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 Former NSA contractor Snowden's disclosures have been
"cataclysmic" for the eavesdropping agency, Richard Ledgett, who
leads a task force responding to the leaks, said in a rare interview
at NSA's heavily guarded Fort Meade headquarters.
In the more than hour-long interview, Ledgett acknowledged the
agency had done a poor job in its initial public response to
revelations of vast NSA monitoring of phone and Internet data;
pledged more transparency; and said he was deeply worried about
highly classified documents not yet public that are among the 1.7
million Snowden is believed to have accessed.
He also stoutly defended the NSA's mission of tracking terrorist
plots and other threats, and said its recruiting of young
codebreakers, linguists and computer geeks has not been affected by
the Snowden affair — even as internal morale has been.
"Any time you trust people, there is always a chance that someone
will betray you," he said.
The NSA is taking 41 specific technical measures to control data by
tagging and tracking it, to supervise agency networks with controls
on activity, and to increase oversight of individuals.
Measures include requiring two-person control of every place where
someone could access data and enhancing the security process that
people go through and requiring more frequent screenings of systems
administrative access, Ledgett said.
After months of sometimes blistering criticism in the news media and
by Congress and foreign governments, the publicity-averse NSA is now
mounting an effort to tell its side of the Snowden story.
It granted access to NSA headquarters to a team from CBS' "60
Minutes" program, which is scheduled to broadcast a segment on the
agency on Sunday.
Ledgett, a 36-year intelligence veteran who reportedly is in line to
be the agency's deputy director, joked that doing media interviews
was "a complete out-of-body experience for me."
He spoke to Reuters on the same day that the White House said it had
decided to maintain the practice of having a single individual head
both the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command, which conducts cyberwarfare — an outcome the NSA leadership favored.
Separately, news reports late Thursday said an outside review panel
appointed by the White House has recommended changes in a program
disclosed by Snowden that collects basic data on Americans' phone
calls — known as metadata.
The panel reportedly said the data should be held by an organization
other than the NSA and stricter rules should be enforced for
searching the databanks.
Ledgett declined to discuss the panel's specific recommendations.
But he seemed to acknowledge that tighter guidelines for NSA
eavesdropping were in the offing, saying that what is
technologically possible "has gotten ahead of policy."
Snowden, who is living under asylum in Russia, disclosed a vast U.S.
eavesdropping apparatus that includes the phone metadata program;
NSA querying of Internet communications via major companies such as
Google Inc and Facebook Inc; and widespread tapping of international
communication networks.
Ledgett made no apologies for what many see as overly aggressive NSA
monitoring. He noted that the U.S. government's intelligence
taskings to the agency run to 36,000 pages, and said its activities
take place within a "box" of U.S. laws and policies.
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"We'll color in every square millimeter of that box," he said,
implying the NSA will use its legal authorities to the fullest
extent possible.
The NSA's internal review has determined about 98 percent of the
scope of the material that Snowden had accessed, and officials have
found no evidence that he had help either within the NSA or from
adversary spy agencies.
Ledgett said that when Snowden was downloading the documents, NSA
was ahead of other intelligence agencies in installing "insider
threat" software that President Barack Obama ordered in the wake of
an earlier leak scandal involving the group WikiLeaks. But
installation of the software, which might have stopped Snowden, was
not complete.
"Snowden hit at a really opportune time. For him — not for us," he
said.
Ledgett said that most of the Snowden material released publicly so
far has been about NSA programs and partnerships with foreign
countries and companies, rather than intelligence reports and
"requirements." The latter refers to U.S. government taskings to the
NSA to answer questions about specific targets.
That last category is what keeps him up at night. "Those make me
nervous because they reveal what we know and what we don't know and
they are almost a roadmap for adversaries."
No one at the NSA has yet lost their job over the Snowden crisis,
including at the Hawaii site where he worked. Ledgett said three
people are under review for potential disciplinary action, but
declined further comment.
He challenged those who call Snowden a whistleblower, saying the
former contractor did not use multiple channels available to vent
his concerns. "I actually think characterizing him as a
whistleblower is a disservice to people who are whistleblowers."
Ledgett said he knew of no U.S. government move toward reaching any
kind of a legal deal with Snowden, a decision that would be up to
the Justice Department.
But, he said in his opinion, such a conversation would have to
include concrete assurances that Snowden would secure any of the
material he has that has not yet been made public.
In the aftermath of Snowden, the NSA is trying to be more open about
what it does so the public can have more confidence in the agency's
mission.
"We as an agency are a little naive, for a long time we were 'No
Such Agency' or 'no comment' and were not adept at presenting our
face to the public," he said.
"I think quite frankly had we done more of that over the last five
or 10 years we might not be in the same place that we are vis-a-vis
the public perception of who we are and what we do," he said. "So
too late to learn that lesson, so what you are seeing now is our new
face."
(Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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