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A REpORTER AT lARgE

THE spYmAsTERCan Mike McConnell fix Americas intelligence community?

BY lAWRENcE WRigHT

Last May, the director of National In-telligence, a soft-spoken South Car-olinian named Mike McConnell, learnedthat three U.S. soldiers had been cap-tured by Sunni insurgents in central Iraq.As a search team of six thousand Amer-ican and Iraqi forces combed throughBabil Province, analysts at the NationalSecurity Agency, in Fort Meade, Mary-land, began examining communications

traffic in Iraq, hoping to pick up conver-sations among the soldiers captors. ToMcConnells consternation, such surveil-lance required a warrantnot becausethe kidnappers were entitled to constitu-tional protections but because their com-munications might pass electronicallythrough U.S. circuits.

The kidnappings could have been justanother barely noticed tragedy in a long,bloody war, but at that moment an im-portant political debate was taking place

in Washington. Lawmakers were try-ing to strike a balance between respect-ing citizens privacy and helping law-enforcement and intelligence officialsprotect the country against crime, terror,espionage, and treason. McConnell, whohad been in office for less than threemonths when the soldiers were captured,was urging Congress to make a changein the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveil-lance Act, or FISA, which governs theprocess of eavesdropping on citizens and

foreigners inside the U.S. and requiresagencies to obtain a warrant within sev-enty-two hours after monitoring begins.The act was a response to abuses of theNixon era, when the U.S. governmentturned its formidable surveillance powersagainst peace activists, reporters, religiousgroups, civil-rights workers, politicians,and even members of the SupremeCourt. Over the years, the act had beenamended many times, but McConnellbelieved that FISAa law written before

the age of cell phones, e-mail, and theWebwas dangerously outmoded. Ifwe dont update FISA, the nation is

significantly at risk, McConnell told me.He said that federal judges had recentlydecided, in a series of secret rulings, thatany telephone transmission or e-mailthat incidentally flowed into U.S. com-puter systems was potentially subject tojudicial oversight. According to McCon-nell, the capacity of the N.S.A. to moni-tor foreign-based communications hadconsequently been reduced by seventy

per cent. Now, he claimed, the lives ofthree American soldiers had been thrownonto the scale.

McConnell is the head of the sprawl-ing assemblage of covert agencies knownas the intelligence communitya termthat first appeared in the minutes of astaff meeting of the Intelligence AdvisoryCommittee, in 1952. That year, Presi-dent Truman signed a secret memoran-dum creating the N.S.A., which is stillthe largest of the sixteen intelligence bu-

reaucracies. The Pentagon has a DefenseIntelligence Agency, and each militarybranch has its own intelligence shop.

There are three very expensive technicalagencies: the N.S.A., which is responsi-ble for code-breaking, code-making,communications monitoring, and infor-mation warfare; the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which makes mapsand analyzes surveillance photographs;and the National Reconnaissance Office,

which provides satellite imagery. The

Central Intelligence Agency is in chargeof human intelligence on foreign targets,although the Defense Intelligence Agencyalso conducts humint operations for themilitary. Domestic intelligence is handledby the Federal Bureau of Investigation,the Drug Enforcement Administration,and divisions of the Department ofHomeland Security. The State Depart-ment has its own intelligence-analysisbureau, as do the Energy and TreasuryDepartments. The intelligence commu-

nity employs more than a hundred thou-sand people, including tens of thousandsof private contractors. And its official

budget, which last year was $43.5 billion,omits the militarys intelligence opera-tions, which, if included, would probablypush the total annual cost past $50 bil-lionmore than the government spendson energy, scientific research, or the fed-eral court and prison systems.

To call the disparate intelligence bu-reaucracies a community suggests thatthey share a collegial spirit, but through-

out their history these organizations havebeen brutally competitive, underminingone another and even hoarding vital in-formation. Since the establishment of theC.I.A., in 1947, the fractious intelligencecommunity has botched many of themajor tasks assigned to it. Its failures in-clude the Bay of Pigs invasion, the un-foreseen collapse of the Soviet Union, theinability to prevent the September 11thattacks, and the catastrophic assessmentthat Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, pos-

sessed weapons of mass destruction.There have been successesin 2006,American intelligence helped lead to thearrest in England of twenty-four con-spirators who were plotting to blow upat least ten transatlantic airlinersbutthey dont begin to outweigh the damagecaused by bungled operations and mis-guided analysis.

Over the past sixty years, frustratedPresidents and lawmakers have commis-sioned more than forty studies of the na-

tions intelligence operations, to deter-mine how to rearrange, reform, or even,in some cases, abolish them. Most ofthese studies have concluded that therivalries and conflicting missions of thewarring agencies could be resolved onlyby placing a single figure in charge. Yet,until September 11th, there was no po-litical will to do so. In 2004, after the9/11 Commission recommended the ap-pointment of a powerful overseer, Con-gress passed the Intelligence Reform and

Terrorism Prevention Act, which createdthe Office of the Director of National In-telligence, or O.D.N.I. Dissenting law-

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McConnell, the director of National Intelligence, wants tighter Internet security. Photographs by Mary Ellen Mark.

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44 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 21, 2008

makers complained that the new officewould simply add another tier of bureau-crats to an already congested roster. In-deed, although the 9/11 Commissionsuggested that the O.D.N.I. needed nomore than a few hundred employees, ithas quickly expanded to some fifteenhundred. Most of these additions, how-

ever, are transfers from other agenciesa maneuver that has rankled seniorintelligence managers, es-pecially in the C.I.A.,which fiercely opposed theestablishment of the newoffice. Until the 2004 lawpassed, the nominal leaderof the intelligence com-munity was the head of theC.I.A. Now the agency re-ports to the D.N.I., just

as the intelligence branchof the Coast Guard does.

The reforms came at a time when thebasic value of intelligence-gathering wasin question. We have such a huge infra-structure that adds so little to our under-standing and frequently gets us in trou-ble, says Richard Clarke, who served asthe counterterrorism cordinator underPresident Clinton and, until 2002, in thecurrent Administration. Youre left withthe impression that it wouldnt make any

difference if they didnt exist.In April, 2005, Congress confirmed

John Negroponte, then the U.S. Am-bassador in Iraq, as the offices first di-rector. General Michael Hayden, thehead of the N.S.A., became his deputy.But Negroponte lasted only two years inthe job before returning to the StateDepartment, where he clearly felt moreat home. And Hayden left to lead theC.I.A. There were few candidates eagerto replace Negroponte in the last two

years of an embattled, lame-duck Ad-ministration. And although the 2004reforms had given the director of Na-tional Intelligence responsibility foroverseeing the community, his powerswere limited.

The President turned to Mike Mc-Connell, a retired admiral who had di-rected the N.S.A. from 1992 to 1996,but who was not well known outside theintelligence community. Sixty-threeyears old at the time, McConnell was

part of the featureless parade of manage-ment consultants and security expertswho work for federal contractors based

in northern Virginia, near C.I.A. head-quarters. McConnell was a senior vice-president of Booz Allen Hamilton, theoldest of these firms. The war on terrorand the wars in Afghanistan and Iraqwere generating an economic boomin the Virginia suburbs, and McCon-nell, like many retired spooks, was reap-

ing the benefits of his government ex-perience and his top-secret clearance.

McConnell has pale,thin, sandy hair, blue eyes,and skin as pink as a babys.His back troubles him, andhe walks with a slightstoop, which becomesmore pronounced as theday wears on. His friendsdescribe him as quick-minded and crafty, with an

unusual ability to synthe-size large amounts of infor-

mation. A workaholic, he regularlylugged two briefcases home each night.Yet, ten years after leaving the govern-ment, he was finally making real moneytwo million dollars a year at Booz Allenand was looking toward a comfortableretirement, perhaps in a cabin in the Car-olinas, where he could build birdhouses(he and his wife, Terry, are members of asociety whose purpose is to protect the

Eastern bluebird) and listen to soft rockand rhythm and blues. He claims to be aterrific dancer.

In September, 2006, McConnell wasoffered the D.N.I. job and refused it.One of the major limitations of the postwas that eighty per cent of the intelli-gence budget was controlled by the Sec-retary of Defenseand at the time thatwas Donald Rumsfeld, whose contemptfor the C.I.A. and other civilian intelli-gence agencies was well known. Two

months later, Rumsfeld resigned, andRobert M. Gates replaced him. WhenVice-President Dick Cheney approachedMcConnell again, over Christmas, heasked for time to think about it.

