia, Nichols said.

It was unclear if Reality Winner is her birth name. Her surname apparently comes from her mother, Billie Winner-Davis.

Winner-Davis described her daughter as an athlete who loves animals and has a sister, Brittany, who is studying for a PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology, according to the UK Guardian.

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Accused NSA leaker cursed out Trump in social media posts | New ... - New York Post

On June 8, 1967, an Israeli torpedo tore through the side of the unarmed American naval vessel USS Liberty, approximately a dozen miles off the Sinai coast. The ship, whose crew was under command of the National Security Agency, was intercepting communications at the height of the Six-Day War when it came under direct Israeli aerial and naval assault.

Reverberations from the torpedo blast sent crewman Ernie Gallo flying across the radio research room where he was stationed. Gallo, a communications technician aboard the Liberty, found himself and his fellow shipmates in the midst of an attack that would leave 34 Americans dead and 171 wounded.

This weekmarks the 50th anniversary of the assault on the USS Liberty, and though it was among the worst attacks in history against a noncombatant U.S. naval vessel, the tragedy remains shrouded in secrecy. The question of if and when Israeli forces became aware they were killing Americans has proved a point of particular contention in the on-again, off-again public debate that has simmered over the last half a century. The Navy Court of Inquirys investigation proceedings following the incident were held in closed sessions, and the survivors who had been on board received gag orders forbidding them to ever talk about what they endured that day.

Now, half a century later, The Intercept is publishing two classified documents provided in the cache of files leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden related to the attack and its aftermath. They reveal previously unknown involvement by Government Communications Headquarters, the U.K. signals intelligence agency; internal NSA communications that seem to bolster a signals intelligence analysts account of the incident, which framed it as an accident; as well as a Hebrew transliteration system unique to the NSA that was in use at least as recently as 2006.

The first document, a formerly unreleased NSA classification guide, details which elements of the incident the agency still regarded as secret as of 2006. The second lists a series of unauthorized signals intelligence disclosures that have had a detrimental effect on our ability to produce intelligence against terrorist targets and other targets of national concern. Remarkably, information relevant to the attack on the Liberty falls within this highly secret category.

Though neither document reveals conclusive information about the causes of the assault, both highlight that at the time of their publication approximately four decades after the incident the NSA was determined to keep even seemingly minor details about the attack classified. The agency declined to comment for this article.

The classification guide, dated November 8, 2006, indicates previously unknown GCHQ involvement in the ships intelligence gathering. The specifics of this involvement remain classified, and it is therefore unclear if involvement was of a material nature on board the ship or through other means. GCHQ declined to comment.

The guide also reveals NSAs own classified Hebrew transliteration system, the existence of which underlines that the agency has historically counted Israel as an intelligence target even as the nation acted as a key partner in signals collection. This inherent tension in the U.S.-Israeli relationship was also manifest on the Liberty, where the Hebrew translators brought aboard the ship were referred to as special Arabic linguists, according to journalist James Bamford, in order to conceal their surveillance of Israeli communications.

Israeli planes and torpedo boats attacked this U.S. Navy research ship, the USS Liberty, in the Mediterranean Sea near the Sinai Peninsula on June 8, 1967.

Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

The Six-Day War between Israel and its neighbors Jordan, Syria, and Egypt was a conflict that the United States chose to stay out of, despite Israels entreaties for military support. Egypt and Syria were Soviet allies at odds with American-aligned Israel. The local conflict could easily have turned into a direct conflict between the superpowers, which neither the United States nor the USSR wanted. The countries directly involved were left to fend for themselves in what proved to be an overwhelming military and territorial victory for Israel one that doubled the fledgling countrys size in less than a week.

