Despite the intelligence community’s attempts to blame NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden for the tragic attacks in Paris on Friday, the NSA’s mass surveillance programs do not have a track record — before or after Snowden — of identifying or thwarting actual large-scale terrorist plots.
CIA Director John Brennan asserted on Monday that “many of these terrorist operations are uncovered and thwarted before they’re able to be carried out,” and lamented the post-Snowden “handwringing” that has made that job more difficult.
But the reason there haven’t been any large-scale terror attacks by ISIS in the U.S. is not because they were averted by the intelligence community, but because — with the possible exception of one that was foiled by local police — none were actually planned.
And even before Snowden, the NSA wasn’t able to provide a single substantiated example of its surveillance dragnet preventing any domestic attack at all.
The recent history of terror arrests linked to ISIS is documented in an internal unclassified Department of Homeland Security document provided to The Intercept via SecureDrop. It shows that terror arrests between January 2014 and September 2015 linked to ISIS were largely of people trying to travel abroad, provide material support, or plan attacks that were essentially imaginary.
The document, dated before the Paris attacks, includes a list and map of 64 U.S. persons arrested on terror-related charges over the course of nine months who were “assessed to be inspired by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” or ISIS.
The document assigns six categories to types of arrests made in the given time period: a foiled attack, “aspirational” planning, “advanced attack plotting,” failed travel, travel, or material support.
The only foiled attack involved the arrests of Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, who traveled from Arizona to Garland, Texas, bearing assault weapons and body armor, intending to shoot up an art contest involving the drawing of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Both attackers were shot by local police officers.
There are just five instances of what the report’s authors call “advanced attack plotting” — two of which involve the FBI providing assistance in planning or acquiring supplies for an attack before making an arrest.
Harlem Suarez, a 23-year-old from Florida, had been posting on Facebook about his support for ISIS when an undercover FBI agent started communicating with him, eventually about a “timer bomb” he wanted to construct and detonate on a public beach in Key West. Suarez asked the undercover agent if he knew how to assemble a bomb, and the agent agreed to get what he needed, subsequently goading him by asking if he was “true to the Islamic State” or “just playing games.” Suarez paid the FBI agent for the materials to assemble the bomb, and the agent taught him how to detonate it. When he tried to carry out the attack, he was arrested. His attorneys described him as “troubled and confused” in a statement.
An FBI agent also provided a fake explosive device to John T. Booker, a 20-year-old Kansas man who was indicted for attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction.
Christopher Cornell, a 20-year-old from Ohio, started posting on Twitter under an alias about his support for ISIS when someone in contact with Cornell agreed to be an FBI informant. Cornell talked about attacking the U.S. Capitol. But his father said it was the FBI that was “taking him somewhere, and they were filling his head with a lot of this garbage.”
Munther Omar Saleh, a New York college student, was arrested after trying to stab federal officers executing a search warrant at his home. The FBI said he and a co-conspirator discussed setting off a pressure-cooker bomb in New York, but no such charge was filed.
Usaamah Rahim, a 26-year-old Boston man, was killed by police officers when he was stopped for questioning after allegedly threatening them with a knife. He had been posting ISIS-inspired social media messages, and had threatened to kill Pamela Geller, the host of the Garland, Texas, Muhammad cartoon contest. Law enforcement sources called that plot a “fantasy,” but said his second plan, to kill cops, was more believable.
There were 12 examples of “aspirational” plots, or even less advanced plans to commit attacks.
There were 30 arrests involving people who were trying to travel to join up with ISIS, most of whom failed, and 15 of people attempting to provide some sort of “material support.”
That’s hardly a record of averting major ISIS attacks on the homeland.
In fact, there’s no evidence that the NSA’s extraordinary surveillance dragnet, as revealed by Snowden, has disrupted any major attack within the U.S. ever.