My first phone call was to SecretaryGates, McConnell recalls. The two menhad known each other since the first Gulf

War, when Gates worked in the WhiteHouse as deputy national-security adviserand McConnell was the intelligenceofficer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Gates,

a former C.I.A. director,had been offeredthe D.N.I. job before Negroponte, andturned it down. Mike had a lot of the

same concerns I had with the 2004 act, interms of the ability to get things done,Gates told me. Under the legislation, theD.N.I. had the responsibility for execut-ing the intelligence budget and assuringthat everybody in the community obeyedthe law, but he didnt have the authorityto fire anybody. The community that

both men had spent decades serving wasin tumult. Morale was low, especially afterthe W.M.D. disgrace, when many Amer-icans blamed the intelligence communityfor dragging the country into an unneces-sary conflict. A number of experiencedofficers had walked away in shame andfrustration. Moreover, the nation that hadlaunched a war in Iraq because of faultyintelligence was now losing the battle, inpart because it was so poorly prepared tounderstand the enemy. Al Qaeda, which

the C.I.A. and the military had failed tovanquish in Afghanistan, was reconstitut-ing itself there, as well as in Pakistan, Iraq,Somalia, and North Africa. Meanwhile,North Korea had exploded a low-yieldnuclear bomb, and China was emergingas a rival to American supremacy. Theneed for reliable intelligence was arguablygreater than it had been during the Cold

War, when the enemy was easy to find, ifhard to destroy; now the enemy might bea small group of lightly armed men who

could be anywhere, and whose capacity tocause great harm had been appallinglydemonstrated.

Gates informed McConnell thathe had recommended McConnells oldfriend Lieutenant General James Clap-per to be Under-Secretary of Defense forIntelligence. I thought that, betweenHayden, McConnell, Clapper, and my-self, we could reach an agreement onsome of the issues that hadnt been re-solved by the legislation, Gates said. If

McConnell and Clapper took office,each of the major agencies would be ledby a military man. This unique align-ment, Gates and McConnell believed,would offer the best chance that the in-telligence community would ever have toreform itself. Unsurprisingly, the modelthey had in mind was the Americanarmed forces.

All four men were insiders who un-derstood the culture of intelligence-gath-ering. There hadnt been this kind of

alignment of stars in the more than fortyyears of my experience in the intelligencecommunity, Gates said. The question

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was whether they could be sufficientlyobjective and forceful to reshape a subter-ranean branch of government that hadfailed so deeply in its mission.

McConnell accepted the post and inFebruary, 2007, he was sworn in. Clap-pers wife gave McConnell and her hus-band clocks that counted down to the last

second of the Bush Administration, onJanuary 20, 2009. That was the amountof time, McConnell believed, that he hadto lead a revolution.

Idont know much about you, I ad-mitted to McConnell at the end ofJuly, when we met for the first of a seriesof discussions in his temporary office,which is at Bolling Air Force Base, inWashington. Despite his long career,there was little in the public record about

his background.Thats a good thing, he said. Im

a spy.He told me that he was born in Green-

ville, South Carolina, in 1943. Workingclass. My father grew up in a mill village.In the Depression, he worked sixty hoursfor six bucks. His view of the world wasthat wasnt right. So he decided to becomea union organizer. McConnells fathercampaigned against child labor and wasan outspoken proponent of civil rights, at

a time when that was genuinely danger-ous. McConnell recalled, The n word

was forbidden in my house, and it wasntuncommon for us to have black peoplecome over to the house for a meal. Kids Igrew up with would absolutely reject anythought of that. He said of his father,He pushed back against everything.

When I was ten, maybe thirteen years old,he described to me bureaucratic behaviorand people being afraid of change. Hesaid that people never accept change will-

ingly. I remember it as clear as day, think-ing, Change will never frighten me.

McConnells parents were poorThey had, basically, nothingso he gota student loan and a job and went toNorth Greenville Junior College, wherehe was elected student-body president inhis second year; he then transferred toFurman University, a private college, liv-ing in a closet in the gym during his firstsemester while he managed the basketballteam. In his senior year, he married his

childhood sweetheart, Suzanne Gideon,in the first of two marriages. It was 1965,during the Vietnam War.

Where I grew up, in South Carolina,theres a war, youre supposed to go, Mc-Connell said. He joined the Navy and,in August, 1967, went to Vietnam, spend-ing a year on a boat patrolling the Me-kong River. The lesson he learned fromVietnam was Be careful what you getinto. He went on, During the latter

stages of Vietnam, soldiers were fraggingtheir own officers, and drugs were ram-pant. The military was a shambles. Likethe agencies of the intelligence commu-nity, the militarys various branches un-dermined rather than helped one another.As McConnell put it, The Navy has itsown ground force, its own air force, andits own ships. So the view of the Navy is:

Why do we need anybody else?A new generation of leaders at the

Pentagon, McConnell said, decided that

the military needed to be reformed.Guys like Colin Powell, they just madea decisionThis is our Army, were tak-ing it back. And they did. What that ledto was an all-volunteer force, the mostprofessional army in history. In 1986,the Goldwater-Nichols Act restructuredthe military, despite resistance from theleaders of the uniformed branches. Thelaw established the Secretary of Defenseas the top decision-maker and awardedbattlefield commanders more control.

The 1991 Gulf War, with its cordi-nated use of overwhelming power, pro-vided a stunning example of the restruc-tured armed forces. McConnell recalled,

Every service chief stood up and said,This is the greatest thing to happen tothe United States military.

The 2004 intelligence legislation wasnot nearly as comprehensive as Goldwa-ter-Nichols, but McConnell came intooffice with a slate of reforms, called theHundred-Day Plan, that was modelled

on the streamlined military command.He proposed a culture of collaboration,which would require agencies to work to-gether. The cost of one agency hiding in-telligence from others was made dismallyclear in the recent Inspector General re-port on the performance of the C.I.A.before 9/11. The report revealed that inMarch, 2000, between fifty and sixty in-dividuals within the agency had knownthat two future Al Qaeda hijackers wereinfiltrating America, but nobody at the

C.I.A. had informed the F.B.I.McConnells hundred days ended in

August. He set up an executive commit-tee made up of the heads of the mostsignificant agencies, and took control ofthe budget for the community. Some im-portant advances were made in sharingintelligence and in prompting career em-ployees to serve outside their home agen-cies, but he admits that his office shouldhave been more realistic about how longit would take to bring about such pro-

found changes. In the fall, he establisheda Five-Hundred-Day Plan, which coin-cided with the number of days remainingon his countdown clock. This second

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phase focusses on information technologyand clearance issues. The intelligencecommunity is literally incapable of under-standing the enemy, because substantialsecurity barriers have been placed in thepath of Americans who are native speak-ers of Arabic and other critical languages.

In the six years since September 11th, verylittle progress has been made in hiringpeople who might penetrate and disruptAl Qaeda and its affiliates.

McConnell was undaunted. I grewup in this community, he said. I servedit as a consultant. Im passionate about it.So this job gives me the opportunity tomake a contribution, even to the conster-nation of the bureaucracies, because I amgoing to force them to coperate.

In August, just before the congressio-nal recess, members of the House andthe Senate were frantically seeking acompromise on a FISA-reform bill. Mc-Connell explained one day over lunch athis office, When the law was passed, in78, almost all international communica-tion was wireless, meaning that it reliedmainly on satellites. Today, ninety percent goes through a glass pipea fibre-optic cable. So it went from almost allwireless to almost all wire. He put down

his sandwich and walked over to a worldmap on his wall. Terrorist on a cellphone, right herehe pointed at Iraq

talking to a tower, happens all the time,no warrant. Tower goes up to a micro-wave tower, no warrant. Goes up to a sat-ellite, back to the ground station, no war-rant. Now, let us suppose that it goes upto a satellite, and in the process it doesthishis finger darted to the U.S. be-

fore angling back to Pakistan. Gottahave a warrant! So it was crazy.

The changes to FISAthat McConnellproposed were minor, in his view. Threethings we wanted, he told me, in char-acteristic bulletin language. First, wehad to have a situation where it doesntrequire us to get a warrant for a foreignperson in a foreign country. Secondpoint, we need the coperation of theprivate sector. The private sector is beingsued for allegedly coperating with the

government. He was referring to reportsthat, even before 9/11, many of Ameri-cas major telecommunications compa-nies had diverted virtually all records oftelephone and e-mail traffic from theirrouters into N.S.A. data banks, where itcould be stored and examined. McCon-nell wanted liability protection not onlyfor the companies future coperation butfor their past actions as well; however, heagreed to take the issue of retroactive im-munity off the table if Congress would

reconsider the matter after its recess.(We were in a pissing contest with theAdministration, because they wouldnt

give us the documents to show whatthey needed the immunity for, SilvestreReyes, of Texas, the chairman of theHouse Intelligence Committee, toldme.) McConnells third point was un-controversial: he wanted a warrant to berequired whenever a person in the U.S.was the object of surveillance. However,

the reform bill before Congress, whichDemocrats in both houses had rejected,did not protect Americanstravellers,soldiers, exchange students, diplomatswho happened to be outside the UnitedStates.

