AP EXCLUSIVE: US war games send signal to Assad

An Iraqi Counter Terrorist forces soldier participates in a rehearsal with forces from Jordan and Lebanon as part of Eager Lion, a multinational military exercise in Zarqa, Jordan, Monday, June 17, 2013. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

ZARQA, Jordan (AP) — Under the watchful eye of stern-faced American advisers, hundreds of U.S.-trained Jordanian commandos fanned across this dusty desert plain, holding war games that could eventually form the basis of an assault in Syria.

With the recent deployment of Patriot missiles near the Syrian border, and the mock Syrian accents of those playing the enemy, the message was clear: There is fear of spillover from the Syrian war in this U.S.-allied kingdom, and the potential for a Jordanian role in securing Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles should Bashar Assad's regime lose control.

Dubbed Eager Lion, the 12-day exercise involves combined land, air and sea maneuvers across the country. It brings together 8,000 personnel from 19 Arab and European nations to train on border security, irregular warfare, terrorism and counterinsurgency.

Marine Corps Lt. Col. Duke Shienle said Syria "is a concern that all our regional partners share."

The Syrian crisis is "causing all military in the region to increase intensity," he said as he supervised masked commandos in black uniforms from Jordan and two other Syria neighbors — Iraq and Lebanon — in a mock exercise to free a hijacked aircraft on an airstrip in the eastern Jordanian desert.

Nearby, U.S. military strategists taught Jordanian riot police to quickly contain a mock protest by angry mobs in a crowded refugee camp. The trainers refused to name the camp, but the trainees said it was "Zaatari," a reference to a refugee settlement straddling the border with Syria that shelters around 185,000 displaced Syrians.

"We want freedom! We want a free Syria!" the trainees shouted, speaking the Syrian dialect as they depicted Syrian refugees. Others looked on from under dusty tents pitched on a strip of desert outside a Jordanian army compound. The location of this exercise and others could not be disclosed in line with Jordanian army regulations.

Elsewhere, in the south, hundreds of masked Jordanian commandos in black uniforms used machine-guns, rocket propellers and tanks to overwhelm an enemy target as Jordanian helicopters and fighter jets — all part of previous American donations — buzzed the skies overhead.

"We want to tell anyone with malicious intentions toward Jordan that we can hit back where it hurts most painfully," said one Jordanian commando, speaking under scorching sun in the arid mountain region. He could not be named under army regulations and declined to say if the enemy he was fighting was Assad's army.

Other training focused on humanitarian relief and crisis management and involves 7,000 civilians from non-governmental organizations engaged in providing assistance to Syrian refugees, said Tawfiq Hennawi of the International Committee of the Red Cross, one of the participating NGOs.

Jordan hosts more than half a million Syrians who fled Assad's military onslaught and that number is expected to rise to 1.2 million by the end of the year.

"These exercises bolster our defense capabilities," said Jordanian army Maj. Gen. Awni Edwan, adding that the Eager Lion exercises, which end Thursday, are routine, having being held twice before at the same time.

"We don't intend to attack anybody," he said.

Jordan has been leery that Assad may eventually use his chemical weapons against his neighbors, or if his regime starts to collapse, his stockpile may fall into the hands of al-Qaida or other militants who are trying to rise to power in Syria.

There has been mounting speculation that should Assad's regime begin to lose control, Jordan will dispatch its highly-skilled, U.S.-trained and equipped commandos to secure Assad's chemical weapons and create a safe haven for Syrian refugees along the 230-mile (375-kilometer) border with Jordan, according to a Western diplomat who monitors Syria from his base in Jordan.

The purpose is to prevent a further influx of Syrian refugees into Jordan out of fear that Shiite militants from the Lebanese Hezbollah group or other Iranian agents may slip across the border to destabilize this key U.S. ally, said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because identifying him might jeopardize his intelligence-gathering on Syria.