The U.S. government initially responded to Snowden’s disclosures in 2013 by suggesting that he had irreparably damaged valuable, life-saving capabilities. Two weeks after the media first reported on Snowden’s leaks, President Barack Obama said that the NSA “averted … at least 50 threats … because of this information,” gathered through communications collection in the United States and abroad.
Members of Congress and the administration alike subsequently repeated that claim, upping the total to 54 attacks thwarted.
But only 13 of the 54 cases “had some nexus to the U.S.,” Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in October 2013. And they were not all terror “plots”; a majority involved providing “material support,” like money, to foreign terror organizations.
Then-NSA Director Keith Alexander was forced to dial back the rhetoric, eventually saying only that the intelligence programs “contributed to our understanding” and “helped enable the disruption of terrorist plots.”
The only incident the NSA has ever disclosed in which its domestic metadata collection program played a key role involved a San Diego man who was convicted of transferring $8,500 to al Shabaab in Somalia — the terror group responsible for a mass shooting at a mall in Kenya. And the metadata program is the only one that has been reigned in since the Snowden disclosures.
The three other terrorism cases the NSA cited as warrantless surveillance success stories were debunked. Either the government could have gotten a warrant, or it received a tip from British intelligence, or it was a case of fraud, not terrorism.
A White House panel concluded in December 2013 that the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ telephone information was “not essential in preventing attacks.” A member of the panel took it one step further, when he told NBC News that there were no examples of the NSA stopping “any [terror attacks] that might have been really big” using the program.
Why don’t any of these people in Homeland Security ever arrest and indict the real terrorists? Like Obama, McCain, and Brennan…….
Government Pathological Liars and Criminals are Operating as Domestic Terrorist on Targeted Individuals and Groups — and you will be seeing more of their Criminal, Black Operations, if they get away with taking more of peoples’ rights :
It is no coincidence about John Brennan’s recent visit to Seattle, when he appeared for a speaking engagement at the University of Washington, just prior to the UW Center for Human Rights experiencing a covert entry burglary on a following weekend. A computer was stolen, with data on it which would have been used against the CIA in a lawsuit.
I have also been targeted by Criminal Personnel in Homeland Security Agencies for ongoing burglaries, vandalism as well as pet torture, since 2011, after repeated FOIA information requests for my FBI files and my appeal of the denial was denied. They have also burglarized my Storage Units in 5 Different Storage Facilities in the Puget Sound Area, as well as my safe deposit box I had in Colville, Washington.
These are members of a Criminal Black Operations Homeland Security Agency network who operate above the law and there is no Civil or Constitutional Rights Organization that will help me as an individual, to fight this Government Sponsored Organized Criminal Network ….. Homeland Security Agencies and their Personnel are just part of the Organized Crime Network targeting citizens for crimes now, and using their surveillance technology, data and personnel to track, gang-stalk and monitor you where ever you go, and target you for covert, black ops crimes and psy-ops now.
I know one of the people involved my government surveillance crimes, and overheard one side of his cell phone conversation, and if cell phone records were traced it would lead to others involved in the covert and non-covert entry burglaries occurring in Washington state. I also followed one of the people involved to a meeting where one of the other men involved in the burglaries was, who ran out the back door when I was discovered photographing license plates in the parking lot where the meeting was being held.
God only knows how many terrorist and criminal acts will continue to occur until these government sponsored domestic terrorists are brought to justice. At least the UW has an attorney helping them pursue the government.
Here are a couple links to information about the UW burglary ( I also posted my info on my Scribd ):
http://evil.news/2015-10-27-human-rights-group-robbed-after-suing-cia-for-documents-detailing-their-role-in-massacring-75000-salvadorans.html
http://www.dcclothesline.com/2015/10/25/after-suing-the-cia-human-rights-group-burglarized-all-evidence-needed-for-lawsuit-stolen/
This doesn’t surprise me at all. The purpose of mass surveillance is prevent a mass peace movement.
As I know Mr Snowden has more information to release. Citizen4
What’s the deter?