As the vote on the legislation ap-proached, the Administration let it beknown that threats from Al Qaeda hadincreased in number; there had even beensigns, it claimed, of a plot to attack Con-gress. Many lawmakers felt manipulated

and suspicious. In a meeting with Mc-Connell, I said, According to SenatorHarry Reid, the legislation authorizeswarrantless searches and surveillance ofAmerican phone calls, e-mails, homes,offices, and

Totally untrue! McConnell ex-claimed. Im telling you, if youre in theUnited States you have to have a warrant.Authorized by the court. Period! Criticsargued, however, that the proposed lawleft a loophole. If the Attorney General

and the D.N.I. decided that a foreign tar-get was a subject of interest, the law per-mitted them to conduct surveillance onany Americans who might be in touchwith that person, to break into theirhomes, to open their mail, to examinetheir medical recordsall without a war-rant. Legislators worried that the lawwould permit the intelligence commu-nity to reverse-target Americans whohappened to be making internationalcalls but who had nothing to do with

terrorism.Thats a violation of the Constitu-

tion, McConnell said. We cant do that,wouldnt do that. Naturally, some inno-cent Americans would be overheard, heconceded. What do you do about it? Itscalled minimize. Courts reviewed itit

works. You get an inadvertent collection?When you recognize what it is, you de-stroy it. Exception: lets suppose it wasterrorism or crime. In that case, as a com-munity, it is our obligation to report

it. But to claim that this community ismonitoring the e-mail and telephonecalls of millions of Americans, and that

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were doing reverse-targeting, is clearlyabsurd.

McConnell admitted that Congresshad reason to be wary of the intelligencecommunitys intentions. In the forties,fifties, sixties, seventiesevery Presidentused either law enforcement or intel toconduct activities in the interest of na-

tional security by tapping telephones ofAmericans, he said.FISAhad been a use-ful corrective. He summed up the lawsintent as follows: You intel guys go offand do your foreign-intel mission, but ifyou ever do it in this country you gottahave a warrant, O.K.?

The intelligence agencies have alwayshad a murky relationship with the law.We have to be at the edge of legality allthe time, Admiral William Studeman,

who preceded McConnell as the director

of the N.S.A., told me. Otherwise, wecant do our job. He added, In foreignenvironments, all espionage agenciesbreak the laws every daybut theyresomebody elses laws. Now there seems tobe a notion that because were criminalsoverseas were criminals domestically.

Six weeks after 9/11, Congress passedthe U.S.A. Patriot Act. The F.B.I. wasgiven expanded authority to issue na-tional-security letters, a form of sub-poena entitling the bureau to pry into the

private lives of American citizens and vis-itors who were not the subject of a crim-inal investigation and might not evenhave been suspected of being terroristsor spies. There was no judicial oversight.Unlike a FISAwarrant, a national-secu-rity letter did not permit the governmentto eavesdrop on phone calls or reade-mails, but it did allow the examinationof phone records, bank accounts, Websearches, and credit-card purchases. TheF.B.I. was required to prove a specific

national-security need before servingsuch letters, but a recent Justice Depart-ment audit uncovered dozens of cases inwhich bureau officials appeared to haveviolated this rule. We found wholesaleabuse of that authority, Silvestre Reyestold me. It underscored the need forconstitutional protections.

I asked McConnell how the new FISAlaw would be different. How couldAmericans be sure that the intelligencecommunity wouldnt commit even more

intimate invasions of privacy?A national-security letter was a whole

new tool, he explained. Now, did the

F.B.I. have the structure and experienceand time to learn, the way you do in theFISAworld? In fact they did not. It wasused in a sloppy way. He said that theFISAsystem, by contrast, was governed bya strict protocol that had been in place fordecades. (A special FISAcourt in Wash-ington, established in 1978, confidentially

weighs all requests for FISAwarrants.)On August 1st, McConnell and his

staff stayed up all night preparing theirposition on FISAfor lawmakers. Despitehis long government service, McConnellhad never been enmeshed in a partisanlegislative debate. Mike McConnell is afirst-rate professional, Senator ArlenSpecter, Republican of Pennsylvania,told me. But hes a little out of his ele-ment in politics.

The next afternoon, the top Demo-

cratic leaders, including Reid and Reyes,gathered in the office of Nancy Pelosi, theSpeaker of the House, and placed a call toMcConnell. The Democrats presentedhim with their proposal, which stated,among other things, that if Congress wasgoing to allow the President to conduct

warrantless surveillance the power had tobe limited to matters of terrorism. McCon-nell responded that this would hamperthe ability of the intelligence communityto collect information about dangerous

foreign powers such as Iran and NorthKorea. He also rejected language in thebill requiring the Attorney General andthe FISAcourt to establish guidelines for

which kinds of contact between a targetedforeigner and a U.S. person merited a

warrant; he called the idea a poison pill.The Democrats ceded on both points. Hepledged to get back to the leaders half anhour later,with a new draft of their billwhich reflected his concerns.

When McConnell didnt call back, the

Democrats telephoned his office. His as-sistant told them that he was talking to the

White House. McConnell called back ataround seven. According to two peoplepresent in Pelosis office, McConnell apol-ogized, saying that he had been on thephone with the other side and that hecould no longer abide by their compro-mise. He told the Democrats, Ive spentforty years of my life in this business, andIve been shot at during war. Ive never feltso much pressure in my life.

Late that evening, McConnells officesent the legislators a sweeping revi-sion that bore little resemblance to their

bill. Reyes, among others, felt betrayed.We had thought we were dealing ingood faith, he said. (McConnell deniesthat he and the Democrats had a firmagreement.)

On Friday, August 3rd, in a furiousscramble, the Democrats and the Re-publicans pushed rival bills to the floor.

McConnell happened to be on CapitolHill, explaining some of the technicallanguage to the senators, and was sur-prised to discover that the Senate wasabout to vote. At that point, I had seenneither version, he said. He was in theVice-Presidents office in the Senate,watching the debate on a monitor, aseach side claimed to be sponsoring Mc-Connells bill. McConnell wrote a noteofficially rejecting the Democratic ver-sion, saying that it creates significant

uncertainty.The Republican bill, called the Pro-

tect America Act, passed that night. Thenext day, the House, desperate to ad-journ, passed the legislation, which wasdesignated a placeholder that would ex-pire in six months, allowing lawmakersto deliberate more fully after their break.

Then all the press stuff started, Mc-Connell said. The White House rolledMcConnell! The nave admiral learns ahard political lesson. I guess the part that

bothered me a bit was the rhetoric com-ing off the Hill, impugning my integrity,saying I was less than honest. Whenasked if he had bowed to the WhiteHouse, McConnell said, Nothing couldbe further from the truth.

Six mornings a week, McConnellawakens at four, does twenty minutesof back exercises, then prepares for hisdaily briefing of President Busha taskthat was formerly the jealously guarded

prerogative of the C.I.A. The night be-fore each meeting, McConnell receives adraft of the Presidential Daily Brief, acompendium of topical items. At 6A.M.,a dark armored Suburban arrives at hishouse, in northern Virginia, and takeshim to the White House. On the way,he says, he reads a summary of opera-tional and intelligence trafficmes-sages, e-mails, or whateverfrom thepast twenty-four hours.

The Presidential briefing starts be-

tween seven-thirty and eight and rarelylasts longer than an hour. In additionto Bush and Cheney, the core group

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Live, Powell recalled. Thats when Iknew wed made a good decision.

In 1992, both Powell and Cheneysponsored McConnells candidacy tobecome the head of the N.S.A., eventhough McConnell had been promotedto a one-star admiral only nine monthsearlier. By law, the N.S.A. position re-

quires three stars; thanks to his powerfulpatrons, McConnell received two addi-tional ones.

When he took over the N.S.A., theCold War had just ended and Congresshad decided to extract a peace dividendfrom the intelligence community. Newhiring came to a near-halt just as the se-curity challenges became far more diverse.

There was a surfeit of Russian linguistsbut scarcely anyone who, for instance,could speak Serbo-Croatian, during the

breakup of the former Yugoslavia, or theCreole dialect of Haiti, when the ClintonAdministration sent troops there to re-store order. The agency had to hire Hai-tian menial laborers in Washington andput them to work listening to intercepts inN.S.A. headquarters.

There was, however, an even greaterchallenge for the N.S.A. than hiring newlinguists. The Internet and e-mail wereradically expanding the abilities of terror-ists and rogue states to communicate.