Jordan's predominantly Sunni Muslim population is traditionally a fiery critic of the growing influence of Iran and its rival Shiite sect.

Regional media reports this week suggesting that Hezbollah activists are deploying near the Jordanian border to help Assad regain control of southern Daraa province— which has been a lifeline for arms shipments to rebels seeking to topple him — sent jitters across Jordan. Officials said that security was immediately beefed up, with more Jordanian soldiers deployed along the border with Syria.

In recent weeks, Assad's forces have appeared to be regaining control over areas seized by rebels, particularly the strategic town of Qusair.

Jordan also fears that Assad's sleeper cells, including Hezbollah, may already be in the country and would act if instructed by Iran or Syria, where an uprising that started in 2011 has descended into all-out civil war.

Eager Lion coincides with Washington deploying one or two Patriot batteries along the border with Syria and agreeing to keep a squadron of 12 to 24 F-16 fighter jets after the exercises — a move Syria's regime and its Russian patron have expressed concern over.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was quoted by Russia's Interfax news agency as saying that the deployment of the air-defense systems in Jordan in order to set up a no-fly zone over Syria would be a violation of international law.

The United States has said it has no plans for military intervention in Syria, although President Barack Obama has left the door open for any possibility.

"With this exercise being the biggest fire power show ever in Jordan, coupled with the deployment of Patriot air defense systems and U.S. fighter jets, it is clear that the ground is being set for military intervention in Syria," said Col. Khalil Rawahneh, a Jordanian military strategist who participated in at least 16 U.S. and British-sponsored maneuvers until he retired four years ago.

Analysis: French EU-wariness complicates life for Hollande

By Mark John

PARIS (Reuters) - A feeling in France that the European Union no longer works in its interest is fueling tensions between Paris and Brussels and adding pressure on President Francois Hollande to be more assertive in Europe.

Successive Europe-wide polls show that disenchantment with the EU is rising fastest in France, a founder member whose battle to reform its ailing economy has now become the top preoccupation of the 27-nation bloc.

Sources of the malaise are many: from the rise of post-unification Germany as a political force in Europe, to the feeling that EU institutions have mishandled the economic crisis and neglected core concerns such as unemployment.

Anti-EU groups such as the National Front have latched onto the public mood of frustration to secure opinion poll gains. The mainstream French left and right are struggling to define their stances onEurope before early 2014 European Parliament elections where both fear heavy losses to populist parties.

The instinctively pro-European Hollande is not about to tilt French policy in a Euroskeptic direction. But such anxieties set the stage for France's lone stance last week to ringfence cinema and other cultural goods from talks on an EU-US free trade pact, to the dismay of Brussels and some European capitals.

"There is a sense in France of losing grip of its own destiny," said Aurelien Renard of pollster Gallup Europe, whose June survey shows two-thirds of French believe the EU is heading in the wrong direction.

"The EU-US trade question, and particularly over culture, was an opportunity to show it still had a grip."

"REACTIONARY"?

French officials believe that maintaining the "cultural exception" - a 20-year-old truce in trade talks preserving state subsidies to cinema and other sectors - is a national interest just as vital to it as the City of London is to Britain.

Thus Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso's attack on the stance as showing a "reactionary" anti-globalization agenda unleashed a volley of Gallic ire, from the Socialist Hollande saying he was shocked to French social media users clicking the ironic #jesuisreactionnaire ("I am a reactionary") hashtag.

The episode showed once again how few French politicians of any hue subscribe wholeheartedly to the free-market agenda of the European Commission. Economic liberals in the U.S. or British sense are a tiny, largely silent minority of France.

But the spat is the just latest example of Paris being too quick to clearly mark out its territory in Europe.

When the Commission last month issued a detailed list of reforms it wants from Paris in return for a two-year reprieve to narrow its budget deficit, a peeved Hollande fired back that it was not for Brussels to "dictate" to France.

