Mangled facts, secrecy brew confusion about NSA

FILE - In this June 12, 2013 file photo, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, commander, U.S. Cyber Command and director, National Security Agency/Chief, Central Security Service testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. Wondering what the U.S. government might know about your phone calls and online life? And whether all of this really helps find terrorists? Good luck finding solid answers. Americans trying to wrap their minds around two giant surveillance programs are confronted with a mishmash of leaks, changing claims and secrecy. Congress members complain their constituents are baffled _ and many lawmakers admit they are, too. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

FILE - In this April 18, 2013 file photo, National Intelligence Director James Clapper prepares to testify on Capitol Hill in Washington. Wondering what the U.S. government might know about your phone calls and online life? And whether all of this really helps find terrorists? Good luck finding solid answers. Americans trying to wrap their minds around two giant surveillance programs are confronted with a mishmash of leaks, changing claims and secrecy. Congress members complain their constituents are baffled _ and many lawmakers admit they are, too. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Wondering what the U.S. government might know about your phone calls and online life? And whether all of this really helps find terrorists? Good luck finding solid answers.

Americans trying to wrap their minds around two giant surveillance programs are confronted with a mishmash of leaks, changing claims and secrecy. Members of Congress complain that their constituents are baffled - and many lawmakers admit they are, too.

Adding to the confusion and suspicion, those defending the programs - from President Barack Obama to the nation's spy chief to lawmakers - have sometimes mangled the facts.

Questions that could help sort things out often get the same answer: "That's classified."

"It's very, very difficult, I think, to have a transparent debate about secret programs approved by a secret court issuing secret court orders based on secret interpretations of the law," said Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M.

The nation's spy leaders promise to declassify more information about the programs, but say revealing too much would tip off terrorists and help them escape detection.

Only vague outlines of the two programs that suck up phone records and Internet data have been declassified since the first leaks were published last week in The Guardian and The Washington Post. There's no website, no book, no investigative report for Americans to turn to for the official facts.

That magnifies the confusion sown by misleading, retracted or inflated claims. A look at some of the misstatements:

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THE 9/11 ARGUMENT

The government's surveillance powers were expanded after the intelligence failures of Sept. 11, 2001.

To explain why millions of telephone records are now stored in a digital library, the NSA chief raised as an example one of the 9/11 hijackers.

In a Senate hearing, Army Gen. Keith Alexander implied that had the program been around before 9/11, the intelligence community might have sifted through records of past calls to catch the hijackers before they crashed airliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

He pointed to hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar.

"We didn't have the data collected to know that he was a bad person," Alexander said.

But the U.S. did know that Mihdhar was a bad guy. The CIA knew that Mihdhar had met with other al-Qaida operatives at a January 2000 gathering in Malaysia.

The big problem was the CIA failed to immediately share what it knew about Mihdhar.

The information wasn't passed to the FBI until late August 2001. The FBI began searching for Mihdhar in early September, but it was too late.

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THE FOILED SUBWAY BOMB

A 2009 plot to bomb the New York subways is being showcased as a triumph for expanded surveillance.

But the details are getting muddied.

First, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, credited the phone records data with thwarting al-Qaida bomber Najibullah Zazi's plan.

Then, talking points declassified by the Obama administration and circulated to lawmakers attributed the success against Zazi to a different NSA program, the one called PRISM that taps into email and Internet traffic in search of terrorists.

The use of PRISM to catch Zazi does little to resolve whether the government needs a program that collects such vast amounts of data, sometimes sweeping up information on American citizens.

Even before the post-Sept. 11 expanded surveillance, the FBI had the authority to - and did, regularly - monitor email accounts linked to terrorists. Before the laws changed, the government needed to get a warrant by showing that the target was a suspected member of a terrorist group. In the Zazi case, that connection already was well-established.

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THE 'LEAST UNTRUTHFUL' ANSWER

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper describes his attempt to dodge a question as "too cute by half."

Sen. Ron Wyden, who posed the question in March, says Clapper failed to give a straight answer. Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., suggests Clapper's answer amounts to perjury and he should resign.

The exchange came at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing before the phone program had been divulged.

"Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Wyden, D-Ore., asked Clapper.

"No, sir," Clapper answered.

"It does not?" Wyden pressed.

