stand: what does fisa for? host: we will focus on the fisa court and how it works.he judges serve seven-year term and the less they're granted special permission by the chief justice, they leave that court and move on to other responsibilities. robert is from manchester, maryland, good morning. you seem to be well versed in the patriot act but i have noticed you have not gone into great detail what constitutional law is being broken. guest:right, because i do not yet have evidence that constitutional law is being broken. that is up to the courts to determine. there have been some arguments in court about what parts of this are constitutional and what are not. i have to admit that i am just not that well educated on the court's history of either the patriot act or fisa. host: we are spending well over two hours this morning on the topics and we will focus more on the implementation of the patriot act right now, we're focusing on the politics that led to the pit trade act. let me go back to the comment by speaker of the house john boehner in 2011 when it wasre- author

fisa >> thank you. general alexander, is the nsa on private company servers, as defined under these programs? >> we are not. >> does the nsa have the ability to listen to americans' phone calls or read their e-mails under these programs? >> we do not have the authority. >> does the technology exists to flip a switch and have an analyst listen? >> no. >> the technology does not exist for individuals at the nsa to listen to americans' phone calls or read their e-mails? >> that is correct. >> help us understand that. if you get a piece of a number, there has been some public discussion that there is not a lot of value in what you might get from a program like this, that has this many levels of oversight. can you talk about how that might work into an investigation to help you prevent a terrorist attack in the united states? >> investigating terrorism is not an exact science. it is like a mosaic. we try to take disparate pieces and bring them together to form a turf. there are many different pieces of -- of

whether or not they started that process, whether or not they ever reviewed those fisa court rulingshave ever been released. that's how we get to last night's all caps exclamation point big deal report from greenwald writing for "the guardian" newspaper in britain. not new the government deems the right to collect records of any kind as long as it's anti-terrorism investigation. that's the law in the patriot act in 2001. not new the government is collecting wholesale information from our communications. we learned about that in 2005 from the "new york times" and expanded way from "usa today" in 2006. what is news now is that we finally get to see one of these orders from this secret court which we've never been able to see before and it spells out this is the kind of power the government thinks the law gives them. it spells it out in detail. the court order specifically is about verizon business customers. specifically about the government getting access to 90 days worth of calling records from verizon business customers. there's no reason to believe the other parts of verizon are no

i know you had something to say about the fisa courts. >> the fisa courts, really interesting. it was formed in 1978 and the entire history of the fisa court, it's only turned the government down once. very few people realize that there's another court above the fisa court called the fisa -- foreign intelligence surveillance court of appeals. it is sort of the maytag repair man of the judiciary. in its entire history since 1978 it's only heard one case. that case favored the government. now if the government -- if it had gone against the government, the government would have still had a third bite at the apple. they could have gone directly to the supreme court to appeal it. the odds of actually the government being turned down on a fisa -- what they call a fisa court order is infinitesimally small. not only that, when you fisa court was formed, it at least had some teeth. if they wanted to eavesdrop on james bamford, the government would have to make some kind of an argument for why. after the revelations of the bush warrantless wiretapping and the creation of the foreign inte

the fisa court secret ruling leaked to one source.ggest secret surveillance system prism leaked to two sources. the after report spread sheet leaked to two sources in two forms. where are these leaks coming from? when it rains it pours and right now national security leaks are pouring down like a flood. i am an american success story. i'm a teacher. i'm a firefighter. i'm a carpenter. i'm an accountant. a mechanical engineer. and i shop at walmart. truth is, over sixty percent of america shops at walmart every month. i find what i need, at a great price. and the money i save goes to important things. braces for my daughter. a little something for my son's college fund. when people look at me, i hope they see someone building a better life. vo: living better: that's the real walmart. i love to golf. ♪ [ grunts ] yowza! that's why i eat belvita at breakfast. it's made with delicious ingredients and carefully baked to release steady energy that lasts... we are golfing now, buddy! [ grunts ] ...all morning long. i got it! for the win! uno