Though the United States refused to intervene on behalf of its ally, it was nevertheless eavesdropping on Israeli military communications during war. There, according to Bamford, lies the rub: Over the course of Israels remarkable territorial acquisition and military victory, it allegedly committed a war crime by slaughteringEgyptian prisoners of war in the city of El Arish in the northern Sinai. Bamford argued in his 2001 book, Body of Secrets, that the USS Libertys proximity to the Sinai, and its ability to intercept Israels motives and activities during the Six-Day War, mighthave prompted Israels attack on the vessel. Other national security experts, including Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, disputed Bamfords analysis, however. According to Aftergood, who directs the FAS Project on Government Secrecy, the killing of Egyptian POWs never happened. [There] appears to be no verifiable evidence that such a massacre ever took place, and Bamfords description of events at El Arish doesnt hold up, Aftergood wrote in 2001 following the publication of Body of Secrets.

Ultimately, both the United States and Israels investigations deemed the attack on the Liberty an accident that resulted when Israel mistook the American spy ship for an Egyptian freighter. Bamford considers that conclusion a cover-up, however, citing the gag order issued to survivors, as well as the fact that NSAs deputy director at the time, Louis Tordella, referred to the Israeli Defense Forces preliminary inquiry into the attack a nice whitewash. Still, other sources assert that any notion of cover-up is mere paranoia. According to a spokesperson at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign affairs, the Liberty assault was a tragic accident that was settled between the parties involved years ago, and that, as is the case with many of these matters, there are always enough conspiracy theories to go around, but they never hold water.

The USS Libertys legacy indeed fed conspiracy theories, and Bamford is not alone in asserting a cover-up. The Liberty Veterans Association, an organization comprised of survivors of the 1967 attack, has called for a robust and transparent investigation into the incident for decades, to no avail.

In a statement to The Intercept, Ernie Gallo, who currently serves as the president of the Liberty Veterans Association, said, We now know that the Navy Court of Inquiry was merely for show, as the officers were told to come to the conclusion the Liberty did [its] job and the attack was accidental. Bamford also references the magnitude and length of the attack as proof of its deliberateness: The ship was hit repeatedly, first by planes dropping thousand-pound bombs and napalm, and then by torpedo boats. Israeli forces also jammed the Libertys antennas and communication channels, took out the four .50-caliber machine guns on board, and reportedly shot at life rafts and crew members as they attempted to evacuate the vessel. It was an attack in broad daylight, said Bamford. They were flying a large U.S. flag. [The ship] said USS Liberty on the back. I mean, what do you need?

The incident and its aftermath took a significant psychological toll on survivors, many of whom were reported to suffer from PTSD.One survivor and member of the Liberty Veterans Association, James Ennes, was shot in the femur during the attack, and was then instructed never to discuss it. Ernie Gallo had a fellow crewmate die in his arms. It was decades before survivors began sharing their experiences, and they were sometimes criticized for being anti-Semitic or slanderous of Israel for doing so.

Not all veterans involved believe in a cover-up, however. Former Navy Chief Petty Officer Marvin Nowicki, the chief Hebrew-language analyst aboard a U.S. Navy EC-121 spy plane that was intercepting Israeli aircraft communications as they were assaulting the Liberty, believed the attack was an accident. He stated in a letter to the Wall Street Journal in 2001 that though he heard and recorded Israeli pilots and captains references to the U.S. flag flying on the deck of the Liberty, these remarks were made only after the attack was underway, and not before. It was when aircraft and motor torpedo boat operators moved closer to the Liberty, recalled Nowicki, that they were able to recognize and therefore reference the American flag.

Unbeknownst to Nowicki at the time, his letter to the editor sparked concerns at NSA that he had revealed classified information on the Liberty. The second Snowden document, dated 2002, referenced several disclosures in his letter surrounding National Security Agency sources and methods or NSAs ability to successfully exploit a foreign target. Though the document does not specify which details in Nowickis article constituted such disclosures, it does reference materials related to the investigation. Nowicki, in a statement that would stir apparent concern at both the NSA and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, called the accident a gross error. How can I prove it? he wrote. I cant unless the transcripts/tapes are found and released to the public. I last saw them in a desk drawer at NSA in the late 1970s before I left the service. After several unsuccessful attempts to reach Nowicki byphone andemail, he ultimately responded to a mailed request for comment. He returned The Intercepts original posted letter, on which he had hastily scrawled: I cannot comply w[ith] your request. The last time I spoke publicly, I was visited by NCIS agents. (NCIS stated that it had no records related to Nowickis claim.)

