STEPHANOPOULOS: Is there any kind of metaphor? I mean, I know all the
difficulties here you could use to sort of help people understand just what
this process is, what this program is.
HAYDEN: Look, without as you say going into too much operational
detail here, I mean, everyone should expect the American Signals
Intelligence Enterprise, NSA to pursue al Qaeda communications. What this
authorization does is make it far more likely that NSA will be able to detect,
grab, intercept al Qaeda communications that are most important. Al Qaeda
communications that enter and leave the homeland.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me try to give you a hypothetical, see if you can answer it.
I went to Pakistan after 9/11. I interviewed a Taliban representative. If after
that interview, that person calls me, am I captured?
HAYDEN: I can't get into operational details, but the way we do this is
based on the people most knowledgeable of al Qaeda, its communications, its
intentions, its tactics, techniques, and procedures. And so we really don't have
the time or the resources, the linguists to, to, to linger, to go after things that aren't going to protect the homeland.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, [Jane Harman] actually, she wrote a letter to the
president yesterday saying, she said, "I am not clear why FISA as presently
drafted can not cover the entire program."
HAYDEN: Okay, but anyway, to answer the question, this is——and again, it's hard to answer in detail because then it reveals some operational aspects of the program. It's about speed. It's about hot pursuit of al Qaeda communications. Let me tell you, we as a government, NSA as an agency, has, has, has used FISA at record numbers since the 9/11 attacks.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So are you still convinced that if you try to get this
authorized with more legislation, it would reveal the program, compromise the
program?
HAYDEN: The position I've, I've pointed out is——and you've asked a fairly
intensely political question as to, as to how we might go forward. I'm
going to give you an operational answer. I'm going to give you a professional judgment. Whatever it is we do in the future has to be done in a way that doesn't reveal our tactics, techniques and procedures to the enemy, I'll just leave it at that.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me bring up something else the president brought up the other night in his State of the Union. He suggested in his State of the Union that had you had this authority before 9/11, 9/11 could have been prevented and a lot of people including me, frankly, have had a hard time seeing how that's the case because as a lot of the studies have shown the 9/11 commission showed these hijackers actually had been identified. The NSA had intercepted some communications and the problem is what was done with the information, not that it wasn't detected.
HAYDEN: I can't tell you how much I would love to go into the
operational details behind this. But I've said, it was my professional
judgment, all right, knowing what this program can do, knowing the reality prior
to 9/11, it was my professional judgment that if we had had this program in
place, we would have identified some of the al Qaeda operatives in the United
States and we would have identified them as such. I'm very, very comfortable
with that.
Oh, and then just hours before Super Bullshit XL, here's the kicker:
STEPHANOPOULOS: So given that history, given all the intelligence and
analysis at your disposal here, who is going to win?
HAYDEN: Let me slip into a bit of patois, okay? Y'uns'll find out that the
Steelers are gonna win this one.
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