Clapper reluctantly softened his answer somewhat: "Not wittingly," he said. "There are cases where they could, inadvertently perhaps, collect - but not wittingly."

Turns out they do file away phone records - not conversations, but the phone numbers of calls placed and received - on millions of Americans.

After that leaked to the public, Clapper tried to explain his answer in an NBC News interview. "I responded," he said, "in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner."

Wyden says he even gave Clapper a day to prepare his answer. And, Wyden says, he gave Clapper a chance to change his answer in private.

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CONFUSION IN CONGRESS

Even one of the surveillance programs' staunchest supporters had trouble keeping the basics straight.

Explaining the programs to reporters, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., initially described how the NSA uses pattern analysis to sort through millions of phone calls from the United States.

"You basically say, 'Computer, tell me who has called Yemen once a week for the last month,' " Graham said. "They spit out a bunch of numbers."

But intelligence officials say that doesn't happen.

They say Americans' phone records are only accessed if there is evidence connecting them to suspected terrorists - not just a pattern of calls, such as to a certain country.

After intelligence officials objected, Graham - a member of the Armed Services and Judiciary committees but not the Intelligence panel - said he had misspoken.

But his earlier words reflect privacy advocates' fears about the sort of thing the government might do with its library of call records, if not now then maybe someday in the future.

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OBAMA'S TAKE

The president tried to reassure Americans about the massive surveillance programs. But he left some misimpressions.

"With respect to the Internet and emails," Obama said, "this does not apply to U.S. citizens."

Indeed, intelligence agency leaders say that these programs can't legally target Americans. That doesn't mean their online activities won't be swept up in the surveillance net, however.

Analysts watching a suspected terrorist see that person's emails, Facebook friends and other online traffic that might include Americans.

And American communications can be accidentally captured by computer programs searching for data on terror suspects. John Negroponte, a former director of national intelligence, said such unintentionally gathered information wouldn't be kept or used by agents.

Some Congress members bristled at the way Obama described briefings available to them: "Your duly elected representatives have been consistently informed on exactly what we're doing," he said.

Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., said: "The impression has been created that people (are) parked in our office giving us daily briefings on this, or monthly briefings. And that's not been the case."

At a Senate hearing Wednesday, Johanns complained: "We're all getting bombarded with questions that many of us at the rank-and-file level in the Senate cannot answer."

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Associated Press writers Adam Goldman, Eileen Sullivan, Lara Jakes, Matt Apuzzo, Donna Cassata and Kimberly Dozier contributed to this report.

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Follow Connie Cass on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ConnieCass

Hezbollah says it will keep fighting in Syria

BEIRUT (AP) — Hezbollah's leader vowed Friday that his militants would keep fighting in Syria "wherever needed" after the U.S. agreed to arm the rebels in the civil war, setting up a proxy fight between Iran and the West that threatens to engulf more of the Middle East.

President Barack Obama has deepened U.S. involvement in the conflict, authorizing lethal aid to the rebels for the first time after Washington said it had conclusive evidence the Syrian regime had used chemical weapons. Syria accused Obama of lying about the evidence, saying he was resorting to fabrications to justify his decision to arm the rebels.

The opposition forces, which have suffered key battlefield losses in recent weeks and were facing heavy fighting Friday in Syria's largest city of Aleppo, appealed for the weapons to be sent to them as soon as possible to swing the momentum to their side.

The 2-year-old conflict, which the U.N. estimates has killed more than 90,000 people and displaced millions, is increasingly being fought along sectarian lines, pitting Sunni against Shiite Muslims, and is threatening the stability of Syria's neighbors.

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, chief of the Shiite Hezbollah group in Lebanon, appeared unwavering in his support for the regime ofSyrian President Bashar Assad.

He signaled for the first time the Iranian-backed militant group will stay involved in the civil war after helping Assad's army recapture the key town of Qusair in central Homs province from rebels.

"We will be where we should be. We will continue to bear the responsibility we took upon ourselves," Nasrallah said in a speech via satellite to supporters in south Beirut. "There is no need to elaborate. ... We leave the details to the requirements of the battlefield."

Nasrallah appeared angry and defiant, saying the group has made a "calculated" decision to defend the Assad regime.