Thank you Jenna. After reading Jane Mayer’s “The Dark Side”, I was horrified at how it seems as if the 2001 tragedy that kicked off most of the horrors that began since that day, was not missed but actually deliberately permitted to occur.
More horrified still when one the ardent supporters of the Iraqi invasion said on CNN that “…we create facts on the ground…” What did he mean by “create facts on the ground”?
And then a British soldier in Iraq disguised as an Arab was found carrying an IED. At that point, one and one began to add to three.
I am an African who speaks no Arabic ,never been to an Arab country and has no Arabic friends. But I am tortured severely even as I write this.
And because I have successfully articulated the crimes to the world to the chagrin of the criminals, just 6 days ago, someone planted an Arabic pamphlet which they pushed partially in through the hinge side of my front door, between the edge of the door and the frame. This, after they wrote online that I was an Arab, using my full name. That website has since dissappeared.
Knowing how innocent people can get framed, I immediately wrote on the Arabic pamplet in indelible ink ” planted in my house on Nov 13, 2015″, before those who planted it there could “found” it in a desperate effort to silence me.
The instances noted here point to the ugliness of the true face of the war on terror.
I am an agnostic and have never been a Moslem.
Pls read:
http://freedomfchs.lefora.com/topic/7442322/nanodevices-in-sensory-overload-mind-control-torture
Let’s include “predictive policing” into this.
Sometimes innocent individuals are targeted by governments because of precieved potiontial.
Because of books they’ve read,websites visited or knowledge obtained.
Governments will do anything to keep the Status Quo. Media is governments lap-dog minion.
The West operates a STASI like social control, utilizing the newest technology. Incorporating watch groups,professionals and criminals. A snitch culture. InfagGard, I-Watch, Neighborhood Watch…
FBI has long been know for creating terrorest plots.
COINTELPRO continues covertly,judge,jury and executioner.
Up to and including elimination. Chemical or RF exposure.
Ruining lives, Whistleblowers, Journalists,Immigrants….
Its a new world we live in.
While “COINTELPRO was officially terminated in April 1971″ *1 it lives on as JTRIG.
COINTELPRO LIVES!
With the advent of the internet (and the near death of snail mail) JTRIG *2 is COINTELPRO on steroids with several greater magnitudes!
COINTELPRO LIVES!
The Snowden disclosures show that the FBI and NSA have sought to distance themselves from COINTELPRO by placing it squarely on the lap of the British GCHQ in new packaging called JTRIG (for distribution to the “FIVE EYES” -the english speaking countries’ spy agencies U.S., CANADA, U.K., AUSTRAILIA, NEW ZEALAND).
COINTELPRO LIVES!
LAPD PDID
By 1975, PDID was the custodian of almost 2 million dossiers on 55,000 individuals and organizations. Most of them were disposed of under court order. In the course of a lawsuit filed in 1981, it was learned that the intelligence unit had illegally spied on more than 200 individuals and organizations (Among those targeted were two California governors, a state attorney general, a mayor of Los Angeles, a future LAPD chief, City Council members, the National Organization for Women, the PTA and the World Council of Churches).
Public Disorder Intelligence Division, disbanded in 1983 after newspapers reported it spied on celebrities and public figures including Mayor Tom Bradley, then gave the information to a private, right-wing group; a shadowy private outfit in San Francisco called Western Goals.
Allegations of illegal spying led to the demise of the controversial LAPD unit in January, 1983. After nearly a decade of controversy, the Police Commission voted to abolish the LAPD’s Public Disorder Intelligence Division, which for years had been accused of exceeding its responsibilities by spying on law-abiding groups and individuals.
…after the settlement of the 1981 suit, the Police Department entered into a consent decree that required it to dismantle the PDID. Its replacement, the Anti-Terrorism Division (ATD), was audited by a civilian staff member of the Police Commission.
