[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 60 (Tuesday, May 16, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H2599-H2600]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      NSA'S PHONE RECORDS PROGRAM

  Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the Chair.
  Well, when we first heard about widespread wiretapping by the 
administration without legal authority under the Federal Intelligence 
Surveillance Act, the President said not to worry, just a handful of 
individuals, and only when they are communicating with people outside 
the U.S. Well, maybe not a handful. Maybe a few hundred. No, maybe 
10,000 or thousands.
  Oops. Now it actually turns out that they are monitoring and have 
asked for the records of the phone calls of hundreds of millions of 
Americans. Over a trillion phone call records, we are told. They say 
they need this to protect America. What are they going to do with this 
mountain of data? They are going to apply a complicated mathematical 
algorithm to it and they are going to find some terrorists. Thus far 
they have raided two takeout services and one call center. That is what 
they have yielded from this. How about good old-fashioned intelligence 
with humans and police work?
  Let's look at the bungling that led up to 9/11. Actually the new 
nominee who headed the NSA who has perhaps perjured himself about these 
billions of monitored records, he had in his hands a communication from 
al Qaeda on 9/11, actually on 9/10, saying, tomorrow is zero hour. But 
the NSA didn't bother to translate that until after 9/11.
  Then we had the FBI. Now, Agent Samit said he had a communication 
about Moussaoui from French intelligence in August after he had been 
arrested by the FBI saying he was very dangerous, indoctrinated in 
radical Islamic fundamentalism, completely devoted to radical 
fundamentalism and Osama bin Laden. But his superiors didn't think that 
was enough to give him a warrant to open Moussaoui's computer and 
perhaps stop 9/11.
  That's why we need to monitor the phone calls of billions of phone 
calls made by Americans, because of the incompetence of the people 
running these agencies.
  Now, Agent Samit sent a letter to FBI headquarters accusing Moussaoui 
of plotting international terrorism and air piracy. This is August. 
August, before 9/11. Then Agent Rowley came forward and also gave us 
the same information. Agent Samit also asked for help from the FBI's 
London, Paris and Oklahoma City offices, FBI headquarters, CIA 
counterterrorism center, Secret Service, Immigration and Naturalization 
Service, Federal Aviation Administration, an intelligence agency not 
identified but presumed to be the National Security Agency headed by 
General Hayden who failed to translate the warning before 9/11. But we 
need to monitor the phone calls of law-abiding Americans, billions of 
them. What a wild goose chase. They want to cover up the extraordinary 
incompetence that allowed these stumblebums to launch a devastating 
attack on America by saying they are doing something now by monitoring 
billions of phone calls. This is absolutely outrageous.
  Let's go back a little further. There were two other guys involved, 
Nawafal Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar. Now, they were tracked to the 
planning meeting, pretty good work, by the CIA over in Southeast Asia. 
That's good. Unfortunately, they didn't have listening devices, they 
didn't have agents go through them, they didn't know what they were 
planning, but they knew they were bad guys planning something. Then 
they lost track of them. Where did they go? Well, they traveled legally 
to the United States of America with visas issued by the Bush State 
Department, they lived openly in San Diego with listed phone numbers, 
but they were never visited or monitored by the FBI or anybody else, 
even though the CIA knew these were bad guys.
  But what are we going to do in response to this incompetence? Well, 
we'll give the people involved gold medals and great retirements. Mr. 
Tenet, who was heading the CIA, he got a gold medal for freedom from 
the President. No one has ever taken the fall for this incompetence. 
Now, instead, they are trying to divert us and say, what we're going to 
do is monitor all the telephone conversations of all Americans and 
apply a mathematical algorithm. So the next time we have a terrorist in 
hand, we won't open his computer, either, because we'll be watching the 
algorithms and the phone calls of law-abiding Americans.

[[Page H2600]]

  What unbelievable incompetence on the part of this administration, in 
addition to law-breaking. The American people are not well served by 
this. We need to clean up this mess and truly protect America.

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