Hezbollah has come under harsh criticism at home and abroad for sending its fighters to Qusair, and Nasrallah's gamble in Syria primarily stems from his group's vested interest in the regime's survival. The Syrian government has been one of Hezbollah's strongest backers for decades, and the militant group fears that if Assad's regime falls, it will be replaced by a U.S.-backed government that is hostile to Hezbollah.

Nasrallah said his group was the last to join the fray in Syria, after hundreds and perhaps thousands of Sunni fighters — many of them from Lebanon — headed to Syria in support of the rebels.

Assad's forces, aided by the Hezbollah fighters, captured Qusair on June 5, dealing a heavy blow to rebels who had been entrenched in the strategic town for more than a year. Since then, the regime has shifted its attention to recapture other areas in the central province of Homs and the city of Aleppo in the north.

Nasrallah did not say outright whether his group would go as far north as Aleppo, but he strongly suggested the group was prepared to fight until the end.

"After Qusair for us will be the same as before Qusair," he said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting in Aleppo was concentrated in the city's eastern rebel-held neighborhood of Sakhour, calling the fighting "the most violent in months." It said regime troops attacked the neighborhood from two directions but failed to advance, suffering casualties.

The Obama administration is still grappling with what type and how much weaponry to send to the Syrian rebels, but the announcement buoyed the opposition forces, which are heavily outgunned and outmanned.

The commander of the main Western-backed rebel group said he hoped that U.S. weapons will be in the hands of rebels in the near future.

"This will surely reflect positively on the rebels' morale, which is high despite attempts by the regime, Hezbollah and Iran to show that their morale after the fall of Qusair deteriorated," Gen. Salim Idris told Al-Arabiya TV.

U.S. officials said the administration could provide the rebels with small arms, ammunition, assault rifles and a variety of anti-tank weaponry such as shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenades and other missiles. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal administration discussions with reporters.

Loay AlMikdad, a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army, said Idris will begin meeting with international representatives Saturday to work out the details of the weapons and their delivery.

"We encourage them to take a decision in this relation, by establishing a no-fly zone either all over Syria or areas they choose based on their technical or military considerations on the ground," he said, adding that would ensure safe areas for civilians.

"We hope they start arming immediately. Any delay costs blood of Syrians. It is not water, it is blood of the Syrians, women and children and its future," AlMikdad told The Associated Press. He said the rebels have asked for shoulder-fired rockets, anti-tank missiles, anti-aircrafts missiles, surface-to-surface missiles and armored vehicles.

The U.S. has made no decision on operating a no-fly zone over Syria, said Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser.

A Syrian opposition figure with wide knowledge of the situation in Syria said Friday that a French-Saudi operation to arm rebels has been underway along the Turkish-Syrian border for the past few days. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

The French government did not confirm the deliveries and an official with the French president's office said: "It's false."

The U.S. said Thursday it had conclusive evidence that Assad's regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against opposition forces. The Syrian government dismissed the U.S. allegations Friday as "full of lies."

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said there can be no certainty of chemical weapons use in Syria without an on-the-ground investigation. Ban said he was opposed to the U.S. decision to arm the rebels, adding that increasing the flow of weapons to either side "would not be helpful."

At the United Nations, U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice told reporters that Washington is "very confident" in its assessment on Syria's use of chemical weapons.

"We've taken two months to reach this through a very careful and deliberative process," Rice said.

Obama's decision to arm the rebels is bound to heighten tensions with Russia, a staunch ally of Assad, and Moscow disputed the allegations about chemical weapons use by the Syrian regime.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in a phone conversation Friday that the "accusations put forth by the United States to Damascus about the use of chemical weapons are not supported by trustworthy facts," a Russian Foreign Ministry statement said.

Lavrov told Kerry that stepping up U.S. involvement would be "fraught with escalation in the region," the statement added.

Earlier, President Vladimir Putin's foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said the information provided by U.S. officials to Russia "didn't look convincing."

Ushakov said there was no talk yet about whether Russia could retaliate to the U.S. move to supply weapons to the Syrian rebels by delivering the S-300 air defense missile systems to the regime.

Alexey Pushkov, chairman of Russia's parliamentary foreign affairs committee, wrote on his Twitter account Friday that "the data on Assad's use of chemical weapons were faked in the same place as the lie about (Saddam) Hussein's weapons of mass destruction," referring to the deposed Iraqi dictator.