“Darrel Gates (LAPD Police Chief) had more than 200 officers as analysts and supervisors in the Public Disorder Intelligence Division, or PDID. When Zev Yaroslavsky, then on the City Council, finally worked up the nerve to ask at a hearing how many undercover political officers the LAPD had, and how much they cost, the response was not subtle. A deputy chief told the councilmen that if he did that and any undercover officer turned up dead, the council members would all become murder suspects. *3
In February 1984, an out-of- court settlement awarded $1.8 million dollars to the plaintiffs who had sued the City of L.A. *4
*1 SEE WIKIPEDIA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
*2 SEE THE INTERCEPT https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
*3 “Daryl Gates real legacy”, David Cay Johnston, http://www.laobserved.com/visiting/2010/04/daryl_gates_secret_legacy.php
*4 “Cases entitled Coalition Against Police Abuse, etc., et al. v. Board of Police Commissioners, etc. et al., LASC Nos. C243458, C317528, C374660, C381339, C399552 and C413904 (hereinafter referred to as CAPA). These cases were ltimately
consolidated and for all purposes were settled by an out of court settlement and the issuance of a Stipulated Consent Decree.” Gates v. Superior Court, 178 Cal. App. 3d 301, 304, 223 Cal. Rptr. 678, 680 (Ct. App. 1986)
COINTELPRO LIVES!
A Russian editorial (of all things) claimed the majority of Americans are on medications and especially anti-depressants. These powerful drugs have common severe side effects especially those with immature or limited brains.
Being isolation and rejected, resentment against society and suicide become common.
American Big-Data agents detect this abnormal behavior and notify DHS. Undercover agents lead the medicated, mentally ill people-on (and are rewarded with promotions). Since most mental institutions have closed they find acceptance and ‘grow’ with other hard-core prisoners.
This system feeds itself as both the terror and security apparatus must continuously expand.
Similarly the USA (under Bush/Cheney) rejected capable Iraqi military officers so they formed ISIL.
Wall Street is happy as pharmaceuticals and defense corporations have skyrocketed. Newly deputized agents Microsoft, Google and Facebook stocks are the darlings of Wall St.
Hopefully the latest terror in Europe will overcome the European Constitution too and allow secret Big-Data sharing with Wall St. They future looks very profitable indeed!
I like to say that What I Say, What I Think and What I Do are three different things. Sometimes they need to be coordinated, sure, but just because the NSA SAYS Mass Surveillance is to stop Terrorism, doesn’t mean that is what it really is for.
It may or may not be coincidental that it is an amazing way to keep a potentially hostile electorate in its place and spy on the rest of the world’s political and business activities at a time when the world is stagnating and ripe for imperial machinations, and America’s corporate investments and industrial assets are often far away overseas, not ever to return and potentially easily lost.
It looks more like a huge Global Doggy Leash to me, with a nasty biting Choke Chain attached.
HEEL, BOY! It screams, and all obey.
Totally forgotten about the terrorists. The CIA are controlling them, anyway, and spying on our own black ops only produces an audit trail.
What were you saying Jenna? Oh, yeah, It is a SPADE, not a Manual Earth Lifting Device, I believe. Call it one.
As I wrote in a short story, “The organization most responsible for terrorist plots on American soil is the FBI.”
COINTELPRO continues.
No Dissent.
u.s. STASI
BTW thank you Jenna for bringing the obvious to the attention of the unenlightened and the brain-dead.
It seems to me (and maybe not just me) that every time the “intelligence” community is questioned about the usefulness of domestic spying with regards to terrorism (there goes that vague word again…) they always seem to spew out their “least truthful” answer.
Could it be that they’re only justifying their own pathetic (& exorbitantly expensive) existence?
What all of this crap is really about is an oligarchical attack upon all of the democratic nations in the world by the dictators and politicians like Clinton/Obama.
The main problem is the cryptocurrency for supporting terrorism.