While his response irked allies of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, it reflects a domestic French reality of which Hollande is only too aware: if he is to reform sensitive areas such as pensions, it must not be seen to be at Brussels' bidding.

An EU plan to cut air travel times and costs across Europe fell foul of French air traffic controllers last week who walked off the job to protest at moves they say threaten security and their working conditions. France, this time joined by Germany, told EU authorities to freeze the project.

PUNITIVE AND ALIENATING

The elephant in the room is the election next May to a European Parliament with a growing say in EU policy matters, and for which the French left and right are nervously bracing.

Explaining the French disenchantment with Europe revealed by Gallup and a widely-watched Pew Research Center poll last month, former Commission President Jacques Delors regaled a Socialist gathering this weekend with a withering attack on what he called a "punitive and alienating" Europe.

The meeting agreed a text urging a revision of EU rules on national budget deficits and for a devaluation of the euro - policies that have little chance of coming to fruition but which will keep up pressure on Hollande to avoid excess fiscal rigor.

France's right remains in disarray on Europe, with a wide cleavage between pro-sovereignty and pro-integration wings potentially meaning the centre-right UMP struggles to go into the elections on a united platform.

That would delight Marine Le Pen, whose poll ratings outdo Hollande's in some surveys and whose anti-EU, anti-immigration National Front this weekend ousted his Socialists out of the run-off for a vacant French parliament seat in a by-election.

While the Socialist Party's case was not helped by the fact that the rural Villeneuve-sur-Lot seat came up when one of its grandees fell to a tax fraud scandal, the other big grievance was against a Europe which many French do not trust.

"It's not that I am anti-EU," Nicole Ausou, a 61-year-old retired social worker said at a union-organized march against welfare spending cuts in Paris this weekend.

"But I want another Europe, a Europe of French policies."

(Additional reporting by Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels and Sophie Louet in Paris; editing by Anna Willard)

Syrian warplanes strike rebel posts in Aleppo

An ambulance belonging to an Islamic group transports children away from clashes that erupted between gunmen and followers of hardline Sunni cleric Sheik Ahmad al-Assir and pro-Hezbollah supporters, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Tuesday, June 18, 2013. Heavy clashes erupted Tuesday between unknown gunmen and followers of a radical Sunni cleric in south Lebanon, security officials said, killing two people in the latest apparent outbreak of violence between Lebanese factions supporting opposing sides in the civil war in neighboring Syria. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian warplanes struck rebel positions near a besieged military air base and other rebel-held areas in the country's north Tuesday as regime forces stepped up attacks against opposition fighters in the key province of Aleppo, activists said.

Rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad have for months been trying to take Kweiras and two other military air bases nearby without success. The government has recently gone on the offensive in the province and in areas in the country's heartland to recapture rebel-held territory.

Activists said warplanes also struck targets in the villages of Atareb and Kfar Hamra in Aleppo province, and troops clashed with rebels inside the provincial capital of the same name. There were no immediate reports of casualties. The regime has gone on the offensive in Homs and Aleppo, the country's largest city, to build on the momentum from its victory at the strategic town of Qusair earlier this month.

The violence also continued to spill over the border. Heavy clashes erupted between pro-Hezbollah gunmen and followers of a radical Sunni cleric in southern Lebanon, killing two people, officials said.

Lebanon has been on the edge for months and bursts of violence between supporters and opponents of Assad have become frequent.

The country is deeply divided along sectarian lines, with Sunni Muslims largely supporting their brethren in Syria, who make up the majority of the rebellion against Assad's regime, and many Shiites supporting Assad, whose regime is dominated by Alawites, an offshoot sect of Shiite Islam.

The polarization has deepened in recent weeks after Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based Shiite militant group backed by Iran, openly joined the fight in Syria on Assad's side and helped his troops crush rebels in the town of Qusair just over the border in Syria earlier this month.