When I went there in 92, the Internetexistedit was called Arpanetbut theWorld Wide Web did not, McConnellrecalled. Then the Web made the Inter-net accessible for everybody. My worldexploded.

One afternoon, as McConnell and Iwere walking back to his officefrom the cafeteria, in the basement, wepassed the security room, where a pair ofguards monitored half a dozen screens

displaying a video of the buildingsgrounds. The setup was, by Hollywoodstandards, disappointingly low-tech. Iasked McConnell if hed seen TheBourne Ultimatum, in which Matt Da-mons character is pursued by C.I.A.officers with instant global access to sur-veillance cameras, banking transactions,and passport controls. Yeah, we cant dothat, McConnell admitted. Thats allhorse pucky.

The intelligence community has

lagged significantly behind private indus-try in the development and use of inno-vative technology. There have been

includes Joshua Bolten, Bushs chief ofstaff, and Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser. We take analysts intothe Oval Office three or four times aweek for what we call a deep dive, Mc-Connell said. Once a week, the deep diveconcerns Iraq. The Secretaries of Stateand Defense usually attend. Sometimes

well go right out of the briefing in theOval to the Situation Room, where wellmeet with the National Security Coun-cil. A screen in the room displays livevideo feeds of Ryan Crocker, the Am-bassador to Iraq; General David Pe-traeus, the U.S. commander there; andAdmiral William J. Fallon, the CENTCOMcommander. McConnell went on,Another day, we do Homeland Secu-rity, so in the room will be the core group,plus the Attorney General, the director

of the F.B.I., the Secretary of HomelandSecurity, and the adviser to the Presidentfor Homeland Security. Another day, wecould do a deep dive on the former Yu-goslavia, Georgia, Russia, Chinawhat-ever the issue is.

By nine-thirty, McConnell is back inthe Suburban, headed to Bolling AirForce Base. His temporary office is in theDefense Intelligence Agency buildingthere, a chilly steel-and-glass structurewith a Scud missile erected beside the el-

evator bank and a pair of Saddam Hus-seins gold-plated automatic weaponsdisplayed in the lobby. His office is spare,except for a photograph of his childrenand a few treasured artifactsa Yemenidagger and a blue vase from the PeoplesLiberation Army of China. Through thelarge windows, one can see planes land-ing at Washingtons National Airportand marines running around a track. Hefrequently leaves the office to testify be-fore Congress, or flies off for a speech.

He usually arrives home around eight.My wife gets about fifteen minutes aday, he said. Shes not a happy camper.Now, Im not complaining. This is a de-manding job, but I love doing it.

McConnell claims to be apolitical,by which he means nonpartisan. Im nota Republican or a Democrat, he told me.My worry is good government. On an-other occasion, he said, I always vote,and Ive voted for both parties. His po-litical heroes are Lincoln, Churchill, and

Franklin Roosevelt. The thing that al-ways impressed me was the pressure onLincoln, and how he stood up to it, he

said. He noted the discord surroundingLincolns decision to suspend habeas cor-pus during the Civil War. There are alot of parallels. The current Administra-tion is accused of spying on Americans.And Im right in the middle of that.

McConnell often speaks admiringlyof General Colin Powell, who, as chair-

man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1990,hired McConnell, then a Navy captain,to be his intelligence officer. I was im-pressed by his reputation and by his in-terview, Powell told me. McConnellwas well versed in technical intelligence,but not in other important areas, such asground warfare. That didnt seem likesuch a liability at the time. It was go-ing to be a quiet summer, so I hiredhim, Powell said, laughing. Four dayslater, Saddam Husseins troops invaded

Kuwait.It was McConnell who informed

Powell that Iraqi troops had massed onthe border. At a speech last fall at theWoodrow Wilson International Centerfor Scholars, in Washington, he recalled,Im anticipating the question was goingto be How many divisions. He said,Mike, how many maneuver brigades? Ididnt even know what a maneuver bri-gade was. . . . So I now feel about twoinches tall. I said, Sir, I dont know, but

Ill find out. Powell was not bothered bythe reply. He instructed McConnell inhis rules for an intelligence agent: Tellme what you know, then tell me whatyou dontknow, and only then can youtell me what you think. Always keepthose three separated. Powell says thatMcConnell spent weeks carrying aroundflash cards of Army terms.

The government was desperate to de-termine whether Iraqi troops were merelyon a maneuver or were poised for inva-

sion. Cheney, then the Secretary of De-fense, was demanding a verdict, and theintelligence community was typically re-luctant to render one. Twenty-two hoursbefore the invasion, McConnell correctly

judged that Saddam intended to moveinto Kuwait. His willingness to take astand earned Cheneys admiration. Soonafter the onset of Desert Storm, theAmerican-led effort that repelled the Iraqiinvasion, Powell had so much confidencein McConnells grasp of ground warfare

that he charged him with delivering dailypress briefings. He got so good that hestarted being parodied by Saturday Night

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McConnell at Bolling Air Force Base, in Washington, D.C., where he works in a temporary office.

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50 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 21, 2008

breakthroughs, General Clapper, theDefense Under-Secretary, told me, cit-ing the use of cell phones and computerson the battlefield, although he acknowl-edges that Al Qaeda has also made cre-ative use of those technologies. By com-parison, during the Second World Warthe U.S. government developed ad-

vanced radar and jet engines, and in-vented the atomic bomb. Six years of thewar on terror have brought nothingnearly as significant; instead, the intelli-gence community has only warily appro-priated models whose usefulness is blind-ingly obvious. In 2006, the communityadopted Intellipedia, a secure version ofWikipedia. Blogging is now permittedon internal servers, giving contrarianopinion a voice. There is a new A-Spacebased on sites such as MySpace

and Facebookin which analysts posttheir current projects as a way of creatingsocial networks. The Library of NationalIntelligence is an online digest of officialreports that will soon provide analystswho use it with tips, much the way Am-azon and iTunes offer recommendationsto their customers. These innovationshave not yet made their way to the ana-lysts and agents in the field, however.

Despite such attempts to bring to-gether resources and staff, the commu-

nity still relies on more than thirty onlinenetworks and eighty databases, most ofwhich are largely inaccessible to one an-other. After the 2004 reforms, whichmandated greater information sharing,the community turned to private indus-try for help in creating the NationalCounter-Terrorism Center, which is innorthern Virginia, at an undisclosed lo-cation. An engineer from Walt DisneyImagineering, the theme-park developer,designed it. Even the chairs in the

lunchroom are the same ones we had atthe Disney Studios, a former Disney ex-ecutive, who now works at the center,told me. The only difference is thesechairs dont have the mouse ears. Shewas one of several former Disney em-ployees who signed up for governmentservice after 9/11. The fantasy worldsthat Disney creates have a surprisingamount in common with the ideal uni-verse envisaged by the intelligence com-munity, in which environments are care-

fully controlled and people are closelyobserved, and no one seems to mind.

The center has a futuristic videocon-

ference room, featuring a table that canchange its shape and has pop-up com-

puter consoles. Three times a day, ana-lysts gather around it to discuss thethreat matrix. The heart of the buildingis the operations center, a dim roomwhere analysts from various agencies areilluminated by the lights of multiplecomputer monitors. When I was there,Fox News was playing on a huge televi-sion screen at the front of the room.

Disney Imagineering also provided theO.D.N.I.s first science-and-technologydirector, Eric Haseltine, who joined the

N.S.A. after September 11th. He was dis-mayed by the lumbering pace of innova-tion, the absence of collaboration, and thelack of thought about how new productsmight be employed. Insufficient atten-tion was being paid to the end user, hesaid. Much of the intelligence communityis technophobic and is also hamstrung bysecurity concerns. Only recently haveBlackBerrys made their way into someagencies, and many offices dont evenhave Internet connections. At Disney,

we had to make technology work for afour-year-old and a grandmother in-stantly, and be fun, Haseltine said.

Haseltine and his successor, SteveNixon, have set up an intelligence version

of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Re-search Projects Agency, which was cre-ated in 1958, after the Soviet launch ofSputnik, and led to the development ofthe Internet, the Global PositioningSystem, night-vision goggles, Predatordrones, and Stealth aircraft. (After 9/11,DARPAalso gave birth to Total Informa-tion Awareness, a program designed tosort through vast sets of data about indi-viduals, including Americans, in order toidentify potential terrorists. Congress

killed the program in 2003, but many ofits capabilities were passed along to otherdepartments.) Like DARPA, the O.D.N.I.version sponsors radical innovationgame-changing breakthroughs, asNixon puts it. The program has onlya few dozen employees, but it expectsto collaborate with private businesses,nonprofits, and universities. The mostsignificant product of this effort so far isArgus, a program that monitors foreignnews reports and other open sources

looking for evidence of bird die-offs, cropfailures, an unusual number of death no-ticesanything that could provide an

Old mARx

I try to envision his last winter,London, cold and damp, the snows curt kisseson empty streets, the Thames black water.Chilled prostitutes lit bonfires in the park.