Even 50 years after the attack, and in a radically different geopolitical climate than that of the Six-Day War, extremely limited information is available about the assault and its subsequent investigations. Inquiries by the media and by the survivors have yielded profoundly limited results, despite considerable attempts; ABCs Nightline interviewed survivors decades after the attack, the results of which never aired. And while James Bamford presumes this is because interested parties didnt want unsavory information about Israel broadcast on mainstream American television, Nightlines then-host Ted Koppel said otherwise: At the risk of contributing to the veneer of cover-up that surrounds any discussion of the USS Liberty story, my only recollection is that we did nothing because we found nothing new or substantive. Neither, it seems, has anyone else.

Top photo: A victim of the Israeli assaulton the American communications ship USS Liberty is carried from a helicopter aboard the aircraft carrier USS America somewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean on June 9, 1967.

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Fifty Years Later, NSA Keeps Details of Israel's USS Liberty Attack ... - The Intercept

USA TODAY Published 3:09 p.m. ET June 6, 2017 | Updated 3:20 p.m. ET June 6, 2017

Alleged National Security Agency leaker Reality Leigh Winner.(Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

A federal contractor was arrested in Georgia Monday in connection with a classified National Security Agency report on Russian election interference published by the online publication The Intercept. Comments are edited for clarity and grammar:

The Russia-Trump scandal just keeps expanding. Its just a matter of time until we find out if there was collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, or more likely an unwitting accomplice from his inner circle who was outsmarted by the Kremlin experts.

Keep in mind that there is way more to the story that cannot be released until the investigation is completed.

Tracy Woods

I think this is evidence ofRussian hacking. Trump supporters cant deny it anymore. This woman was wrong in revealing classified information, but it does support what all intelligence communities were already saying.

Jeff Hartung

There could be 20 sources, each with individual videos with perfect audio of President Trump accepting an open briefcase of cash from Russian President Vladimir Putin himself, and it wouldnt matter anyway. Trump supporters wouldnt care. Nice job, America.

Rance Mohammitz

Dont you just love the liberals who are still in meltdown mode after all of these months? What are they going to do after they strike out on Thursday during James Comeys testimony? It will be yet another disappointment, just like: Nov. 8, the recount that Green Party candidate Jill Stein requested, the attempt to sway Electoral College voters, etc. Liberals are running out of ideas.

This is no smoking gun.

Doug Steltenpohl

Not releasing that Russia tried to hack into our presidential election should be the crime, not the other way around! How backwards and Soviet-like have we become?

This not only undermines our faith in government, it also undermines our elections by not telling us about it.Thats the crime!

Edward J. Hale

Our followers shared their thoughts on the federal contractor who was arrested after a classified report from the National Security Agency on the Russian election hacking was published online. Tweets are edited for clarity and grammar:

Couldnt this woman be considered a whistle-blower?

@uhlmary1

This doesnt change the Trump-Russia investigation.

@GDT0429

Im sure President Trump would have preferred to bury this information deep. She sounds like a hero.

@nedrow_aj

So whats the maximum sentence if shes found guilty? I hope she gets the book thrown at her.

@lemonbar4948

If she hadnt leaked this information, it would likely have been covered up by the government. I wouldnt be surprised if the whole thing isnt deeper.

@RomeoandTHOT

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NSA leaker reveals more Russian hacking: #tellusatoday - USA TODAY

A federal contractor was arrested over the weekend and accused of leaking a classified report containing "Top Secret level" information on Russian hacking efforts during the 2016 presidential election.

Reality Leigh Winner, 25, appeared in U.S. District Court in Augusta, Ga., to face one charge of removing classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet, theJustice Department said Monday.

Winner's arrest was announced shortly after the Intercept website published a story detailing how Russian hackers attacked at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent so-called "spear-phishing" emails to more than 100 local election officials at the end of October or beginning of November.