it was not part of the fisa process. it did not involve the n.s. a. >> and i think that's what we need to be clear of. it was not part of the fisa process. that was a lot more detailed and a lot more scrutinized as far as getting information than what this was. is that correct? >> well, they are both very detailed and very scrutinized processes. they have different aspects to them. they are both very unusually detailed and scrutinized, both of those processes. >> thank you. and general, going back to what ms. sewell had asked about what the difference is of the clearance you would have with a contractor or government employee, when you have 1,000 different government contractors, i know from my experience after having one of my staff go through a security clearance, it is a pretty detailed operation. i know this person had previously worked for the c.i.a. had there been additional clearance given to him when he became a contractor after he left the employ of the c.i.a.? >> no additional clearance. he had what's necessary

we have seen this increase in the use of fisa. we saw twice the number of fisa applications in 2006 as in 2001. they doubled. if you look at business records between 1998-2001, there is only one order granted between 1998- 2001. that was following oklahoma city. since 2001, -- actually since the patriot act -- we have seen the business records provision steadily expanding. there were only 13 in 2008. by 2011, there were 205 of these orders issued per year. in 2012, there were 212. anyone of these orders can obtain millions of records, as we saw from the order that was published in "the guardian." if that is accurate and that is the order, any one of these orders can obtain millions of records. the idea that we now have -- host: it is a wide swath. guest: the idea that we have hundreds of these granted per year -- congress ties the court's hands -- the court is required to grant these orders if certain criteria are met -- to talk about the court being a check somehow on the executive branch, all it does is make sure that the execut

the judges on the fisa court take this job seriously. they meet in a private place, there can be no interception. most often they can't have their law clerks with them. it's done in a careful way. it's a very different thing than what you're used to for the normal criminal justice process. the fact that they authorize most or all of -- >> 100%. >> the fact that they authorized most or all of the applications. >> 100%. >> greta, i won 95% of my cases when i was u.s. attorney. you know why? we prosecuted guilty people and we were careful about bringing our indictments. the justice department only brings the very best cases to them. it goes through an enormously rigorous process in the justice department before it get to them. this justice department, past justice department. the court in a way is being put in a bad light because they get very good applications that have already been very thought out carefully. and there's a lot of conversation that goes on. >> let me ask you this. >> the judges will say, you don't have enough of this, you

for all fisa court orders, companies are prevented from his closing they received a fisa court order. this week google went to the fisa court to seek permission to explicitly state how many fisa orders it has responded to every year. general alexander testified the use of these programs stopped 50 errorist events. for section 202 and 10 using business record information. he did not have a number on the percentage of intel of essential intelligence coming out of the use of the business records metadata information. that was very long, but i wanted everybody to be operating on the same acronyms and terms as we go through this rapid pace questioning. so, i want to open it up to the panel and ask a broad overarching fustian. what are your overall observations about these programs as recently disclosed and do you distinguish the two programs from a legal or policy perspective? >> thank you, mary ellen. thank you for having me here today. a quick word of context to start off. american companies have for years received many, many requests -- legitimate request -- from the government to produ

they work only on fisa matters. when we prepare an application for fisa, whether it is one of these programs or traditional fisa, we first of the to the core what is called a read copy. the court staff will review and comment on it. they will almost come back with questions and concerns and problems that they see. there is a process back and forth between the government and the board to take care of those concerns. at the end of the day, we are confident that we are presenting something that the fisa court will approve. that is hardly a rubber stamp. it is rather extensive and serious judicial oversight of this process. the third point -- misconception i want to make is that the process that we have here is one that simply relies on trust or individual analysts or people at nsa to obey the rules. i will not go into details as to the oversight. it has been adequately described. the point is that there is a multilayered level of oversight within nsa and involving my agency, the office of the director of national intel

they work only on fisa matters. when we prepare an application for fisa, whether it is one of these programs or traditional --sa, we first of the to the submit to the court what is called a read copy. the court staff will review and comment on it. they will almost come back with questions and concerns and problems that they see. there is a process back and forth between the government and the board to take care of those concerns. at the end of the day, we are confident that we are presenting something that the fisa court will approve. that is hardly a rubber stamp. it is rather extensive and serious judicial oversight of this process. the third point -- misconception i want to make is that the process that we have here is one that simply relies on trust or individual analysts or people at nsa to obey the rules. i will not go into details as to the oversight. it has been adequately described. the point is that there is a multilayered level of oversight within nsa and involving my agency, the office of the director of