Vast locomotives sobbed somewhere in the night.The workers spoke so quickly in the pubthat he couldnt catch a single word.Perhaps Europe was richer and at peace,but the Belgians still tormented the Congo.

And Russia? Its tyranny? Siberia?

He spent evenings staring at the shutters.He couldnt concentrate, rewrote old work,reread young Marx for days on end,and secretly admired that ambitious author.He still had faith in his fantastic vision,

but in moments of doubthe worried that hed given the world onlya new version of despair;then hed close his eyes and see nothingbut the scarlet darkness of his lids.

Adam Zagajewski(Translated, from the Polish, by Clare Cavanagh.)

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early warning of an epidemic, nuclear ac-cident, or environmental catastrophe.The program, which began in 2004,spotted the appearance of avian flu in2006 and a recent outbreak of Ebolain Angola. During flu season last year,the program tracked more than a thou-sand socially disruptive diseases simul-

taneously. Argus now monitors a mil-lion Web pages in twenty-eight lan-guages and in nearly every country in theworldexcept the U.S., where suchscrutiny would stir concerns about do-mestic spying.

The intelligence community is alsomarshalling insights from the social sci-ences. Psychologists, for example, arestudying how terrorists behave whenthey are attempting to avoid detection;agents will then be trained to look for ex-

amples of such behavior. Nixon said,Were also looking at virtual worlds andgamingimmersive environments inwhich to train agents, such as SecondLife. He conceded that such efforts werederivative. Our brightest people areworking on things in the commercial en-vironment. The problem is that we donthave a lock on that. Technology is a two-edged sword for the intelligence commu-nity. For instance, with biology, therecould be a time in the not distant future

when teen-agers can design biologicalcomponents just as they do computer vi-ruses today. Thats why I think intelli-gence is as critical now as at any time inour nations history.

At the N.S.A., McConnell set up anew office to conduct information war-fare against potential enemies, but heeventually realized that America, with itshuge computer networks, was far morevulnerable to such attacks than its adver-saries. Ed Giorgio, a security consultant

who worked at the N.S.A. under McCon-nell, and who is the only person to havebeen both the nations chief code breakerand its chief code maker, said, Early on,Mike had what many directors of theN.S.A. have near the end of their ten-urethat is, an info-sec epiphany. Ifonly I had paid more attention to ourown systems! Practically nothing wasbeing done to secure American compu-ter networks, which the entire worldroutinely depended upon. Information

security became McConnells passion.In the nineties, new encryption soft-

ware that could protect telephone con-

versations, faxes, and e-mails from un-warranted monitoring was coming onthe market, but the programs could alsoblock entirely legal efforts to eavesdropon criminals or potential terrorists. UnderMcConnells direction, the N.S.A. de-veloped a sophisticated device, the Clip-per Chip, with a superior ability to en-

crypt any electronic transmission; it alsoallowed law-enforcement officials, giventhe proper authority, to decipher andeavesdrop on the encrypted communica-tions of others. Privacy advocates criti-cized the device, though, and the Clipperwas abandoned by 1996. They con-vinced the folks on the Hill that theycouldnt trust the government to do whatit said it was going to do, Richard Wil-helm, who was in charge of informationwarfare under McConnell, says.

At Booz Allen, McConnell helpeddevelop a program designed to protectthe global financial network. He and ateam of veterans from the New YorkStock Exchange and information-tech-nology officers from major financial in-stitutions put together a report that sur-veyed the systems vulnerabilities, andsubmitted it to the Presidents Commis-sion on Critical Infrastructure Protec-tion. Our study, which was unclassified,was so compelling that they classified it!

McConnell says, laughing. McConnellsteam eventually won nearly three hun-dred million dollars in government con-tracts for Booz Allen.

Every day, the Defense Departmentdetects three million unauthorized probesof its computer networks; the State De-partment fends off two mil-lion. Sometimes, these turninto full-scale attacks, suchas an assault last spring onthe Pentagon that required

fifteen hundred computersto be taken off-line. In May,the German governmentdiscovered that a spywareprogram had been plantedinside government computers in severalkey ministries, and also in the office ofChancellor Angela Merkel. The Ger-mans blamed the Chinese Army. Thehead of Britains M.I.5, the domestic in-telligence agency, recently said that Chi-nese and Russian spying was at such a

high level that combatting it was divert-ing government resources from counter-terrorism. McConnell says that the U.S.

faces similar problems. Chinese spyinghas gone up significantly, and Russianspying hasnt decreased at all since theCold War, he says. (A spokesman for theChinese consulate called the German andAmerican accusations preposterous.) EdGiorgio explained the situation to me:There are forty thousand Chinese hack-

ers who are collecting intelligence off U.S.information systems and those of ourpartners. How many of them can readEnglish? Almost every one of them. If youask how many intelligence-gatheringpeople are doing similar things in Mikes

vast empire, the answer would be tiny.And you wont find any who understandMandarin. We should never get into ahacking war with the Chinese.

One day in May, at a meeting with thePresident and several cabinet members,

McConnell asked for authority to wageinformation warfare against the tech-savvy insurgents in Iraq. First, he de-scribed the three aspects of information-

warfare operations. Computer-networkexploitationthat is, the theft or manip-ulation of informationis done by theN.S.A. Computer-network attacks arethe province of the Department of De-fense. The third element, computer-net-

work defense, was not the specialty ofany agency. According to someone who

was in the Oval Office, McConnell thensaid, If the 9/11 perpetrators had fo-cussed on a single U.S. bank throughcyber-attack and it had been successful,it would have an order-of-magnitudegreater impact on the U.S. economy.

The President blanched and turned to theSecretary of the Treasury,Henry Paulson. Is that true,Hank? he said. Paulsonsaid that it was. The Presi-dent then charged McCon-

nell to come up with a secu-rity strategy, not only forgovernment systems butalso for American indus-try and private individuals.

One proposal of McConnells Cyber-Security Policy, which is still in the draftstage, is to reduce the access points be-tween government computers and the In-ternet from two thousand to fifty. Thereal question is what to do about indus-try, McConnell told me. Ninety-five per

cent of this is a private-sector problem.He claimed that cyber-theft accounted foras much as a hundred billion dollars in

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annual losses to the American economy.The real problem is the perpetrator whodoesnt care about stealinghe just wantsto destroy. The plan will propose restric-tions that are certain to be unpopular. Inorder for cyberspace to be policed, Inter-net activity will have to be closely moni-tored. Ed Giorgio, who is working with

McConnell on the plan, said that wouldmean giving government the authority toexamine the content of any e-mail, filetransfer, or Web search. Google has re-cords that could help in a cyber-investiga-tion, he said. Giorgio warned me, Wehave a saying in this business: Privacy andsecurity are a zero-sum game.

With the cyber-security initiative,McConnell is asking the country to con-front a dilemma: Americans will have totrust the government not to abuse the au-

thority it must have in order to protectour networks, and yet, historically, thegovernment has not proved worthy ofthat trust. FISAreform will be a walk inthe park compared to this, McConnellsaid. This is going to be a goat rope onthe Hill. My prediction is that weregoing to screw around with this untilsomething horrendous happens.

F

or all McConnells insistence onchange, he often thinks like a tradi-

tional spy. During one conversation, Iasked McConnell, Have we gotten mean-ingful information through torture?

We dont torture, he respondedautomatically.

O.K., through aggressive interroga-tion techniques.

Aggressive is your word, he said.Have we gotten meaningful informa-tion? You betcha. Tons! Does it savelives? Tons! Weve gotten incredible in-formation. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

K.S.M. No. 3. Go pull his testimony. Alot of what we know about Al Qaeda andwhat we shut down came out of that.(The reliability of the confession of Mo-hammed, who after sustained abuseclaimed a role in more than thirty crimi-nal plots, has been widely questioned.)He peered over his glasses. And this wasa test for Mike McConnell. When AbuGhraib happened, my view was that wehad lost the moral high ground.

McConnell had not yet returned to

government when the Abu Ghraib scan-dal broke, but after becoming director ofNational Intelligence he received the still

secret protocol that the White Househad devised to govern future interroga-tions. Shortly after Attorney GeneralAlberto Gonzales came into office, inFebruary, 2005, he issued an opinion en-dorsing the most brutal interrogationtechniques that the C.I.A. had ever used.According to the Times, the agency had

learned some of these methods fromEgyptian and Saudi intelligence officials;others were drawn from old Soviet tech-niques. The methods included strippinga suspect naked and placing him in a coldcell; manacling him in a painful posture;subjecting him to deafening rock music;head slapping; and waterboarding, an actof simulated drowning that was used inthe Spanish Inquisition. Any one ofthese techniques would likely violate theinternational legal standards banning

torture, such as the Geneva Conven-tions. The C.I.A. had used specialmethods of questioning on about thirtypeople, McConnell learned.