The clashes broke out in an eastern suburb of Sidon erupted Tuesday after several people threw stones and shattered windows in a car belonging to Amjad al-Assir, the brother of Hezbollah critic and hard-line cleric Sheik Ahmad al-Assir, the officials said. A statement from al-Assir's office said he was not driving it at the time. Al-Assir then gave Hezbollah a one week ultimatum to vacate apartments occupied by the group's supporters in the mostly Sunni city as clashes broke out with gunmen wielding automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. Officials believed the gunmen fighting al-Assir's followers to be Hezbollah sympathizers.

Lebanese army troops deployed in the area of the fighting, which subsided after several hours. The military called on gunmen to withdraw immediately from the streets.

Earlier Tuesday, Lebanon's official news agency said gunmen shot and wounded a Syrian man, whom it said was believed to have been involved in a deadly attack on four Shiite youth in Ras Baalbek, a Hezbollah stronghold that is also home to Christians in a volatile area near the border with Syria.

The National News Agency did not elaborate on the suspected connection between the attack on the Syrian in the town of Labwa and the killing of four Shiites in a Sunday ambush nearby.

The Syrian uprising began more than two years ago with peaceful protests against Assad, but later grew into a civil war that has killed 93,000 people and likely many more, according to the U.N.

Millions of Syrian fled their homes and sought shelter in neighboring countries with Jordan and Lebanon hosting the bulk of them, further fueling fears that Syrian conflict's sporadic spill overs across the border into the Arab country of 4 million people will turn into a full blown war.

Lebanon, a country of 4 million which is still recovering from its own 15-year civil war that ended in 1990, is hosting over half a million refugees.

In Syria meanwhile, an explosion inside a housing complex in a rebel-held village in the country's northern Idlib province killed 20 people, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

It was not immediately known what caused the explosion and who was behind it. Nobody claimed responsibility for the blast.

The complex belonged to a member of parliament, the group said. The lawmaker, Ahmed al-Mubarak, was not in the area at the time of the explosion but his brother was among those killed, the Observatory's director Rami Abdul-Rahman said.

___

Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut contributed to this report.

Fears of violence as Egypt nears June 30 protests

FILE - In this Thursday, May 16, 2013 file photo, an Egyptian woman signs a leaflet for the campaign Tamarod, or "rebel" in Arabic, that seeks to withdraw confidence from Egypt's Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, in Cairo, Egypt. Opponents of Egypt’s Islamist president are convinced that nationwide protests planned for June 30 are their last opportunity to drive him from power. They say they have tapped into widespread public discontent over shortages, broken infrastructure, high prices and lack of security, and can bring that anger into the streets. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser, File)

FILE - In this Friday, May 17, 2013 file photo, An Egyptian protester shouts anti-President Mohammed Morsi slogans as he holds an application for "Tamarod", Arabic for "rebel", a campaign calling for the ouster of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and for early presidential elections, during a protest in Tahrir Square, in Cairo, Egypt. Opponents of Egypt’s Islamist president are convinced that nationwide protests planned for June 30 are their last opportunity to drive him from power. They say they have tapped into widespread public discontent over shortages, broken infrastructure, high prices and lack of security, and can bring that anger into the streets. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File)

CAIRO (AP) — Massive nationwide protests that Egypt's opposition plans for June 30 are taking on a dangerous edge.

Opponents of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi are convinced that this is the best and perhaps the last opportunity to drive him from power. They say they have tapped into widespread public discontent over shortages, broken infrastructure, high prices and lack of security, and can bring that anger into the streets.

Morsi's Islamist backers have vowed to defend the president with counter-demonstrations. Police have signaled they want to stay out of the conflict. The powerful military, widely suspected to be at odds with the president, is keeping its cards close to its chest.

As a result, fears are high of potential violence on the day, the anniversary of Morsi's 2012 inauguration as Egypt's first freely elected leader.

