GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Let’s get more on this now with our "This Week” exclusive, General Keith Alexander, the four-star general who heads the National Security Agency.
General Alexander, thank you so much for coming on this morning.
First off, this news that Snowden is apparently on his way to Moscow, perhaps to Venezuela.
To get to the point to Pierre was just making, do you understand why the system did not blink red in a way that that could prevent Snowden from leaving Hawaii in the first place with these secrets?
GENERAL KEITH ALEXANDER: No, I don’t. It’s clearly an individual who’s betrayed the trust and confidence we had in him. This is an individual who is not acting, in my opinion, with noble intent.
And when you think about what our mission is – I want to jump into that because I think it reflects on the question you’re asking.
You know, my first responsibility to the American people is to defend this nation. And when you think about defending the nation, let’s look back at 9/11 and what happened.
The intel community failed to connect the dots on 9/11. And much of what we’ve done since then were to give us the capabilities – and this is the business record FISA, what’s sometimes called Section 215, and the FAA 702, two capabilities that help us connect the dots.
The reason I bring that up is that these are two of the most important things, from my perspective, that helps us understand what terrorists are trying to do.
And if you think about that, what Snowden has revealed has caused irreversible and significant damage to our country and to our allies.
On Friday, we pushed to Congress over $50 cases where these contributed to the understanding and, in many cases, disruption of terrorist plots.
And I brought with me a quote because I thought it was important to read this. As an Army officer, you know I can’t read that good, but I’m going to try.
This was a report issued by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 2012 in support of the reauthorization of the 2008 amendments to FISA.
And I quote: “Through four years of oversight, the committee has not identified a single case in which a government official engaged in willful effort to circumvent or violate the law.”
What that means specifically is we take protecting our civil liberties and privacy as one of our key foundational values.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: And I want to ask more about that, General.
First, one more question about – it’s pretty startling that you didn’t know how he could – why the alarm bells did not go off.
So what’s to say that it couldn’t happen again? There are about 3.5 million private contractors with top-secret classification, about a million with government clearances.
How can you prevent this from happening again?
GEN. ALEXANDER: Well, this is a key issue that we’ve got to work our way through.
Clearly, the system did not work as it should have. He betrayed the trust and confidence we had in him. This is an individual with top-secret clearance whose duty it was to administer these networks. He betrayed that confidence and stole some of our secrets.
We are now putting in place actions that would give us the ability to track our system administrators, who they’re doing and what they’re taking – a two-man rule. We’ve changed the passwords.
But at the end of the day, we have to trust that our people are going to do the right thing. This is an extremely important mission, defending our country. When they betray that trust, well, then we have to push it over to the Department of Justice and others for the appropriate actions.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: In a statement that Hong Kong put out this morning explaining why they allowed Snowden to leave, they also said they’ve written the United States government requesting clarification of reports based on Snowden’s information that the United States government had hacked computer systems in Hong Kong.
He said that the NSA does all kinds of things that hack Chinese cell phone companies to steal all of your SMS data.
Is that true?
GEN. ALEXANDER: Well, we have interest in those who collect on us as an intelligence agency. But to say that we’re willfully just collecting all sorts of data would give you the impression that we’re just trying to canvas the whole world.
The fact is what we’re trying to do is get the information our mission needs to form the intelligence. That primary mission, in this case, in the case that Snowden has brought up, is in defending this nation from a terrorist attack.
Now, we have other intelligence interests, just like other nations do. That’s what you’d expect us to do. We do that right. Our main interest? Who’s collecting on us?
And I’d just say let’s look back at where that source comes from.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, that was the government of Hong Kong putting out that statement.
Are you confident that we have not broken the laws of Hong Kong?
GEN. ALEXANDER: I’m confident that we’re following the laws that our country has in doing what we do. We have a set of laws that guide how NSA acts. We follow those laws. We have tremendous oversight by all three portions of the – of the government: The courts, Congress and the administration.
And when you look at these laws and the way they’ve been passed and the oversight mechanisms that we have, I am confident that we are following our laws.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Finally, the final point that Pierre made, the question about some government officials are asking whether WikiLeaks is a legitimate journalistic organization or an enemy of the state. Where do you come down on that?
GEN. ALEXANDER: I have no opinion on WikiLeaks. I really don’t track them. I don’t know – I really don’t know who WikiLeaks are other than this Assange person.
My job, again, defend the nation. So –
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: You just said that, as you testified to Congress this week, that the government programs have helped prevent 50 terrorist attacks.
Senators Wyden and Udall from the Intelligence Committee responded to that assertion this week. They acknowledge that the present program has been quite effective, but they went on to say this: However, it appears that the bulk phone records collection program under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, played little or no role in most of knees disruptions. In fact, we have yet to see any evidence that the bulk phone records collection program has provided any otherwise unobtainable intelligence.
Can you provide that evidence?
GEN. ALEXANDER: Yes. And I think we did.
Now, here’s the facts. I think what they put on the table – if you look at it just across the board, across these 50 – the business record FISA is only going to focus on those that had a nexus in the United States. And that’s a little over 10.
So when you look at it, the scope that the business record FISA can deal with is those that are just over 10. And in those, I think it contributed in a majority of cases.
A lot of this, too, formed some of the dots. And I think that’s key to what we’re trying to do.