ISIS transfer money internationally using bitcoins
There’s going to be a reckoning for that – at least, provided I understand it correctly.
The issue with bitcoins is that each represents a “blockchain” or ledger of past transactions. In order to make bitcoin ‘worth money’, it has to be possible to trace it back to the previous transaction.
Therefore, it should be possible for authorities to say that a bitcoin (or portion thereof) can be shown to have once been paid as ransom, or to terrorists, or for drugs, etc., and then say that part has to be forfeited, hopefully to someone who was robbed in the first case but in the latter cases probably to them.
But, being as bitcoins are decentralized, why wait? Why accept a bitcoin that has a questionable provenance, knowing you might be forced to give it up later? So I see a private vendor making a “bitcoin whitelisting service” available whereby people agree to pay off all the ransomware victims, etc. whose transactions are recorded in the blockchain of their bitcoins; in exchange, they are then certified to be purified.
Note I don’t have to propose this idea – this is something like chemical contamination that simply exists, whether you like it or not, and which people will have to deal with … sooner or later.
> Therefore, it should be possible for authorities to say that a bitcoin (or portion thereof) can be shown to have once been paid as ransom, or to terrorists, or for drugs, etc., and then say that part has to be forfeited, hopefully to someone who was robbed in the first case but in the latter cases probably to them.
Actually, no they can’t. That’s one of the issues the authorities have with bitcoin. They can’t force transactions. And if a user is careful, transactions can be made anonymously.
Ok, I give up (and go off topic). Are the comment formatting options documented anywhere? I can’t seem to locate them, and they don’t appear to be markdown based.
This massive increase in surveillance is nothing less than the creation of a secret society beholden to no politician or nation.
No weapons, no soldiers, tanks, ships or planes being necessary having only the power of information (or disinformation) as it’s base.
John F. Kennedy once said, “and there is grave danger that an announced need for increased for security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment”.
I’m not so sure about the “fraud, not terrorism” link. I mean, it says they sent money, wanted to be in Al Qaida, and in fact “The Doctor” gave some of the money to families of Islamic “martyrs”, which is practically a fee-for-service transaction! I mean, ignoring the bull about virgins and such, how many of them would actually self terminate if they didn’t think their families were getting enough money to get out from under?
Spook gangs can blackmail lawmakers and judges. They can engage in narcotics trafficking, gun running, insider training, money laundering, kidnapping, torture, and terrorism. Wound my heart with a monotonous languor. Spook gangs could not thwart terror attacks even if they wanted to.
To stop ISIS requires serious police work and serious fighting – not spooks blackmailing lawmakers, not pensioners groped in airports, and not thousands of highly profitable smart munitions dropped on wedding parties and empty deserts. Politicians have to start valuing results over profits, kickbacks, and “speaking fees”.
A good start would be a brigade of three thousand Saudi Princes fighting on the front lines against ISIS.
This is a pretty misleading article. The document, as you can see on page 1, is about American would-be terrorists, not foreign terrorists. And it’s unclassified, so it’s a fair assumption that not every action ever taken by the intelligence community is documented here. And yet you manage to extrapolate that all of NSA’s programs (plural) have never stopped a terrorist attack, ever. Ridiculous, and the sort of thing that stops TI from being taken seriously.
TI is taken seriously. So if your conclusion is wrong, your argument probably has some issues.
The US government has never been able to produce evidence of major thwarted attacks. They have, however, missed attacks that happened.
@ Peter
Okay, could you please provide a link to any source that indicates it is America’s intelligence services legal or moral mandate to protect other nations from terrorist attacks.
Also, while you are at it, could you provide a single documented instance where America’s intelligence agencies thwarted a major foreign terrorist attack aimed at civilians via mass surveillance.
One rule, you can’t use any instance of plans or plans to attack our soldiers or allies’ soldiers when and where they are engaged in military operations on foreign soil–because most don’t define that as “terrorism”.