the fisa court is sort of a red herring.is special oversight, but really last year they approved nearly 2,000 applications brought to them and denied none. it's a rubber stamp. >> i want to get to gloria borger. in light of all that's just been said, gloria, the big sell will be to the american people and whether the american people are comfortable with this nsa program, and if they're listening to this hearing, are they? >> well, you know, carol, so far when you look at all the polls from the american people, if you ask them specifically, you know, do you like the idea that this metadata is being collected, it depends on how you ask the question. and people may not like the idea action but in the long run, the majority of is the american people say that they get it. if it's to thwart any kind of terror attack, i think right now what we are hearing in this hearing is -- and the government going out of fits way to sort of say -- and this is what you heard from the deputy attorney general, there is a molest here, there are pro

you can find out who the head of the court is and so forth. >> the fisa court was established in 1978 to provide oversight so the government doesn't run amuck, but to get back to the original question, edward snowden is a loner, a libertarian. i don't think he's guilty of treason because he has no evident intent to betray at least that we know about. he believes he was doing the right thing in alerting the american people this kind of surveil was going on. what's new here is the -- surveillance was going on. what's new here is the extent of the surveillance. i think people understood this is what the national security agency was created to do. now he's brought this out to the open and i think that's fair enough. let's have a debate. >> this is a very nice gloss of this young man's reputation and i think he'll be very grateful to you. >> maybe he will be. i believe he will be prosecuted under the espionage act. >> privacy no more. >> get a warrant. go after a murderer, terrorist or rapist but don't troell through a billion -- troll through a billion phone records every day. that is unc

when we prepare an application for fisa whether it's under one of these programs or a traditional fisa we submit to the court what is called a read copy, which the koerpl court staff will review and comment on and they will almost invariably come back with questions, concerns, problems they see and there is a process back and forth between the government and the fisa court to take care of those concerns. so that at the end of the day we are confident that we are presenting something that the fisa court will approve. that is hardly a rubber stamp. it's rather extensive and serious judicial oversight of this process. the third point -- the third misconception that i want to make is that the process we have here is one that simply relies on trust for individual analysts or individual people at nsa to obey the rules. and i won't go into detail as to the oversight, because i think it's been adequately described by the others, but the point is, there is a multilayered level of oversight, first within nsa, then involving my agency, the office of the director of national intelligence and the d

recreate the fisa court. we have to have somebody that isn't saying yes, sir, yes, sir, to everything the government does. >> you don't know that's what they are doing or what the government is asking. >> when they get 100% of their application, i have to admit i'm suspicious. >> you may be suspicious, but they may be doing less than they should be doing because they only go after the safe cases. ray kelly says the percentage was too high because they weren't going far enough. >> what is the secrecy doing to the kriblt of the government? that with brit hume, up. >>> and does the targeting in the irs scandal go all the way to the top. trey gowdy here next, and donald trump, does he love the irs just as it is? we'll see. war within the house oversight committee, between darrell issa and elijah cummings. >> case is closed, end of story. >> based on everything i have seen, the case is solved. and if it were me, i would wrap up and move on. >> eridgea colijah cumming, say case of the irs targeting tea party groups

they go to this fisa court. they have made 1,788 requests to the fisa court to do this.ss how many times the fisa court has said no? >> not once. >> not once. if you are looking to the judicial to be an independent oversight of the executive request, it doesn't look like they are doing that. then you go to the congress and you do have serious and respected members of congress saying that they have been very alarmed by this. ron wyden of oregon has been talking about this. >> and mark eudall of colorado. >> these are serious peek talking about this. they talked in the past in the most cryptic ways because they were prohibited from confirming or releasing what was going on. clearly, this is not it. i think it is wrong to say that this is clearly an example the three branches of government kind of working things out and keeping the balance, keeping the balance between maintaining security and protecting civil liabilities. >> bill: i think they are all looking the other way. so, do you think, now, susan, that the -- there will be pressure building on president obama to come