The date is shaping up as the culmination of polarization that has sharpened throughout the year. Protests erupted repeatedly the past year — frequently leading to clashes with Islamist supporters of Morsi — but often they were fueled by particular issues like political maneuvers by Morsi or police brutality.

This time, Morsi's opponents, led by a mix of liberal and secular movements and street activists, say the sole purpose is to force him out by showing the extent of public rejection of his presidency. Many talk as if that is a matter of "when" and not "if." They plan ambitious "post-Morsi" steps: suspending the Islamist-backed constitution and naming the chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court as interim president, followed by the drafting a new constitution by a panel of experts and new presidential elections.

"We will take to the streets and the squares and stage sit-ins," said Hossam Mustafa, the chief organizer for the protests in southern Egypt. "We will not leave until the president leaves. We will win back Egypt for all Egyptians."

Already, protest organizers have clashed with Morsi supporters in several parts of the country, including clashes in the Nile Delta city of Tanta on Tuesday that left 10 injured. On Sunday night, clashes in the oasis province of Fayoum southwest of Cairo left at least 100 injured, and similar fights have broken out in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Damanhour.

In expectation of possible violence, the gates of Morsi's Cairo presidential palace have been reinforced. The walls of the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic group from which the president hails, have been fortified.

The protest campaign is rooted in an activists' petition drive the past few months called "Tamarod" — or "Rebel" — that claims to have collected up to 15 million signatures on a call for Morsi to step down and for early elections to be held. Organizers of the campaign say its success shows how anger at the government and the Brotherhood has transcended the core opposition to the public at large.

"The will of Egyptians is stronger than anyone," Tamarod spokesman Mahmoud Badr told reporters on Tuesday. "The Egyptians who removed the tyrant Hosni Mubarak will most certainly be able to remove the failed tyrant Mohammed Morsi." He vowed the protest campaign can continue as long as needed, even as summer temperatures rise and the Muslim holy month of fasting, Ramadan, begins, around July 10.

Morsi's supporters, in turn, have depicted the campaign — and the planned protests — as an attempt by supporters of ousted autocrat Hosni Mubarak to overturn democracy. Morsi, whose term is four years, has vowed to deal "decisively" with those trying to force him out.

Senior Brotherhood leader Essam el-Erian told The Associated Press on Monday that the protest calls are "unconstitutional, illegal and irrational" and are not backed by genuine popular support. He cast doubt on the Tamarod signatures, reflecting claims by Morsi supporters that they are forged.

Raising the specter of clashes, el-Erian said Morsi's supporters would defend the presidential palace in Cairo's Heliopolis district if "state institutions" fail to defend it against the protesters.

Some hard-line clerics have issued fatwas, or edicts, saying that organizers and participants in the planned protests are "kuffar," or non-believers, who deserve to be killed.

Assem Abdel-Maged, a senior leader of the hard-line Gamaa Islamiya, said the protest organizers are communist and "radical" Coptic Christians. "It is another phase of the counter-revolution that we have suffered from for so long," he said.

Hanging over the June 30 plans is the sense of a year's building tension coming to a head, centered on the question of the basic legitimacy of the troubled political system that emerged after Mubarak's fall in February 2011. In the polarization, talk of national reconciliation is falling on deaf ears.

Morsi's opponents accuse him and the Muslim Brotherhood of using their victories in a string of post-Mubarak elections to monopolize power. June 30 is crucial, the campaigners argue, because the Islamists are increasing their hold, and it will eventually become difficult to remove them.

For Morsi's supporters, the protest campaigners are trying to overturn democracy itself because they are unable to compete at the election box. They say old regime loyalists have frustrated Morsi's attempts to deal with the nation's woes, which they argue are worsened by repeated opposition protests.

In last year's election, Morsi defeated Mubarak's last prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, in a runoff, with about 52 percent of the vote. His win is widely thought to have been possible only because of the support of young reform activists who did not want a Mubarak loyalist to rule. The same activists are now at the forefront of the opposition.