The Justice Department did not specify that Winner was being charged in connection with the Intercept's report. However, the site noted that the National Security Agency (NSA) report cited in its story was dated May 5 of this year. An affidavit supporting Winner's arrest also said that the report was dated "on or about" May 5.

The Intercept contacted the NSA and the national intelligence director's office about the document and both agencies asked that it not be published. U.S. intelligence officials then asked The Intercept to redact certain sections. The Intercept said some material was withheld at U.S. intelligence agencies' request because it wasn't "clearly in the public interest."

The report said Russian military intelligence "executed cyber espionage operations against a named U.S. company in August 2016 evidently to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions, according to information that became available in April 2017."

The hackers are believed to have then used data from that operation to create a new email account to launch a spear-phishing campaign targeting U.S. local government organizations, the document said. "Lastly, the actors send test emails to two non-existent accounts ostensibly associated with absentee balloting, presumably with the purpose of creating those accounts to mimic legitimate services."

The document did not name any state.

The information in the leaked document seems to go further than the U.S. intelligence agencies' January assessment of the hacking that occurred.

The Washington Examiner reported that Winner worked forPluribus International Corporation and was assigned to a U.S. government facility in Georgia. She had held a top-secret classified security clearance since being hired this past February. The affidavit sworn by FBI agent Justin Garrick said that she had previously served in the Air Force and held a top-secret security clearance.

Late Monday, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange tweeted his support for Winner.

Winner's attorney, Titus Thomas Nichols, declined to confirm whether she is accused of leaking the NSA report received by The Intercept. He also declined to name the federal agency for which Winner worked.

"My client has no (criminal) history, so it's not as if she has a pattern of having done anything like this before," Nichols told the Associated Press in a phone interview Monday. "She is a very good person. All this craziness has happened all of a sudden."

Garrick said in his affidavit that the government was notified of the leaked report by the news outlet that received it. He said the agency that housed the report determined only six employees had made physical copies. Winner was one of them. Garrick said investigators found Winner had exchanged email with the news outlet using her work computer.

Garrick's affidavit said he interviewed Winner at her home Saturday and she "admitted intentionally identifying and printing the classified intelligence reporting at issue" and mailing it to the news outlet.

Asked if Winner had confessed, Nichols said, "If there is a confession, the government has not shown it to me."

House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, praised the arrest in an appearance on Fox News' "The Story with Martha MacCallum."

"When you have classified information, you cannot put that out there just because you think it would be a good idea," Chaffetz said. "I want people in handcuffs and I want to see people behind bars."

Chaffetz also criticized federal agencies for failing to protect sensitive information after a series of high-profile leaks.

"They have hundreds of thousands of people that have security clearances," Chaffetz said. "There are supposed to be safeguards in there ...But how many times do we have to see this story happen? They obviously dont have the safeguards."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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NSA contractor accused of leaking top secret report on Russian hacking ...

The National Security Agency campus in Fort Meade, Md.(Photo: Patrick Semansky, AP)

A federal contractor was arrested in Georgia Monday in connection with a classified NSA report on Russian election interference published by the online publication The Intercept.

According to the top secret document, Russian military intelligence conducted a cyberattack on at least one supplier of voting software and sent phishing emails containing malicious software to more than 100 local election official days before the 2016 election, The Intercept reported.

After theIntercept story was published Monday, the Justice Department announced the arrest of a 25-year-old federal contractor from Georgia in connection with the disclosure.

Reality Leigh Winner, a contractor with Pluribus International Corp., who has held a top secret security clearance since at least February, made her first federal court appearance in Augusta, Ga., Monday afternoon.

Winner printed and improperly removed classified intelligence reporting, which contained classified national defense information from an intelligence community agency and unlawfully retained it, court documents stated, adding that material was taken May 9. Approximately a few days later, Winner unlawfully transmitted by mail the intelligence reporting to an online news outlet.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein credited federal law enforcement agents with acting quickly to identify and arrest the defendant.

Releasing classified material without authorization threatens our nations security and undermines public faith in government, Rosenstein said.

