2 Top U.S. Spymasters Deny Illegally Snooping on Americans

Two of America’s top spymasters fervently denied Wednesday accusations that they illegally snoop on U.S. citizens at home and abroad by secretly reading e-mail, tapping cellular phones or even listening to baby monitors.

In a scene sometimes reminiscent of the spy scandals of the 1970s, when congressional hearings exposed flagrant abuses by U.S. intelligence services, the House Intelligence Committee grilled George J. Tenet, who heads the CIA, and Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who directs the National Security Agency.

Both repeatedly insisted that their services have stayed within legal limits set by Congress and executive orders over the last two decades. Both also argued that no new laws are necessary to safeguard American privacy rights from government spies in the Internet Age.

But Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), who chairs the committee and who spent 10 years in the CIA’s clandestine service, cited “concerns that the NSA operates in a very secret environment without any oversight or legal strictures in place to guide and control [its] conduct.”

Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), who worked as a CIA analyst while in law school, said it is “long past time” to reexamine regulations. “It is difficult, if not impossible, to argue that laws written in the 1970s are adequate for today’s technological challenges.”

Although exact figures are classified, the NSA is the nation’s largest intelligence service. It uses spy satellites, planes, ground stations and other high-tech surveillance gear to intercept and collect foreign “signals” intelligence for the U.S. military and policymakers. It also is the nation’s cryptologic service, responsible for making and breaking codes.

No hard evidence was introduced Wednesday that the NSA or any other U.S. agency is illegally spying on Americans, as they did against anti-war activists and other political targets during the 1960s and 1970s.

Fearful that the public might get the wrong idea anyway, the NSA did the unthinkable Tuesday: It called reporters to a news briefing, apparently the first by the NSA since it was created by secret presidential order in 1952.

The senior NSA official who met with reporters refused even to say how many lawyers are on the agency’s staff to ensure that laws are enforced, insisting that the figure is classified.

But the NSA’s public relations challenge was clear on a glossy handout given to reporters. Called “Frequently Asked Questions,” it included: “Do you assassinate people? Do you secretly perform experiments on us?” The answer to both questions, the handout avers, is no.

Current concern about the NSA has grown from a rash of unproved media accounts, such as a recent “60 Minutes” report which suggested that the NSA had bugged a U.S. senator and tapped transmissions from baby monitors.

Other allegations came from a report to the European Parliament. The report, and subsequent news accounts, accused the NSA of tapping communications across Europe and engaging in industrial espionage on behalf of U.S. companies.

Hayden, who bore the brunt of the committee’s questions Wednesday, denounced what he called “urban myths” about the NSA. The agency, he said, does not collect every electronic communication around the globe.

He specifically denied that the NSA gets other countries to snoop on Americans and rebutted allegations that the NSA steals blueprints or other secrets for U.S. companies.