Decision Points

Internet, FISA prohibited the NSA from monitoring communications involving people inside the United States without a warrant from the FISA court. For example, if a terrorist in Afghanistan contacted a terrorist in Pakistan, NSA could intercept their conversation. But if the same terrorist called someone in the United States, or sent an email that touched an American computer server, NSA had to apply for a court order.
    That made no sense. Why should it be tougher to monitor al Qaeda communications with terrorists inside the United States than with their associates overseas? As Mike Hayden put it, we were “flying blind with no early warning system.”
    After 9/11, we couldn’t afford to fly blind. If al Qaeda operatives were calling into or out of the United States, we damn sure needed to know who they were calling and what they were saying. And given the urgency of the threats, we could not allow ourselves to get bogged down in the court approval process. I asked the White House counsel’s office and the Justice Department to study whether I could authorize the NSA to monitor al Qaeda communications into and out of the country without FISA warrants.
    Both told me I could. They concluded that conducting surveillance against our enemies in war fell within the authorities granted by the congressional war resolution and the constitutional authority of the commander in chief. Abraham Lincoln had wiretapped telegraph machines during the Civil War. Woodrow Wilson had ordered the interception of virtually every telephone and telegraph message going into or out of the United States during World War I. Franklin Roosevelt had allowed the military to read and censor communications during World War II.
    Before I approved the Terrorist Surveillance Program , I wanted to ensure there were safeguards to prevent abuses. I had no desire to turn the NSA into an Orwellian Big Brother. I knew that the Kennedy brothers had teamed up with J. Edgar Hoover to listen illegally to the conversations of innocent people, including Martin Luther King, Jr. Lyndon Johnson had continued the practice. I thought that was a sad chapter in our history, and I wasn’t going to repeat it.
    On the morning of October 4, 2001, Mike Hayden and the legal team came to the Oval Office. They assured me the Terrorist Surveillance Program had been carefully designed to protect the civil liberties of innocent people. The purpose of the program was to monitor so-called dirty numbers, which intelligence professionals had reason to believe belonged to al Qaeda operatives. Many had been found in the cell phones or computers of terrorists captured on the battlefield. If we inadvertently intercepted any portion of purely domestic communications, the violation would be reported to the Justice Department for investigation. To be sure the program was used only as long as necessary, it had to be regularly reassessed and reapproved.
    I gave the order to proceed with the program. We considered going to Congress to get legislation, but key members from both parties who received highly classified briefings on the program agreed that the surveillance was necessary and that a legislative debate was not possible without exposing our methods to the enemy.
    I knew the Terrorist Surveillance Program would prove controversial one day. Yet I believed it was necessary. The rubble at the World Trade Center was still smoldering. Every morning I received intelligence reports about another possible attack. Monitoring terrorist communications into the United States was essential to keeping the American people safe.

    On December 22, a British passenger named Richard Reid tried to blow up an American Airlines flight carrying 197 people from Paris to Miami by detonating explosives in his shoes. Fortunately, an alert flight attendant noticed his suspicious behavior, and passengers overwhelmed himbefore he could light the fuse. The plane was diverted to Boston, where Reid was marched off in handcuffs. He later told questioners that his goal was to cripple the U.S. economy with an attack during the holiday season. He pled guilty to eight counts of terrorist activity, leading to a life sentence at the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.
    The foiled attack had a big impact on me. Three months after 9/11, it was a vivid reminder that the threats were frighteningly real. Airport screeners began requiring passengers to remove their shoes at checkpoints. I recognized that we were creating