we have the check and balance in the case of prism, and in verizon, it was a fisa order that allowedhat and that is supposed to be the check and the balance and we have to know more and have a review of how the fisa courts are operating. >> so the tech giants areç denying this involvement, and google says they don't have a backdoor to provide user, and we only provide what is required by law, and gofacebook, we do not provide information and the same with microsoft, so how does the public who want to have trust in you and our leaders and what do we make of this? >> well, that is why you need the debate. i'm not suggesting that the americans believe one way or another, but in a democracy where you have a historic debate how to keep my constituents safe from the foreign attack, and still want to keep my constituents safe, you need transparency and debate. in is not about finger pointing or comparisons between bush and obama. this should be about how you get that balance between national security and privacy as a matter of policy and democracy. >> all right. meanwhile, i want to bring

we've bumped up against the fisa and patriot act deadlines on a number of occasions. so this is not a secret program. this is something that has been re-authorized and had to be re-authorized through congress and ultimately signed by the president. >> let me ask you, changing topics, to the women in foreign policy now. sort of all-male club that has existed for generations until we had women secretaries of state. now you've got susan rice and samantha power joining the president, susan rice in the white house samantha power in the u.n. how will foreign policy change? how will the dynamic change? >> look, i think he has picked as you said, two very dynamic individuals. i watched in a lot of situation room meetings, susan rice. she is somebody who is not afraid to ask anybody else in the room questions. i think both samantha and susan werevy active in making sure that the president was out discussing what was happening in egypt and the arab spring. even when several in the room did not want the president to even make a comment about it. i was not there during libya and

you have the fisa court. what is the f for? foreign. fisa so much of this is just domestic.doesn't even touch on calls overseas which is what we heard from before. i think, willie, when americans wake up this morning and read what is going on in this country over the past seven, eight years, they are going to be as disturbed as i am. >> what you just heard there from republicans was referring to the verizon story of 24 hours ago where they claim no content is being swept in. they are just looking at the call numbers and who it is. it was democrats too. harry reid said, america, relax, this isn't as bad as you think it is. today with this report and we will talk to barton gailman of "the washington post." now they can read what you type or video chat you had or what was in an e-mail or skype. this is different and it's domestic. >> i thought the internet one was international. i thought the internet one was not domestic. >> let's bring in "the washington post" contributor barton gailman. he broke the online surveillance program. barton, break it down for us. how did a program

i supported the patriot act, i support data mining, i support surveillance and i support fisa court. support what the administration did. am i consistnent with what the law is? >> you absolutely are consistent, and i agree with every one of the points you've made, sean. we have to balance security with a respect for civil liberties, which has made our country different than any other country in the world. i think i did that when i drafted the patriot act. now, obviously, we're going to have to have some changes in section 215 and maybe in the law that authorizes the fisa court to do what it has done. i don't know exactly what those amendments need to be, but obviously this program has got to be reined in. we should look at the business records of people who are targets of investigations and people who are foreigners, but we don't need to grab everybody's phone calls and they can even go to grabbing the phone calls of journalists or members of congress, who are protected in one way or the other by the constitution, so that the administration, whoever it may be, can see who we are in c

the arguments the administration is offering the fisa court to get this type of data. and i think that's sort of the low-hanging fruit but it would be very revealing fruit if which were to see that. >> revealing fruit. richard, when you look at the fisa court and its decision making over the last 33 years of its existence, it has declined just 11 of the more than 33,900 surveillance requests made by the government. president obama sort of stumbled on that when charlie rose pressed him on it. and i guess to sam's point is that he was outlining sort of i guess if you will concessions he's making to the question of civil liberties. do you think he's got to increase transparency around fisa courts to satisfy certain ends of this debate? >> i think transparency around national security intelligence is extremely difficult but we need a fisa court which has some teeth. and actually, congress can apply those teeth. it can actually slot them in like dentures. it could actually say, you know, we want to have real oversight. if we only get one shot at authorizing this law or reau

but what is also true that the fisa court has to fully chorize.mmary what you've got is two programs that were originally authorized by congress, have beenç repeatedl authorized by conversation, bipartisan majorities have approved them. congress is continually briefed on thousand hess are conducted. there are a whole range of safeguards involved and federal judges are overseeing the entire program throughout. we are also setting up, we've set up an audit process when i came into office to make sure that we're after the fact, making certain that all the safegads are being properly served. now having said all that. you'll remember when i made that speech a couple of weeks ago the need for us to ship out of a perpetual war mindset. i specifically said one of the things we're going to have to discuss and debate is how are we striking this balance between the need to keep the american people safe and our occurrence concerns about privacy. because there are some tradeoffs involved. i welcome this debate ant i think it's healey for our drois, democracy.