"Obama is going down the route of G. Bush," he added, a reference to former President George W. Bush's assertion — never proven, but used to justify the invasion of Iraq — that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

Koray Caliskan, associate professor of political science at Bogazici University, said the U.S. decision to arm the rebels while Russia continues to militarize Syria "from top to bottom" will have dire consequences for Syria.

"Unfortunately this way would only destroy Syria until no one lives there," he said in Istanbul.

Turkey's state-run news agency said 73 Syrian military officers — including seven generals and 20 colonels — crossed the border into Turkey with their families "seeking refuge."

The Anadolu Agency said they arrived in the town of Reyhanli and were taken to a refugee camp that houses military officers who have defected from the Syrian army. Turkish Foreign Ministry officials and the local administrator in Reyhanli could not immediately confirm the report.

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By arming Syria rebels, US drawn into proxy war

UK territories sign on to tax-avoidance crackdown

LONDON (AP) — U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron struck a deal Saturday with leaders of Britain'soverseas territories to share tax information — a move he heralded as a "positive step forward" on an issue at the forefront of next week's G-8 summit in Northern Ireland.

The prime minister met Saturday at Downing Street with representatives from Britain's network of overseas territories and dependencies, and he said that all agreed to sign up to a multilateral convention to exchange information automatically between tax authorities.

"I commend their leadership and I look to other international partners to work with their own territoriesto reach similar agreements," he said, adding that the deal is a "very positive step forward" that will strengthen Britain's voice in the G-8 and its campaign on the issue around the world.

"At the G-8 I'm going to push for international agreements to fight the scourge of tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance," Cameron said. "That means automatic exchange of information between our tax authorities - so those who want to evade taxes have nowhere to hide."

It also means getting companies to report to tax authorities where they earn their profits and where they pay their tax, plus transparency about who owns which companies and who benefits, he added — all moves Britain's territories and dependencies supported by signing onto the tax initiative Saturday.

Cameron said in an interview with the Guardian newspaper that in order to set an example to fellow G-8 leaders, he will introduce a new central register in Britain requiring the owners of "shadowy shell" companies be declared to tax authorities.

"Personally, I would hope the whole world will move towards public registers of beneficial ownership, but I want to maximize the leverage that the U.K. has got over others in terms of each step in turn," he added later.

Britain has a number of offshore territories, which include the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and the Channel Islands.

Officials: NSA programs broke plots in 20 nations

WASHINGTON (AP) — Top U.S. intelligence officials said Saturday that information gleaned from two controversial data-collection programs run by the National Security Agency thwarted potential terrorist plots in the U.S. and more than 20 other countries — and that gathered data is destroyed every five years.

Last year, fewer than 300 phone numbers were checked against the database of millions of U.S. phone records gathered daily by the NSA in one of the programs, the intelligence officials said in arguing that the programs are far less sweeping than their detractors allege.

No other new details about the plots or the countries involved were part of the newly declassified information released to Congress on Saturday and made public by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Intelligence officials said they are working to declassify the dozens of plots NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander said were disrupted, to show Americans the value of the programs, but that they want to make sure they don't inadvertently reveal parts of the U.S. counterterrorism playbook in the process.

The release of information follows a bruising week for U.S. intelligence officials who testified on Capitol Hill, defending programs that were unknown to the public — and some lawmakers — until they were revealed by a series of media stories in The Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers, leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who remains in hiding in Hong Kong.

The disclosures have sparked debate and legal action against the Obama administration by privacy activists who say the data collection goes far beyond what was intended when expanded counterterrorism measures were authorized by Congress after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Intelligence officials said Saturday that both NSA programs are reviewed every 90 days by the secret court authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Under the program, the records, showing things like time and length of call, can only be examined for suspected connections to terrorism, they said.

The officials offered more detail on how the phone records program helped the NSA stop a 2009 al-Qaida plot to blow up New York City subways. They say the program helped them track a co-conspirator of al-Qaida operative Najibullah Zazi — though it's not clear why the FBI needed the NSA to investigate Zazi's phone records because the FBI would have had the authority to gather records of Zazi's phone calls after identifying him as a suspect, rather than relying on the sweeping collection program.