I had to sign off on that program,McConnell told me. The President saidwe dont torture anyone, but I had toconvince myself by going through thewhole process. He pored over the pro-cedures that had been secretly authorizedby the Bush Administration. I sat downwith the doctors and the medical person-

nel who oversee the process, he said.Our policies are not torture.

I asked how he defined torture.Theres a history of people making

claims that its not torture if you dontforce the failure of a major organ, Mc-Connell said, referring to the infamous2002 memo by John Yoo, a Justice De-partment lawyer, who argued that an in-terrogation technique was torture onlywhen it was as painful as organ failure ordeath. My view is, thats kind of absurd.

Its pretty simple. Is it excruciatinglypainful to the point of forcing someoneto say something because of the pain?McConnell leaned forward confidentially.Now, how descriptive do I want to bewith you? I dont want to tell you every-thing, and why is that? Look, these guystalk because, among other things, theyrescared.

McConnell asserted that it was notdifficult to evaluate the truthfulness ofa confession, even a coerced one. And

as soon as they start to talk we can tellin minutes if they are lying, he said.One, you know a lot. And you know

when someone is giving you informationthat is not connecting up to what youknow. You also know when to use apolygraph.

McConnell refused to specify whatnew methods had been approved for theC.I.A. There are techniques to get theinformation, and when they get the in-

formation it has saved lives, he saidvaguely. We have people walking aroundin this country that are alive today be-cause this process happened.

Couldnt the information be obtainedthrough other means?

No, McConnell said. You can saythat absolutely. He again cited the caseof Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Hewould not have talked to us in a hundredyears. Tough guy. Absolutely commit-ted. He had this mental image of himself

as a warrior and a martyr. No way hewould talk to us. Among the things thatMohammed confessed to was the mur-der of Daniel Pearl. And yet few peopleinvolved in the investigation of Pearlsdeath believe that Mohammed had any-thing to do with the crime; another man,Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, was con-victed of killing Pearl.

I mentioned McConnells hero, Gen-eral Powell, whose disastrous speech tothe United Nations, in February, 2003,

made the case to the world for invadingIraqa case founded on faulty intelli-gence. Part of Powells presentation wasbased on the testimony of Ibn al-Sheikhal-Libi, an Al Qaeda operative who wascaptured by Pakistani forces in Decem-ber, 2001. The Pakistanis turned himover to the Americans. According to JackCloonan, a former F.B.I. agent involvedin the interrogation, Libi was providinguseful and accurate intelligence until theC.I.A. took custody of him and placed

him inside a plywood box for transport.He was reportedly sent to Egypt and tor-tured. (An agency spokesman said, TheC.I.A. does not transport individualsanywhere to be tortured.) Libi allegedlytold his interrogators that the Iraqi mili-tary had trained two Al Qaeda associatesin chemical and biological warfare. Thiswas the essence of Colin Powells claim:Saddam had weapons of mass destruc-tion and was working with Al Qaeda.Neither assertion was true. How could

we ever trust information obtained undertorture when such methods had alreadyled us into a catastrophic war?

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Now, wait a minute, McConnellsaid. You allege torture. I dont know.Maybe it was. I dont know. He wasntin office at the time.

I asked what personal experiences in-formed his views.

McConnell recalled that before goingto Vietnam he had participated in the

militarys Survival, Evasion, Resistanceand Escape program. You had to gothrough jungle training, get slappedaround, knocked down, put in a box,physically abused, he said. Thats toprepare you for what the enemy might doto you. McConnell was thrown into acovered pit with a snake. There was noroom to stand or move around. Theywould open up the thing and whackyou a few times and close it down, hesaid. They beat us up reasonably well.

However, he knew that he was not goingto die.

Waterboarding was not a part of thetraining when McConnell went throughSERE, although it sometimes has been.You know what waterboarding is? heasked. You lay somebody on this table,or put them in an inclined position, andput a washcloth over their face, and youjust drip water right herehe pointedto his nostrils. Try it! What happensis, water will go up your nose. And so

you will get the sensation of potentiallydrowning. Thats all waterboarding is.

I asked if he considered that torture.McConnell refused to answer di-

rectly, but he said, My own definition oftorture is something that would cause ex-cruciating pain.

Did waterboarding fit that de-scription?

Referring to his teen-age days as alifeguard, he said, I know one thing. Ima water-safety instructor, but I cannot

swim without covering my nose. I dontknow if its some deviated septum ormucus membrane, but water just rushesin. For him, he said, waterboardingwould be excruciating. If I had waterdraining into my nose, oh God, I justcant imagine how painful! Whether itstorture by anybody elses definition, forme it would be torture.

I queried McConnell again, later,about his views on waterboarding, sincethis exchange seemed to suggest that

he personally condemned it. He re-jected that interpretation. You can dowaterboarding lots of different ways, he

said. I assume you can get to the pointthat a person is actually drowning. Thatwould certainly be torture, he said. Thedefinition didnt seem very different fromJohn Yoos. The reason that he couldntbe more specific, McConnell said, is thatif it ever is determined to be torture,there will be a huge penalty to be paid for

anyone engaging in it.

In early September, German authori-ties arrested three Islamic radicals whowere allegedly planning terrorist strikesagainst an American military base andthe Frankfurt airport. In a hearing of theSenate Homeland Security and Govern-mental Affairs Committee, on Septem-ber 10th, Senator Joseph Liebermanasked McConnell if the temporary FISAlegislation that Congress had just passed

contributed to the arrests of those men.Yes, sir, it did, McConnell replied, ex-plaining that, by monitoring the com-munications of the underground cell, theU.S. learned that the men had alreadyobtained explosive liquids. The Germanauthorities decided to move, he said.

In fact, the information about theGerman cell had been obtained underthe previous FISAlaw. McConnell con-ceded the point two days later, after anarticle in the Times questioned his

claim.Later that month, McConnell ap-

peared before congressional committees,seeking to make the provisional Protect

America Act a permanent law. He un-derscored the need for FISAreform byciting the example of the three kidnappedAmerican soldiers in Iraq. (The body ofone serviceman has since been discov-ered; the other two men remain missing.)In a hearing of the House IntelligenceCommittee, McConnell asserted that

bureaucratic delays caused by requestinga FISAwarrant had slowed the search inthe critical moments after the soldierscapture. This argument made a deep im-pression on the legislators. Representa-tive Heather Wilson, of New Mexico,said to McConnell, We had U.S. sol-diers who were captured in Iraq by insur-gents and . . . we werent able to listen totheir communications. Is that correct?She asked, If it was your kid, is thatgood enough?

I asked McConnell about the rele-vance of the soldiers kidnapping, sincethe FISAlaw allowed a three-day graceperiod, after the start of monitoring, toobtain a warrant. When people hearthat story, they say, Well, dont you haveemergency authority? McConnell said.Sure we do. But the emergency author-ity still has to go through a process.Somebodys gotta approve it.

He refused to be more specific aboutwhat, if anything, had prevented the in-

telligence community from monitoringthe kidnappers immediately. If you un-derstand it, and you write it down, thenthe bad guys understand it, he said cryp-

Your rsum is very impressive. What kind of no-show job do you want?

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tically. Ive told you that this debate,this debate is going to cost Americanlives. He tapped the table for emphasis.This debate is going to cost Americanlives!

McConnell returned for anotherhearing on September 25th. Many Dem-

ocrats remained angry with him over hisretreat from the compromise bill duringthe August FISAdebate. You gave assur-ances that were not fulfilled, and madeagreements that were not kept, SenatorJay Rockefeller, of West Virginia, hadwritten him during the summer recess.Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, of RhodeIsland, echoed these complaints. Thestampede worked, he wrote in a note.You won. But you did so at a substantialprice, one that will be paid in rancor, sus-

picion, and distrust.Such emotions were very much in ev-

idence as McConnell sat at the witnesstable in a wood-panelled hearing room.The glowering face of Senator PatrickLeahy, of Vermont, loomed over thedais. Before administering the oath toMcConnell, he chided, I hope well nothear any more irresponsible rhetoricabout congressional inquiries riskingAmerican lives.

Many Democrats clearly regretted

passing the temporary FISAbill. Leahy,in his introduction, said that the actprovides no meaningful check by the

FISAcourt, or by the Congress for thatmatter. Shortly after McConnell beganhis opening statement, Leahy testily cuthim off. He mentioned McConnellsmistaken testimony about the relevanceof the Protect America Act to the recentarrests in Germany. Now, Im just won-

dering, why did you testify to somethingthat was false? McConnells ears turnedbright red. He said that he had been re-ferring to FISAin general, not the newreforms.