person under fisa, when they are located abroad, when they are not here? what would be the process for the government? >> that would be the full package, going to the fisa court, identifying that person, identifying the probable cause to believe that person is involved in terrorism or foreign intelligence activities, and indicating that we have the request to the court to allow us to intercept their communications, because we have made the showing that they are involved in terrorist or foreign intelligence activities. we have to make a formal application, targeting that person specifically, what are they are inside or outside the united states. >> if i might add, that could not be done under 702. there is a separate section of the foreign intelligence surveillance attack that would allow that, that it would not be doable under 702. >> what if you want to monitor the within the united states? >> again, a different provision of pfizer, but we would have to show that person is, was probable cause, involved in foreign terrorist activities or foreign intelligen

what about the fisa warrants?t about the -- you think fisa's going to give up stuff so that google can save its rear end? >> no, i don't think so. the fisa court doesn't respond to those requests because those people are not before that court. it's a very special and different type of court where there's usually only one party. that's the united states government. but the issue here goes really beyond all this. these companies are trying to actually help themselves. they're trying to change the subject. it's a very obamaesque move, what they did. they're trying to make it look like they're not responsible for any of this, that they don't want to do any of this, that they're not interested in it. i was reminded by the remarks, i believe it was a google executive the other day, who was asked, you know, whether or not he thought it was really somewhat unusual that people were worried about things that they were writing in their e-mails being disclosed and he gave a snarky remark. he said listen, if people are worried

. >> i'm critical of fisa court. in 2012, according to letter sent to harry reid, senate majority leader, 1,789 applications for electronic surveillance. withdrew one, and 1,788 were granted. every single one the government asked for was granted. looks like a rubber stamp to me. >>ith not. it means two things. number one, national security division always has been, was when i was there, and i'm sure still, very cautious about what they apply for. one thing they have going for them is credibility. and secondly, statistics don't tell you what changes were made in the applications before they were granted. whether the court pushed back as it sometimes does, and ask for changes in the application. that often happens. >> it -- let me ask you this, in terms of the cautious nature. we see the -- the best of the best, seeking the warrant to grab james rosen's information and that was anything but cautious. i would say it was reckless. >> that was not the national security division, that was the u.s. attorney's office in the

maybe with a small amemento fisa.ea that no court will review, no congress will know with ewill trust the president and the vice president of the united states that they're doing the right thing, don't count me in on. okay. very interesting, as you know, president obama and vice president biden are now supporting the very nsa program that they're talking about. in fact, hook, line and sinker. we'll be right back. i'm kudlow. ♪ >> senator dianne feinstein wants the nsa to release a list of thwarted terrorist attacks to prove how well the program is working. nbc news michael isikopf jones us. >> good evening, larry. >> the public i think is starting not to believe a word of it. >> well, first of all, you have to remember that senator feinstein has been a backer of the program she has a vested interest in showing these programs have been successful. so she's pushing for more disclosure of those, of these presumed thwarted terrorist attacks. the problem when you get these list, it's hard to evaluate. you get such little i

andthe pfizer -- fisa court congress.to the extent that each of those entities are brought in the loop and understand or are able to question to a certain extent, assuring these entities have coverage, the american public can put faith in these institutions. you are always going to have those areas of classified areas where it does not make any difference whether it is the cyber arena or the military arena or the intelligence arena like this. where disclosing our secrets will make us that much more vulnerable. there will always be a level of frustration. the only other thing i say is that there will be additional terrorist attacks. one of the most debilitating things for those of us in this try youris to darndest to prevent there being an attack, and then when you are immediately attacked, why didn't you do more? we'll is believed, regardless of the attack, that it is incumbent upon us and others to come back and do a scrub and see what we have done better. but the way that you do it would whoelpful to those of us worry a