According to The Intercept, the classified May 5 intelligence report is the most detailed U.S. government account of Russian interference in the election that has yet come to light." The NSA report says it is based on information it obtained in April, but the document does not reveal the raw intelligence that led to the reports conclusions.

Related:

Warner: 'Unthinkable' if Trump pressured Comey to end FBI's investigation

Devin Nunes: No credible evidence of Russia-Trump collusion

Lindsey Graham: There's 'reason to believe' conversation was 'unmasked'

Accordingto the purported NSA document, Russian intelligence executed cyber espionage operation against a named U.S. Company in August 2016, evidently to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions. The report's authors have no doubt the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, was behind the operation.

The Russian "spear-fishing" attack involved sending local government employees emails that appeared to be from e-voting vendors containing Microsoft Word documents loaded with malware. Once the recipient opened one of the documents, the hackers would gain control of the infected computer.

In order for the emails to seem legitimate, the Russians tried to hack an election software company's email system, The Intercept reported. At least one employee's account was likely hacked, according to the report.

"Although the document does not directly identify the company in question, it contains references to a product made by VR Systems, a Florida-based vendor of electronic voting services and equipment whose products are used in eight states," The Intercept reported.

In late October, the hackers began to send emails that appeared to be from a VR system employee, the document says. The emails were sent to 122 addresses tied to "local government organizations," the document says, adding that "officials involved in the management of voter registration systems" were the likely targets.The emails contained "trojanized" attachments that would allow the hackers to gain access to the infected computer.

"It is unknown whether the aforementioned spear-phishing deployment successfully compromised all the intended victims, and what potential data could have been accessed by the cyber actor," the alleged NSA document says. "However, based upon subsequent targeting, it was likely that at least one account was compromised."

The Interceptis an online publication started in 2013 by journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill in the wake of Edward Snowdens revelations about NSA surveillance.

Thereport published Monday is based on a top-secret National Security Agency document provided by an anonymous source. The report was independently authenticated, according to The Intercept.

An unnamed U.S. intelligence officer told The Interceptnot to read too much into the document because, a single analysis is not necessarily definitive.

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Federal contractor arrested after NSA document published on news site - USA TODAY

As they traveled across America last year, it seems Donald Trump's children saw not only potential voters, but also potential customers.

After years of spinning out hotels laden with gold leaf and marble, Trump Hotels is launching a hospitality brand positioned for a different kind of clientele. At Trump Tower tonight, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., along with Trump Hotels CEO Eric Danziger, announced the launch of a mid-market hotel chain called American Idea. The new franchisea big departure from the flagship, luxury Trump Hotels and the company's planned upmarket second brand, Scionwill launch with three locations in the Mississippi Delta area. The three-star rooms will range from $80 to $120 a night.

"I'm sure it's going to haunt me, but we kind of look at [the new brand] as flea market chic," said Danziger during the announcement event. "It means that in any given city, there's history," he said, explaining that the decor of each hotel will reflect the heritage and ephemera of its local community.

The younger Trumps said they got the idea to launch the new hotel brand as they traveled the country with their father during the campaign. "There's a market here that we've been missing our entire lives," said Donald Trump Jr. during the announcement event.

By creating a hotel brand for third- and even fourth-tier American cities, Trump Hotels appears to be attempting to avoid headwinds facing the company's other brands. For example, Trump Hotels' international expansion has been curtailed by conflict of interest concerns. "When the president became the president, we said we're not going to do anything internationally. So that kind of forced me into [saying] we're going to be a domestic brand," said Danziger in an interview with Fast Company.

President Trump and his family have been accused on various occasions of viewing their move into politics as a business and branding opportunity. Certainly the theme of the new franchise falls in line with the U.S.A.-first attitude of Trump's campaign, which championed the American yesteryear. During the election, Mississippi swung for Trump.

[Photo: Ruth Reader 2017] AM

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Reality Winner: Here's what we know so far about the accused NSA leaker - Fast Company

by LINDSAY WHITEHURST, Associated Press

NSA officials deny mass surveillance during Utah Olympics (Photo: MGN)

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) A former top spy agency official who was the target of a government leak investigation says the National Security Agency conducted blanket surveillance in Salt Lake City during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah, according to court documents.