Look at where this came from. And I think – you heard part of the testimony on Tuesday, as you had mentioned. In 2001 – (inaudible) – who is in California, the intelligence community didn’t know that. We weren’t able to connect those dots.
So these programs are helping us connect the dots. I think that’s very important to have the tools of this.
We can argue over which dot is the most important, but at the end of the day, we didn’t have enough information to connect those dots. And I think working with FBI, the CIA and others, our job is to get that information.
If we’re going to defend the information, we need the intelligence to do it.
Now, here’s the key. I think another important point, George, on this. Look at the information that we’re collecting. In 2012, less than 300 selectors were approved for reasonable, articuable suspicion with that database. So it is a very small set. Two thirds of those are foreign. One third were in the U.S.
Now, of those one third, note that we treat all phones inside the U.S. as U.S. persons. So in this case, when we talked about the 2009 case of Zazi, he was in Colorado. That is considered a U.S. person.
So from our perspective, tracking those people is the most important thing we can do.
Here’s what’s in the balance. Over 50 cases globally, over 10 in the United States. These two capabilities helped us form the dots. I think that’s what the American people want us to do.
And note that they did not – we have not, in a single case, had a case where a government official engaged in willful effort to circumvent or violate the law. Zero times have we done that.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: When you talk about this tracking, though, you know, the president told Charlie Rose this week that he can say unequivocally is that, if you are a U.S. person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls.
Now, I understand that under the 215 program, you don’t listen to the phone calls. But is that statement correct?
I would assume – and tell me if I’m wrong here – that, if the NSA was tracking someone, say, in Cuba or someone oversees who tell calls the United States, you’re going to listen to that phone call, correct?
GEN. ALEXANDER: Right. You’re asking me a different set of questions.
So let me put, first of all, the prime directive on the table.
The FISA law makes is clear. In order for the NSA to target the content of U.S. persons communications anywhere in the world, anywhere, NSA requires probable cause and a court order, a specific court order.
So if we’re targeting outside the United States a terrorist and they happen to talk to a U.S. person inside the United States, yes, we would follow that law.
And the minimization procedures that I think were leaked earlier this week talk about the responsibilities that we now have with respect to those U.S. persons. And we follow those.
We train our people how to do this right. We get oversight by Justice. We get oversight by the courts. We get oversight by the administration and by Congress, all three parts of government.
From my perspective, our most important job is defending this nation. We follow the laws, and we defend this nation.
And I would tell you, when you look at – (inaudible) – over 50 cases that we’ve helped disrupt terrorist plots that have contributed information to those, zero times have we come up with a place where we have failed the public’s confidence or Congress’ confidence. I think that’s pretty good.
I think that’s what we’ve got to do is we’ve got to move this debate from a political debate to a debate on national security because that’s what we’re talking about and the security of this country.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: And the head of the – director of national intelligence, Mr. Clapper, has said that cyberthreats are the top national security threat.
And you are the head of the U.S. Cyber Command. So you preside over elements of the Navy, the Air Force, the Army, the cyber warfare operations.
And in your testimony to Congress, you said that this involves both defensive cyber warfare but also offensive operations.
Here’s what you said.
GEN. ALEXANDER: (From video.) This is an offensive team that the Defense Department would use to defend the nation if it were attacked in cyberspace. Thirteen of the teams that we’re creating are for that mission set alone.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: And one of the documents leaked by Mr. Snowden, the PPD 20 I believe, elaborated on that authority.
It also says you have emergency authority to act on our own in certain circumstances, including anticipatory action against imminent threats.
So that’s a preemptive capability, preemptive authority for you.
Can you help explain under what kind of circumstances you would be authorized on your own to launch an offensive act of cyber warfare?
GEN. ALEXANDER: So to be clear, what I can do on my own right now is within our networks to launch offensive measures to stop somebody from getting into the networks.
Anything that I want to do outside the networks that is offensive in nature, we would have to call the secretary and the president to get their approval.
So there are things that we can do to stop packets in flight. But from our perspective, any action that’s offensive in nature would require the policymakers.
This is no different than if you think about the nuclear situation. If somebody comes in and attacks the country, what we would do is immediately stand up a set of communications with the secretary, the president and the policymakers and say here’s what’s going, here’s what we’re doing to defend the networks right now and the actions we’ve taken. And those who are described in that is the defensive cyber effects operations.
And here’s what we’d recommend to secure the nation, here is the steps we need to take.
And the president would have several options. He could take diplomatic. He could take military. He could take intelligence. He has a range of options.
We would present some of the options, and then the president and the secretary would choose what to do. They may just trolley defending country or actors and say stop, or they may choose else.
But that’s a policy decision.
Finally, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers, was on this program a short while ago, and he said we’re losing the cyber war to China?
Is he right?
GEN. ALEXANDER: Well, I think our nation has been significantly impacted with intellectual property, the theft of intellectual property by China and others.
That is the most significant transfer of wealth in history. And it goes right back to your initial question: Who is taking our information? It’s one of the things I believe the American people would expect me to know. That’s where my mission is. Who’s doing this to us and why?
So when you asked your initial question, why, there is part of the answer. Who’s coming after us? We need to know that so we can defend this nation.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: General Alexander, thank you very much for your time this morning.
GEN. ALEXANDER: Thank you.