all we use this for today is the business records, fisa. i do want to point out something you said here. as you know, this was developed, and i agree with you. we all had this concern coming out of the 9/11. how would we protect the nation. we had information but we didn't know where he was. we didn't have the data collected to know he was a bad person. we had no information on it. and if we didn't collect it ahead of time, we couldn't make those connections. so what we create is a set of data and we put it out here. and then only under specific times do we query that day tachlt any time we do that, it's audible by the committees, by the justice department, by the court, and by the administration. we get oversight from everybody on this. >> i'm over my time, but i want to -- here's the point. if you knew that a suspect had made a call into area code 312, the city of chicago, it certainly defies logic that you need to collect all of the tell phone calls made to the 312 area code on the chance that one of those persons might be on the other e

and in terms of the courts, the only court that oversees this program is the fisa court. which is a court that meets in secret, allows only the government to appear before it. and very rarely publishes its own decisions. when we tried to challenge the constitutionality of some of the surveillance in ordinary federal court, the government said you don't have the right to be in court because you can't show that your own communications were monitored. and we're not going to tell you whether your communications were monitored. that's a state secret. so the government has been very successful, that argument actually prevailed at the supreme court earlier this year, 5-4. and the government has been very successful at keeping these kinds of programs safe from judicial review, they've been very successful at limiting congressional oversight and the result is, the only reason that we learn about any of this stuff, is through the kinds of leaks that have happened over the last couple of days. >> jamal, thank you very much. thanks for your contribution to this debate. and we'll be r

he said there are protections, there's the constitution, the so-called fisa court. >> the fisa court i have yet to see a decision made by the fisa court. it's a -- >> woodruff: this is a special court that was set up a few years ago. >> 11 judges but we don't know what goes on. one side presents and i don't know of the number of rejections that the fisa court has given. i guess where i disagree with david is it's very seductive to become part of this intelligence community. because we're doing it because we're protecting you. we're taking care of you. we're going to make sure you're safe and anything that's done in that name. we went through the entire cold war, that was a real threat. that was a real threat. and the soviet union and the intelligence community-- which was closed off and completely cloistered and nobody could go near it-- was absolutely wrong. as late as 1989 it was saying the soviet union was getting stronger economically, militarily, it was a bigger threat than it was and george canon predicted 50 years earlier it would implode, the seeds of its own destruction were

all we use this for today is the business records of pfizer -- fisa.s you know, this was developed -- and i agree with you, we have this concern coming out of 9/11 -- how we going to protect the nation? we didn't know where he was. we didn't have the data collected to know that he was a bad person. because he was in the united states, the way we treat it it, he is a u.s. person. we had no information on that. if we do not collect the ahead of time, we couldn't make those connections. we did not have the data collected to know that he was a bad person. but the committees, by the justice department, by the court, by the administration. >> if you knew that is suspect may call in to area code -- the city of chicago it's certainly defies logic that you need to collect all of the telephone calls made in that area code on the chance that one of those persons might be on the other end of the foam. suspected contact, that to me is clear. i want you to go after that person. what i am concerned about is to reach beyond that that affects innocent people. >> the ag

another point is that total secrecy in which surveillance operates under the patriot act and fisa.with meaningful oversight and prevents the public from holding its government accountable for its action. i can see that it's a difficult and sensitive issue to resolve. but that is our job. a free society can only be freed if it has the informed consent of its citizens. so that the public knows how its government, the content of its calls even when it collects them by mistake. it is true that some members of the congress have chosen to receive classified briefings about these programs. i am on them. these briefings though often prohibit attendees from taking even notes or to even discuss such information with anyone else. and with all due respect to my friends in the administration, the mere fact that some members may have been briefed in a classified setting does not indicate our approval or support of these programs. indeed, many of us voted against the reauthorization of the patriot act and the fisa amendments act precisely because of what we learned in those classified sessions. i

there is a compare bolt mechanism in the fisa context. now the question is -- how affective of a check are they on the branch? the justice department and that court provided regular, routine, comprehensive briefings the congress, usually classified, about the kinds of activities being offered. someone in congress knows the scope of those courts and their oversight. and whether the justice department is secretly engaging in wiretapping activities without authorization. if that sort of activity were taking place, my sense is that someone in congress would be blowing the whistle, if not publicly that privately. host: we have had a number of calls on this and i have asked callers about evidence of their theories behind september 11, this is from richard, who focuses more on trust and he says, you should not be surprised from the conspiracy calls. it stems from trust in government or the lack thereof. on the larger issue we have seen what happened with the irs, the nsa. your thoughts as someone employed by the federal government? guest: no one