They say the Brotherhood and its Islamist allies have run roughshod over the judiciary, stacked the deck by pushing through a constitution they largely wrote, imposed their agenda and broke campaign promises for an inclusive administration, freedom of expression and consensus.

The anti-Morsi campaign has been fueled by widespread frustration over host of troubles in the nation of 90 million people, from surging crime, rising prices and unemployment to power cuts, fuel shortages and traffic congestion. Many of those signing the Tamarod petition have blamed Morsi for failing to deal with the problems.

"It is a surrealistic and absurd regime that will not and cannot be allowed to continue," said reform leader and Nobel Peace Laureate Mohamed ElBaradei. "We must put an end to it with our own hands and through peaceful and civilized means."

Islamist parties loyal to Morsi plan protests of their own across the nation Friday and are considering occupying sites where the president's opponents plan sit-ins on June 30.

Mustafa, the anti-Morsi organizer in the south, said he fully expects violence on the protest day in his home province of Assiut, as well as in Minya province to the north. The two provinces are Islamist strongholds and have large communities of Christians opposed to Morsi's government.

A police officers association announced over the weekend they would stay on the sidelines on June 30, protecting only their own installations and key facilities like banks, foreign embassies and hospitals.

"We promised ourselves not to repeat past mistakes. The police are the police of the people and the state," they said in a statement. "We hereby pledge not to use a baton or a firearm against any peaceful protester and that we abide by complete neutrality."

The Interior Ministry, in charge of the police, says security forces will monitor protests from a distance and intervene only in the event of clashes.

The military's position is less clear. Its top brass have over the months sent subtle but telling hints of their displeasure over the policies of Morsi and his Islamist backers. They, however, have also seized every available opportunity to make clear that their mandate is not just to protect the nation against external threats but also to maintain security at home and that they will side with the people if they ever intervene.

NSA director says plot against Wall Street foiled

NSA director defends sweeping surveillance program, says plot against Wall Street thwarted

Associated Press -

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. foiled a plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange because of the sweeping surveillance programs at the heart of a debate over national security and personal privacy, officials said Tuesday at a rare open hearing on intelligence led by lawmakers sympathetic to the spying.

The House Intelligence Committee hearing provided a venue for officials to defend the once-secret programs and did little probing of claims that the collection of people's phone records and Internet usage has disrupted dozens of terrorist plots. Few details were volunteered.

Army Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, said the two recently disclosed programs — one that gathers U.S. phone records and another that is designed to track the use of U.S.-based Internet servers by foreigners with possible links to terrorism — are critical. But details about them were not closely held within the secretive agency. Alexander said after the hearing that most of the documents accessed by Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former systems analyst on contract to the NSA, were on a web forum available to many NSA employees. Others were on a site that required a special credential to access. Alexander said investigators are studying how Snowden did that.

He told lawmakers Snowden's leaks have caused "irreversible and significant damage to this nation" and undermined the U.S. relationship with allies.

When Deputy FBI Director Sean Joyce was asked what is next for Snowden, he said, simply, "justice." Snowden fled to Hong Kong and is hiding.

In the days after the leaks, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers cited one attack that he said was thwarted by the programs. In the comments of other intelligence officials, that number grew to two, then 10, then dozens. On Tuesday, Alexander said more than 50 attacks were averted because of the surveillance. These included plots against the New York subway system and a Danish newspaper office that had published cartoon depictions of Muhammad.

In a new example, Joyce said the NSA was able to identify an extremist in Yemen who was in touch with Khalid Ouazzani in Kansas City, Mo., enabling authorities to identify co-conspirators and thwart a plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange.

Ouazzani pleaded guilty in May 2010 in federal court in Missouri to charges of conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization, bank fraud and money laundering. Ouazzani was not charged with the alleged plot against the stock exchange. Joyce said the arrest was made possible by the Internet surveillance program disclosed by Snowden.