Leahy mentioned an attorney in hishome state who is representing a clientdetained at the American-run prison inGuantnamo Bay, Cuba. Hes worriedthat his calls regarding his client arebeing monitored by the government,Leahy said. He makes calls overseas, in-

cluding to Afghanistan, on behalf ofhis client. . . . You can see why peopleworry.

That month, McConnells office wasforced to make another embarrassingdisclosure. Silvestre Reyes, the HouseIntelligence Committee chairman, de-manded that the O.D.N.I. release a timeline of the kidnapping of the Americansoldiers in Iraq. McConnell had earliertestified that it took somewhere in theneighborhood of twelve hours to get the

Attorney General to authorize an emer-gency FISAwiretap on insurgents.

The O.D.N.I.s time line showed

that the soldiers were kidnapped southof Baghdad on May 12th. Over thenext two days, intelligence officialspicked up signals that they believedwere coming from the kidnappers, andthey received FISAauthorization to tar-get the communications of insurgents.The record shows that the intelligence

community had immediately assignedall available assets to search for themissing soldiers.

Then, on May 15th, at 10A.M., lead-ers from several key intelligence agenciesmet to discuss other options for en-hanced surveillance. (McConnell wouldnot disclose what form of additionalmonitoring was being explored.) By1 P.M., the N.S.A. had determined thatall the requirements for an emergencyFISAauthorization had been met. But

intelligence officials and lawyers contin-ued to debate minute legal issues forfour more hours. At 5:15 P.M., hoursafter the N.S.A. made its determination,and three days after the soldiers disap-peared, Justice Department lawyers de-layed the process further by decidingthat they needed to obtain direct autho-rization from Attorney General Gonza-les, who was in Texas making a speech.Gonzales finally called back, at 7:18 P.M.,and within twenty minutes the en-

hanced surveillance began. It was notthe FISAlaw that retarded the intensifiedmonitoring of the insurgents but, rather,internal wrangling between the JusticeDepartment and the intelligence com-munity. That said, the confusion overthe limits of American law when appliedto a desperate situation in a foreigncountry underscored the need for legalclarity.

Despite his missteps, McConnell hasso far succeeded in winning every impor-

tant point in the FISAdebate. The billsthat are now under consideration awardthe intelligence community nearly asmuch authority as it enjoyed under thePresidents secret wiretapping program,although with somewhat more supervi-sion and with the stipulation that war-rants be obtained to monitor Americansinside the country. The battle has harmedMcConnells reputation, however. It isconvenient to say, McConnell was a badguy, McConnell broke faithits easy

to say that because they lost! McCon-nell said. We went to the mat, andthey lost.

Oh yeahIve been supporting her going way back to the beginning

of the end of the New Hampshire vote count.

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THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 21, 2008 55

McConnell forced a debate upon thecountry that it was reluctant to have. Inagreeing to reform FISAalong the linesthat McConnell proposed, Congresshas acknowledged that technology hascreated new tools for terrorists and madea salad out of existing laws that distin-guish between foreign and domestic in-

telligence. Instantaneous global com-munications, cell phones, the free flowof commercial data, an untethered In-ternet, and the unprecedented ease oftravel have erased the once rigid distinc-tion between what is native and what isforeign. American law needed to reflectthese changes. But the reforms leave itup to the intelligence community to de-cide whether to monitor an Americansinternational communications withouta warrant and what to do with that

knowledge. Moreover, by giving immu-nity to telecommunications companiesfor future actions, the legislation pres-sures them to turn over to the govern-ment any and all communication rec-ords, whenever they are asked for.

Unfortunately, intelligence officialshave a poor record of safeguarding civilliberties within the country, nor doAmericans have any obvious recourse ifthey learn that they have been spiedupon.

When McConnell and I first met,he defended the Presidents war-rantless-wiretapping initiative. To many,the program seemed to violate the spiritof FISA, because Americans were clearlyinvolved in the conversations. McCon-nell didnt see it that way. Theres nospying on Americans, he had told me.The issue was if a known bad guy,somebody associated with Al Qaeda,calls into the United States, the Presi-

dent authorized the community to mon-itor that call. If you have a different po-litical point of view, you turn that intospying on Americans.

Let me make a disclosure, I said. Ihave been monitored. I told him that,while I was researching The LoomingTower, a book about Al Qaeda, theF.B.I. had come to my house, in Austin,Texas, to ask about some calls that I hadmade from my home office. I also saidthat a source in the intelligence commu-

nity had read a summary of a telephoneconversation that I had from my homewith a source in Egypt.

Im not surprised at that, McCon-nell said. Because you were gettinga phone call from some telephone num-ber thats associated with some knownoutfitO.K., thats monitored. In myview, it should be.

Actually, I had placed the call.On another occasion, at McConnells

prompting, I described more fully whathad happened. After I published a Profileof Ayman al-Zawahiri, the deputy of binLaden, in this magazine, in February,2002, I was asked by one of his relatives,a respected architect in Cairo who hadbeen a useful source, if I could learnwhether all of Zawahiris children weredead. An F.B.I. source told me that theywere, and that there was no reason thefamily shouldnt know that. I relayedthe news to the architect. (The F.B.I.

official turned out to be wrong.) Re-cently, a source in the intelligence com-munity told me that a summary of thatconversation was archived in an inter-nal database. I was surprised, becausethe FISAlaw stated that my part of theconversation should have been mini-mizedredacted or rendered anony-mousbecause I am an American citizen.

Hes a terrorist, or hes associatedwith terrorists, McConnell said of myEgyptian contact. Now, if Im targeting,

Im looking at his number. If he places acall, I listen. If he gets called, I listen. Idont know who is going to call him, butonce I got it, I gotta deal with it. Turnsout it is Larry Wright. You would havebeen reported as U.S. Person 1. Youwould never have been identified, exceptif the F.B.I. learns that this unidentifiedU.S. person is talking to a known terror-ist. Then the F.B.I. would go in and re-quest the identity of U.S. 1. The N.S.A.would have to go through a process to

determine if the request was legitimate.So heres what I thinkIm guessing.You called a bad guy, the system listened,tried to sort it out, and they did an intelreport because it had foreign-intelligencevalue. Thats our mission.

I then told him about the F.B.I. offi-cials who visited my house. They weremembers of the Joint Terrorism TaskForce, I said. They wanted to knowabout phone calls made to a solicitor inEngland who represented several jihadis

I had interviewed for my book. The ac-tual calls involved her telling me, Pleasedont talk to my clients, I said.

Now if you ever became a target forsurveillance, they would go get a warrantand tap your telephone, McConnellsaid. But they would have to have prob-able cause to do that.

What bothers me is that my daugh-ters name came up in this, I said. Theagents had told me they believed that

she was the one making the calls. Thatwas ridiculous, but it placed her on theF.B.I.s link chart as an Al Qaeda con-nection. Her name is not on any of ourphones, I continued. So how did hername arise?

I dont know, McConnell admitted.Maybe you mentioned her name.

That troubles me, I said.It may be troublesome, it may not

be, McConnell said. You dont know.

That would make a great target,McConnell observed in early Oc-tober as his government jet passed overthe two cooling towers of a power plantin Pennsylvania. I had joined him on atrip to speak to a group of governmentcontractors in Farmington, in the south-west corner of the state. The twin stackslooked dismayingly vulnerable from theair, and I recalled that the 9/11 plottershad considered attacking nuclear plantsbefore settling on the World Trade Cen-

ter, the Pentagon, and the Capitol.In July, the O.D.N.I. had released

a National Intelligence Estimate ti-tled The Terrorist Threat to the U.S.Homeland. The N.I.E., the most au-thoritative document that the intelli-gence community produces, representsthe agencies cordinated judgmentsabout the various perils the nation faces.The reputation of the N.I.E. was seri-ously damaged, though, by the notori-ously mistaken 2002 assessment that

Saddam Hussein had weapons of massdestruction. This N.I.E. had been in theworks for three years, an indicationof how cautious the community hadbecome in issuing consequential newfindings. The new report declared thatAl Qaeda was stronger than at any timesince September 11th, and that it waslikely to continue to focus on promi-nent political, economic, and infrastruc-ture targets with the goal of producingmass casualties, visually dramatic de-

struction, significant economic after-shocks, and /or fear among the U.S.population. It went on to say that the

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war in Iraq had helped the terrorist or-ganization find new recruits.