I’ll wait and thanks in advance.
http://intelligence.house.gov/1-four-declassified-examples-more-50-attacks-20-countries-thwarted-nsa-collection-under-fisa-section
@ Peter
Not sure if you struggle with reading for comprehension or you don’t know much about your own examples. You didn’t answer the first question. But you appear to be trying to answer the second which was “provide a single documented instance where America’s intelligence agencies thwarted a major foreign terrorist attack aimed at civilians via mass surveillance.
It appears you didn’t even read your own link if you think it answers that question.
The last example in your link doesn’t even give a name of the individual so it doesn’t constitute proof of anything in the real world.
Najibulla Zazi was the subject of FBI targeted-warrant surveillance not a function of “mass surveillance”. Any role the NSA played was in conducting foreign surveillance not domestic mass surveillance, and likely not “mass surveillance” of any kind even in Pakistan, but rather targeted foreign surveillance. From your link “while monitoring the activities of Al Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan, the National Security Agency (NSA) noted contact from an individual in the U.S.”
As far as David Coleman Headley goes, again not a function of “mass surveillance”. The guy might as well have been a spy either for the US or the Pakistan ISI. More importantly, the Mumbai attack he was prosecuted for playing a role in actually happened—so it can’t be used as an example of surveillance of any kind thwarting an attack.
And if you want to really understand the case of Basaaly Moalin try reading the following the link at the bottom. He wasn’t a “terrorism” plotter nor was there any specific “plot” or “plan” thwarted by “mass surveillance” or any other surveillance.
They guy was convicted of giving $8,500 to some nominal charities in Somalia. He was a US citizen and mostly a cab driver not some battle hardened terrorist with some imminent plot to harm people that was thwarted.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/26/whole-haystack
Thank you for making my point.
I’d need breast enhancements and a caberet show if I was called Najibulla Zazi.
Oh, Cruel Fate! Why is one man’s transvestite dream, another man’s would-be terror attack?
That’s not true. The document is titled “ISIL-Related Arrests in Homeland.” It’s scope is domestic arrests, but not domestic terrorism. Let’s not confuse things.
The article does conclude there’s no evidence the NSA dragnet programs have stopped any attacks ever. It concludes that because it’s true.
You’ve already been proven by rrheard and other commenters to be totally in error; even especially in total error since you made the mistake of posting a link which undermined everything you had claimed. So I’ll keep my question to you focused on asking about your claim about The Intercept.
My question to you is: from what source, poll, “Terrorism Expert” and so on and on do you derive your conclusion that The Intercept has been ‘stopped’ from being taken seriously? It appears that you took hold of some Thin Air in order to have come to that conclusion; much in the same way that you concluded all of your other bogus claims.
_________________________________________________________________________
So pleased to see The Intercept posting the facts and exposing the propagandists and the liars who are currently in prolific liar mode as they exploit the pain, suffering and deaths of all of those directly and indirectly effected by the recent mass murders.
Not pertaining to this article at all, but there have been 3 articles that have lead me to conclude that TI isn’t what Greenwald claimed it to be. I have commented on those 3 articles. They were poorly fact checked, misleading , biased (which is ok…but u can be biased and fair in writing an article) and they really lacked substance and fairness. I was surprised that the journalists really thought they had a breaking story. In my assertion, they could have been good stories but they failed in how they approached the story.
The Intercept, in two of the stories, ISIS RECRUITMENTS IN BRUTAL PRISON AND especially, FORMER DRONE OPERATORS SAY THEY WERE HORRIFIED BY CRUELTY OF ASSASSINATION PROGRAM, have demonstrated not only to me but to other readers that TI DOES NOT POST FACTS IN SOME OF THEIR ARTICLES, THUS MAKING ME ALSO NOT TO TAKE TI SERIOUSLY.
These journalists in these articles do not write the way that Glen Greenwald would, and so they are indistinguishable from main stream media propagandists.
Peter, you’re just like Richard. Such a Dick!