Joyce also said a terrorist financier in San Diego was identified and arrested in October 2007 because of a phone record provided by the NSA.

The individual was making phone calls to a known designated terrorist group overseas, Joyce said. He confirmed under questioning that the calls were to Somalia.

Alexander said the Internet program had helped stop 90 percent of the 50-plus plots he cited. He said just over 10 of the plots thwarted had a connection inside the U.S. and most were helped by the review of phone records. Still, little was offered to substantiate claims that the programs have been successful in stopping acts of terrorism that would not have been caught with narrower surveillance. In the New York subway bombing case, President Barack Obama conceded the would-be bomber might have been caught with less sweeping surveillance.

Officials have long had the authority to monitor email accounts linked to terrorists but, before the law changed, needed to get a warrant by showing that the target was a suspected member of a terrorist group. In the disclosed Internet program named PRISM, the government collects vast amounts of online data and email, sometimes sweeping up information on ordinary American citizens. Officials now can collect phone and Internet information broadly but need a warrant to examine specific cases where they believe terrorism is involved.

Alexander said he would provide the lawmakers more details on the 50-plus plots Wednesday but the details would be classified.

Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the panel's top Democrat, said the programs were vital to the intelligence community and assailed Snowden's actions as criminal.

"It is at times like these where our enemies within become almost as damaging as our enemies on the outside," Rogers said.

Ruppersberger said the "brazen disclosures" put the United States and its allies at risk.

Committee members were incredulous about the scope of the information that Snowden was able to access and then disclose.

Alexander said Snowden had worked for 12 months in an information technology position at the NSA office in Hawaii under another contract preceding his three-month contract with Booz Allen.

"Egregious, egregious leaks," Joyce said.

But after the hearing, Alexander said almost all of the documents Snowden leaked were on an internal online library.

"They are on web forums that are publicly available in the NSA," he said.

The general counsel for the intelligence community said the NSA cannot target phone conversations between callers inside the U.S. — even if one of those callers was targeted for surveillance when outside the country.

The director of national intelligence's legal chief, Robert S. Litt, said that if the NSA finds it has accidentally gathered a phone call by a target who had traveled into the U.S. without the agency's knowledge, it has to "purge" that from system. The same goes for an accidental collection of any conversation because of an error.

Litt said those incidents are then reported to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which "pushes back" and asks how it happened, and what the NSA is doing to fix the problem so it doesn't happen again.

Deputy NSA Director Chris Inglis said a limited number of officials at the agency could authorize dissemination of information to the FBI related to a U.S. citizen, and only after determining it was necessary to understand a counterterrorism issue. Information related to an American who is found not to be relevant to a counterterrorism investigation must be destroyed, he added.

Alexander said 10 people were involved in that process, including himself and Inglis.

The hearing came the morning after President Barack Obama vigorously defended the surveillance programs in a lengthy interview, calling them transparent — even though they are authorized in secret.

Obama said he has named representatives to a privacy and civil liberties oversight board first established in 2004 to help in the debate over just how far government data gathering should be allowed to go. The discussion is complicated by the secrecy surrounding the surveillance court, with hearings held at undisclosed locations and with only government lawyers present. The orders that result are all highly classified.

Snowden on Monday accused members of Congress and administration officials of exaggerating their claims about the success of the data gathering programs, including pointing to the arrest of the would-be New York subway bomber, Najibullah Zazi, in 2009.

In an online interview with The Guardian in which he posted answers to questions, he said Zazi could have been caught with narrower, targeted surveillance programs — a point Obama conceded in his interview without mentioning Snowden.

"We might have caught him some other way," Obama said. "We might have disrupted it because a New York cop saw he was suspicious. Maybe he turned out to be incompetent and the bomb didn't go off. But, at the margins, we are increasing our chances of preventing a catastrophe like that through these programs."

___