Coming Events. Best-selling Intelligence Author, Journalist. Michael V. Predator, above, and other UAVs to be visited at th is special symposium. Symposium will feature presentations on the testing of atomic weapons, airborne reconnaissance platforms, and more. Department of Energy's Nevada Test Site - the former on-continent nuclear weapons proving ground, and Creech Air Force Base - the home of the Predator unmanned aerial vehicles currently deployed for combat missions in the Middle East, yet piloted from Creech.
Registration forthcoming. Harrah's Hotel Registration is available now at: Telephone reservations may be made at They have contributed one or more stories used in this issue. The program was lawful, effective and necessary. The reflexive judgments to the contrary seem hasty at best. The report also suggested that there were counterterrorism successes associated with the program but that these could not be discussed in an unclassified venue. An analyst would have no way of knowing the source of the information.
Some critics claim that Congress was not aware of the full extent of the program, but the ultimate judgment on the effectiveness of much of the program may actually have been the actions of Congress. In the amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Congress judged it appropriate not only to provide additional legal underpinnings for much of what the agency had been doing but also to recognize the value of its activities by providing additional critically needed capabilities.
There has been much controversy about the lawfulness of the program. Here I must point out that agency lawyers — career attorneys with deep expertise in the law, privacy and intelligence — assisted their professional Justice Department counterparts in their review of the program but remained comfortable throughout with the lawfulness of all aspects of the surveillance effort. And it should be pointed out that the elements of the program made public in news reports in December had been consistently deemed lawful by the Justice Department.
Such phrases have already led to incorrect assumptions that the report concluded that the wiretaps violated the privacy of millions of American citizens. Let me stress that Congressional overseers were told of all activities conducted by the agency under this authorization. In fact, at every briefing we reported daily and cumulative activities for the program.