Ex-NSA official Thomas Drake wrote in a declaration released Friday that the NSA collected and stored virtually all electronic communications going into or out of the Salt Lake City area, including the contents of emails and text messages.

"Officials in the NSA and FBI viewed the Salt Lake Olympics Field Op as a golden opportunity to bring together resources from both agencies to experiment with and fine tune a new scale of mass surveillance," Drake wrote.

It comes as part of a lawsuit filed by attorney Rocky Anderson, who was the mayor of Salt Lake City during the games held a few months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Anderson said the document was disclosed to the U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday.

Former CIA and National Security Agency director Michael Hayden has denied in court documents that such a program existed. Hayden was NSA director from 1999 to 2005.

Current NSA operations director Wayne Murphy said in court documents that NSA surveillance in Salt Lake City was limited to international communications in which at least one participant was reasonably believed to be associated with foreign terrorist groups.

Drake disputed that statement, writing that he spoke with colleagues who worked on the operation and were concerned about its legality. He said he also saw documents showing surveillance equipment being directed to the Utah program.

His declaration was written in support of the former mayor's lawsuit. Anderson said the lawsuit is designed to get more information about what he calls covert, illegal operations.

The NSA has argued the lawsuit's claims are far-fetched speculation about a program that may never have existed. A judge, though, refused a Justice Department push to dismiss the lawsuit in January.

Drake started working for the NSA in 2001 and blew the whistle on what he saw as a wasteful and invasive program. He was later prosecuted for keeping classified information. Most of the charges were dropped before trial in 2011, and he was sentenced to one year of probation.

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Ex-spy says NSA did mass surveillance during Utah Olympics - KUTV 2News

Wall Street Journal (subscription)

US Charges Contractor With Leaking NSA ... Wall Street Journal (subscription) A 25-year-old government contractor was arrested over the weekend and charged with leaking a secret report to a news organization that described some of Russia's election-related hacking activities, according to court papers and U.S. officials briefed ...

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US Charges Contractor With Leaking NSA ... - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

'Intercept' Article Reveals NSA Report On Russian Cyberattack NPR Email. June 6, 20175:00 AM ET. Heard on Morning Edition. The Intercept reveals an NSA report that Russian military intelligence hacked into one voting software supplier, and sent phishing emails to local election officials days before the November ...

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'Intercept' Article Reveals NSA Report On Russian Cyberattack - NPR

Former National Security Agency senior executive and whistleblower Thomas Drake revealed himself this week as the source for a lawsuit alleging the NSA conducted blanket, indiscriminate surveillance of Salt Lake City during the 2002 Winter Olympics.

In a declaration filed in discovery in the case in U.S. district court in Utah, Drake asserted the NSA, in coordination with the FBI, scooped up and stored the content of emails and text messages sent and received by anyone in the city and Olympic venues including American citizens.

The mantra was just take it all, said Drake, 60, in a Thursday evening phone interview. Drakes assertions contradict declarations filed in the case in March by former NSA director Michael Hayden and current NSA operations manager Wayne Murphy.

The NSA has never ... at any time conducted mass or blanket surveillance, interception, or analysis ... of e-mail, text message, telephone, or other telecommunications in Salt Lake City or the vicinity of the 2002 Winter Olympic venues, whether during the 2002 Winter Olympic Games or otherwise, Murphy stated.

Drake accused Murphy and Hayden of making statements that are if not literally false, substantially misleading. His declaration was first reported Friday by the Salt Lake Tribune.

[Read Thomas Drakes full declaration here]

The NSA and the Department of Justice declined to comment Friday on the case, which was filed in 2015 by former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson on behalf of six American citizens who alleged their private communications were monitored and likely stored by the NSA during the Winter Games, held in Salt Lake City in February 2002.

Its incredibly important that the public be aware of what our governments doing, and all of us standing up against it, Anderson said in a telephone interview Thursday evening. We need to let our elected officials know that we will resist in any way possible this rather sudden transformation of our country, not only to a surveillance state, but to a nation where the rule of law seems to mean very little.