, the fisa court interpreted 215 to allow the program. it's not just the justice department. it's the fisa court has an issued an opinion saying this is the appropriate interpretation of 215. >> all right. one question on the -- you hold it for five years. say, if it has not, queried, or minimized during that period you get rid of it. >> yes. >> but that -- >> nsa hold it. >> nsa, yes. but that, which has been queried and dually minimized where appropriate, i would say siewm that can -- assume that can be queried again and again. and last year was queried 300 times. it's the same information basically that -- the same data base, the same meta data that queried again and again. >> the data base is -- as a result dismissed from the data base and it picks up new numbers. it's a rolling five-year period. anything older than five years. >> yes, it enables us to go back. you may have a number called in, for instance, out in san diego made the call to the yemen telephone number back in, i think, earlier 2002. you needed that number that data bas

for all fisa court 0erds, companies are prohibits from disclosing the fact that they received a fisa court order or the scope of the production. this week google went to seek permission to explicitly seek how many fisa orders to which it has responded every year. nsa general alexander testified that the use of these programs stopped 50 terrorist events. 40 terrorist events using section 702 and ten due to business records information. and follow-up questioning, general alexander said in approximately 20 overseas cases the 702 information was, quote, essential. he did not have in number on the percentage of central intelligence coming out of the metadata information. sorry, that was very long, but i thought i'd get some stage setting so everyone would be operating on the same acronyms and terms as we go through this rapid pace be questioning. so i'm going to start and open it up to the panel and is ask them a broad, overarching question. what are your overall observations about these programs that have been recently disclosed, and do you distinguish the two 3r578s from a legal or poli

>> the justices appoint the justices of the fisa court.tion. >> there's no judge shopping, there's nothing like that. >> no, the judges are lifetime tenured senate-counfirmed, nonpartisan judges. no americans are targets under this program. >> i want to know why a guy from booz allen had all this access and was able to leak all this classified information. not a government employee. a government contractor. how -- that part to me is very startling as an american citizen. >> our government relies on contractors. they take the same south. they sign the same nondisclosure agreements. they have the same exact clearance as government officials. he had a responsibility. no one forced him to work at the cia. he voluntarily did it. the efforts to make him into a hero i think are going to fall flat. he's not a whistle blower. you don't break the law, steal documents and then make a run for the border. there is a whistle blower process. this is the whistle blower process that's on the nsa website. to go to the inspector general if you think there's

all we use this for today is the business records, fisa. would point out and just want to characterize something that you said here. as you know, this was developed -- and i agree with you, we all had this concern coming out of 9/11. how are we going the protect the nation? because we did get intercementingsing on -- intercements on -- [inaudible] but we didn't know where he was. and because he was in the united states, the way we treat it is he's a u.s. person. so we had no information on that. and if we didn't collect that ahead of time, we couldn't make those connections. so what we create is a set of data, and we put it out here. and then only under specific times can we query that day. and as you know, senator, every time we do that, it's auditable by the committees, by the justice department, by the court and by the administration. we get oversight from everybody on this. >> i'm over my time, but i want to -- here's the point. if you knew that a suspect had made a call into air code 312, the city of chicago, it certainly defies logic

. >> has the fisa corp turned down any requests? >> the requests are surprisingly small, number one. numb beer two, folks don't go with a query unless they've got a pretty good suspicion. >> should this be transparent in some way? >> it is transparent. that's why we set up a fisa corp. >> it is transparent. transparent. it is an interesting word to describe the fisa corp that operates with total near secrecy. >> what do you think of me? >> the fisa court is also not a court in the way most of us understand. there are not two sides to every case and there's no one there to challenge what they claim through the fisa corp. and joining me to discuss the hearing is congressman dutch rufus burger. we're told more than 50 plots disrupted, ten of them homeland-based, but what's not entirely clear is how many of these attacks de ffinitively cod not have been done with more atar atta attacks, gumshoe attacks. >> let me give you an example. first thing we think is important to educate members of the congress why we need this program and why we