The link was from the House Intelligence Committee, not the NSA. I'm sure they're basing a lot of that on information they got from the NSA, since these are, after all, NSA programs, but those four examples came from an entirely separate branch of the government.
I'm curious if you bothered reading the three articles you cited, because the Washington Post article doesn't address those four cases at all, and the other two in that group you cited are, in fact, the exact same article published in two separate outlets. The arguments that the authors pose against three of the four cases is basically that it was possible to acquire the intelligence differently, not that the programs failed. The argument against the 4th case makes the argument that because Khalid Ouazzani was indicted for separate charges, the programs must not have worked. This article[1] gives more detail on the case, and explains why he wasn't indicted.
The original "party line" was the following (from [2]):
Gen. Keith Alexander said these programs enabled the United States to disrupt 54 "events," 42 of which "involved disrupted plots."
Of those 54:
12 involved cases of material support to terrorists;
50 lead to arrests or detentions;
25 occurred in Europe;
11 were in Asia;
5 were in Africa;
13 had a homeland nexus.
Forty-one of the terrorist activities did not involve events in the United States, Alexander said. Alexander went on to say that in 53 of the 54 cases, data collected under Section 702 provided the initial tip to "unravel the threat stream." He said that almost half of terrorist reporting comes from Section 702, ...
When Sen Leahy questioned Gen Alexander on this, it was more of an indictment that the media was getting it wrong and inflating the count by including the 12 material support cases, and clarifying how many cases were the result of the bulk cell phone records program (one or two) versus PRISM (everything else).
> Elected US officials don't have access to enough information to verify those claims, guessing you don't either.
I'm guessing you've never sat in on a classified congressional intelligence committee briefing, and wouldn't have the information to back up your statement.
> I'm sure they're basing a lot of that on information they got from the NSA
Cite the exact sources the House Intelligence Committee's report was based on. If it's coming directly from the NSA what makes you think it's trustworthy? They've lied under oath.
Your conclusions are debatable.
> I'm curious if you bothered reading the three articles you cited, because the Washington Post article
Curious about your reading ability as well. The article is from the Washington Times, not the Washington Post. The very first paragraph states:
The Obama administration’s credibility on intelligence suffered another blow Wednesday as the chief of the National Security Agency admitted that officials put out numbers that vastly overstated the counterterrorism successes of the government’s warrantless bulk collection of all Americans’ phone records.
They seem to be talking about the exact same numbers you're citing as unassailable truth. Hopefully that satisfies your curiosity.
> I'm guessing you've never sat in on a classified congressional intelligence committee briefing, and wouldn't have the information to back up your statement.
Sorry this doesn't make sense. Not sure how to respond.
> If it's coming directly from the NSA what makes you think it's trustworthy? They've lied under oath.
I love this assertion - it gets tossed around so much when someone just wants to shut an argument down. Because James Clapper (who is not part of the NSA) gave a statement on the NSA to Congress which turned out to be false, every subsequent piece of information on the NSA from a government official that disagrees with your opinion must therefore be a lie - no evidence necessary. Who needs to examine official testimony when we can just say the opposing argument is all lies and call it a day?
> Curious about your reading ability as well.
Classy.
> They seem to be talking about the exact same numbers you're citing as unassailable truth.
You're the one that introduced the numbers with your "party line" comment, not me. My point was that your cited article claims to show Gen Alexander caught in a lie over the '54' number, admitting finally that it was only one or two, when that was never his claim to begin with. For that matter, Sen Leahy isn't questioning the number, either - he released a rather long statement on the matter[1] in which he stated that his issue was that the number of successes for the Section 215 (bulk cell records) and the Section 702 (PRISM) programs were being lumped together. Gen Alexander gave public testimony in June stating that 53 of those 54 successes were from PRISM, but that fact wasn't being adequately conveyed to the public. You'll note that Sen Leahy states in that document that he did, in fact, have access to the complete classified list.
> Sorry this doesn't make sense.
Allow me to break it down for you: you have never been to any of the classified briefings given to either of the two congressional intelligence committees, so you don't know what was briefed to them. You have no idea how much access the congress has been given to classified information. When you say "Elected US officials don't have access to enough information to verify those claims," you have no way to back that statement up.
That's the nature of classified information - the government gets to keep secrets, too. That's why we have intelligence committees to oversee agencies like the NSA, CIA, FBI, etc. If you don't like it, just be honest and make an argument against state secrecy or degrees of transparency instead of making up credibility claims that you can't back up.
I'm curious if you bothered reading the three articles you cited, because the Washington Post article doesn't address those four cases at all, and the other two in that group you cited are, in fact, the exact same article published in two separate outlets. The arguments that the authors pose against three of the four cases is basically that it was possible to acquire the intelligence differently, not that the programs failed. The argument against the 4th case makes the argument that because Khalid Ouazzani was indicted for separate charges, the programs must not have worked. This article[1] gives more detail on the case, and explains why he wasn't indicted.
The original "party line" was the following (from [2]): Gen. Keith Alexander said these programs enabled the United States to disrupt 54 "events," 42 of which "involved disrupted plots."
Of those 54:
12 involved cases of material support to terrorists; 50 lead to arrests or detentions; 25 occurred in Europe; 11 were in Asia; 5 were in Africa; 13 had a homeland nexus.
Forty-one of the terrorist activities did not involve events in the United States, Alexander said. Alexander went on to say that in 53 of the 54 cases, data collected under Section 702 provided the initial tip to "unravel the threat stream." He said that almost half of terrorist reporting comes from Section 702, ...
When Sen Leahy questioned Gen Alexander on this, it was more of an indictment that the media was getting it wrong and inflating the count by including the 12 material support cases, and clarifying how many cases were the result of the bulk cell phone records program (one or two) versus PRISM (everything else).
> Elected US officials don't have access to enough information to verify those claims, guessing you don't either.
I'm guessing you've never sat in on a classified congressional intelligence committee briefing, and wouldn't have the information to back up your statement.
[1] http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/al-qaedas-abandoned-ny-stock-e...
[2] http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/27/19175466-nsa-chie...