Drake is a former Air Force and Navy veteran who worked at the NSA from 1989 until 2008, when his career ended amid a leak investigation. Drake had grown uncomfortable with the expansion of the NSAs surveillance operations, authorized by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and leaked unclassified information to a reporter about waste and fraud in the agency.

In 2007, Drakes home was raided by the FBI, and, in 2010, federal prosecutors charged him with 10 felonies under the Espionage Act. The case against him ultimately collapsed Drake pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in 2011 and his ordeal is seen by civil liberty advocates as emblematic of overaggressive targeting of whistleblowers by the federal government.

In early 2002, according to Drake, he started hearing rumors from alarmed colleagues at the NSA about the Salt Lake Olympics Field Op. Then he started seeing manifest documents, showing shipments of surveillance equipment headed to Utah.

The Winter Games that year were held on American soil just five months after the Sept. 11 attacks, and according to Drakes declaration, the NSA saw the event which would bring thousands of people, including foreign leaders and international media, to a relatively confined geographic area as a golden opportunity to fine-tune a new scale of mass surveillance.

The mass surveillance program during the 2002 Olympics was first reported in a 2013 Wall Street Journal article that alleged, based on anonymous officials, that the FBI and the NSA made an arrangement with Qwest Communications International Inc. to monitor the content of all email and text communications in the Salt Lake City region during the Winter Games.

Qwest, a Denver-based telecommunications company, was acquired in 2011 by CenturyLink. Former Qwest chief executive Joseph Nacchio has said he knew nothing about his company cooperating with the NSA during the 2002 Olympics, but that federal authorities could have worked with other executives without his knowledge.

In 2013, one of the secret documents former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked to journalists describes NSA discussions about an operation during the Olympics, but not to the extent of what Drake has alleged.

In early 2002, NSA personnel met with senior vice president of government systems and other employees from Company E, the document stated. Under authority of the Presidents Surveillance Program (PSP), NSA asked Company E to provide call records in support of security for the Olympics in Salt Lake City ... On 19 February 2002, Company E submitted a written proposal that discussed methods it could use to regularly replicate call record information stored in a Company E facility and potentially forward the same information to NSA.

The Snowden document makes no mention of capturing content, though, but rather seems to align with previous revelations of NSA operations capturing metadata: information about a phone call or text message, such as the phone numbers, geographical locations of the devices used, and the duration of a call or size of a message.

But Drake said the Salt Lake City operation captured far more than just metadata. Before the Olympics, he said, the NSA set up geofencing virtual geographic boundaries around Salt Lake City and nearby Olympic venues.

Virtually all electronic communication signals that went into or out of one of those designated areas were captured and stored by the NSA, including the contents of emails and text messages, according to Drakes declaration. The NSA stored the metadata, as well as text in emails and text messages. Only large attached images or video files to texts and emails would have been spared, Drake said, because of their size.

Anderson, the former Salt Lake City mayor, was in private practice as an attorney when he read the 2013 Wall Street Journal article. He connected with Drake through a mutual friend, and when Drake described the scope of the operation he believed had been conducted, Anderson decided to pursue litigation.

Andersons case was filed in 2015 on behalf of six people who lived or worked near Olympic venues in Salt Lake City in 2002, including a lawyer, an author and a college professor. Their lawsuit seeks damages, an order to compel the NSA to disclose what communications from the plaintiffs it still has in storage and then the deletion of that information.

Anderson has asked the American Civil Liberties Union and several other electronic freedom and individual rights organizations to take up the case, but all have declined. The Department of Justice has tried to get the case dismissed, but U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby allowed it to proceed with a ruling in January.

Drake expressed dismay Thursday evening that the case has been greatly overshadowed this year by the news, and tweets, coming from the White House.

If there was anything exceptional about America, it was our Constitution ... and yet, here I was, seeing it unravel, in secret, from within the government, Drake said. To me, this still really matters.

Michael E. Miller contributed to this report.

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Former NSA executive: Agency used 'blanket' surveillance during 2002 Olympics - Washington Post