The report reflects the continuingfailure to capture or kill bin Laden anddismantle his organization. The trail iscold, David Shedd, the deputy directorof the O.D.N.I. for Policy, Plans andRequirements, admitted. Its as hard a

target as weve ever faced.McConnell bridled when I used the

word failure to describethe bin Laden situation. Hesaid, Were coming up onthe sixth anniversaryof9/11and we have not hada major terrorist event in thecountry. He claimed thatthe intelligence communityhad stopped many, manyattacks on America in that

span of time, but that most of those suc-cessful efforts were classified.

In late 2005, the director of theC.I.A. at the time, Porter Goss, shut-tered Alec Station, a counterterrorismunit devoted exclusively to trackingdown bin Laden. The C.I.A. now main-tains that the unit was not actually dis-banded but, rather, folded into theCounter-Terrorism Center. And yet for-mer agency officials criticize the absenceof a clear leader in the fight against Al

Qaeda. Theres a sense that theres nota quarterback, one of them told me.Part of me believes the people involvedlike this arrangementtheres no onereally to blame.

Bruce Riedel, a fellow at the Brook-ings Institution, who had a long careerin the C.I.A. and also served in the cur-rent Administration as the senior direc-tor for Near East Affairs at the NationalSecurity Council, pointed to some re-cent successes: the capture in Afghani-

stan of Mir Amal Kansi, who murderedtwo C.I.A. employees outside the gatesof the agency in January, 1993, and thearrest in Pakistan of Ramzi Yousef, themastermind behind the February, 1993,bombing of the World Trade Center.They were in some ways harder tar-gets, Riedel said. The reason wehavent captured bin Laden, I think, isIraq. We took needed resources andtransferred them out of the hunt for binLaden. This happened, he told me, as

early as the spring of 2002, when theBush Administration was already se-cretly preparing for war in Iraq. Who in

American government is now responsi-ble for the apprehension of Osama binLaden? Riedel asked. Theres thedirector of the National Counter-Ter-rorism Center, but I doubt thats his job.The D.N.I.? Who does the Presidentthink is responsible?

McConnell, when asked this question,

said, If the President picked a singleperson, hed probably point to Mike

Hayden, the C.I.A. director.At another level, he mightsay Secretary of Defense.Depends on where binLaden might be.

And where was that?Hes in the border

region of Pakistan andAfghanistan, McConnellreplied.

McConnell was referring, in part, tothe Federally Administered Tribal Areas,a mountainous expanse about the size ofMassachusetts. Between 2004 and 2006,President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistanstruck deals with the chieftains inside thetribal areas which permitted them to po-lice their own territory. Al Qaeda and the

Taliban quickly reconstituted themselvesthere. Capturing bin Laden, then, wouldpossibly mean invading Pakistan, withthe likely consequence of destabilizing

an already volatile country. You cannotindiscriminately attack a sovereign na-tion, McConnell observed, though hepromised that if American officials pin-point bin Ladens location well bring itto closure.

For more than six years, Predatordrones have crisscrossed the tribal areas,scanning the terrain for anyone whomight resemble bin Laden. In February,2002, a Predator near the border fireda Hellfire missile at a man because he

was tall, killing him. The United Stateshas paid the Pakistani government morethan ten billion dollars since Septem-ber 11th for its help in tracking downbin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders.But for the past four years the special re-lationship with Pakistan has been un-productive; in a recent interview withCBS, President Musharraf said of binLaden, We are not particularly look-ing for him. John McLaughlin, theformer deputy director of the C.I.A.,

told me, Its not too hard to figure outwhy we havent gotten bin Laden. Werenot there.

Moreover, there is the quandary ofwhat to do with bin Laden if he was ac-tually captured. Killing him would onlyinsure his martyrdom and seal his leg-acy; putting him on trial grants him apriceless venue for promoting his causeand invites acts of terror in response, in-cluding kidnappings designed to ran-

som the Al Qaeda leader. Wayne Mur-phy, the assistant director of the F.B.I.for Intelligence, told me that the radi-calization of young Muslims will con-tinue, regardless of bin Ladens mortalfate. In the end, I dont know if thebenefits of getting bin Laden would bal-ance out, he said. And I dont know ifit buys us anything. Think about whatwe just went through with SaddamHussein.

There is another reason that we

havent captured bin Laden. Given thequality of Al Qaedas operational secu-rity, you need trusted people who canpenetrate the organization, ThomasFingar, the deputy director of theO.D.N.I. for Analysis, said. Yet theAmerican intelligence community hastraditionally been a white-male enclave.Few agents can even pronounce Arabicnames correctly. On September 11th,there were only eight fluent Arabic-speaking agents in the F.B.I.; now there

are nine. The U.S. government rankslanguage proficiency on a zero-to-fivescale, in which five is the equivalent of anative speaker. Training a person up toa four-plus is almost impossible, PhilipMudd, who is in charge of staffing andtraining two thousand analysts for theF.B.I.s National Security Branch, toldme. The people you want are first-gen-eration immigrants. But the security guyswill say, Wait!

Although McConnell recognizes the

need to hire Americans with nativeforeign-language skills, the Office ofManagement and Budget oversees thegovernment security-clearance process,which takes months or even years tocomplete, especially for candidates whoare intimately familiar with the culturesdeemed most critical in terms of Amer-icas safety. We have mounted an un-precedented effort to recruit affinitygroups, Michael Morell, the associ-ate deputy director of the C.I.A., told

me. The agency recently helped spon-sor the Arab International Festival, inDearborn, Michigan, the heart of the

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American-Arab community. But few ofthose possible recruits are willing to puttheir lives on hold for a year or more asthey await clearance. Michael Hayden,the C.I.A. director, told me that hecould circumvent the security backlog inspecial cases, and he has done so on sev-eral occasions.

McConnell, upon landing in Far-mington, delivered his speech before thegovernment contractors. There was astudy done in 1955, he told them. Oneconclusion it came to was that it was anabomination that the government takesfifteen monthsto clear someone! Imhappy to tell you we got that downto eighteen months. The contractorslaughed in recognition. When I agreedto take the D.N.I. post, the first surprisewas being told, Fill out the form, Mc-

Connell continued. Ive been cleared forforty years! Then the agent shows up. Hewants to know if I am a Communist anddo I advocate the violent overthrow ofthe U.S.

That experience prompted McCon-nell to reflect on what causes membersof the intelligence community to turninto traitors. Look back at all the spiesweve had in our history, he said.About a hundred and thirty. Howmany did it for money? A hundred and

twenty-eight. He contrasted the gov-ernments security-clearing process withthe vetting that multinational banks dofor American and foreign employeesthe process can take less than ten work-ing days. The opportunities for fraud atsuch a bank are obvious, he noted: If Ican slow down the movement of moneyby one single second, I can make mil-lions through arbitrage. How do com-panies prevent such losses? Every key-stroke can be monitored. McConnell

advocates a simplified clearance proce-dure that will take a month or less.Under his plan, it will be much easierfor first- and second-generation Amer-icans to enter the intelligence commu-nity. The trade-off will be that theywill be subjected to what he calls life-cycle monitoringthat is, constantsurveillance.

Flying back to Washington after thespeech in Pennsylvania, McConnellsaid, Im trying to change the rules, say-

ing if you want to be in this community,here are the conditions of employment.He mentioned Jonathan Pollard, a for-

mer civilian analyst for U.S. Naval In-telligence, who pleaded guilty to espio-nage in 1986. He transferred reamsand reams and reams of data to the Is-raelis! Well, in todays world that stuff isnot sitting on a shelf somewhereits ina database. So if you want to transfer ityouve got to print it or get an electronic

copy or whatever. Thats what I meanby monitoring.

I asked McConnell if he believed thatAl Qaeda was really the greatest threatAmerica faces.

No, no, no, not at all, he said. Ter-rorism can kill a lot of people, but it cantfundamentally challenge the ability of thenation to exist. Fascism could have donethat. Communism could have. I thinkour issue going forward is more engage-ment with the world in terms of keeping

it on a reasonable path, so another ismdoesnt come along and drive it to one ex-treme or another. And we have to havesome balance in terms of equitable distri-bution of wealth, containment of conta-gious disease, access to energy supplies,and development of free markets. Thereare national-security ramifications toglobal warming.

He looked down at the patchworkquilt of the Pennsylvania countryside.His thoughts quickly turned back to ter-

rorism. One of the things I worry aboutmost would be something like a pan-demic, particularly if it could be weapon-ized, like avian flu, he continued. You

could turn that into a human virus. Youcould have fifty million to five hundredmillion deaths.

In 2005, the intelligence communityinformed President Bush that thegreatest danger in the Middle East camefrom Iran. An N.I.E. on the subject de-

clared that Iran intended to build a nu-clear weapon. Some of that informationcame from a purloined laptop containingdrawings of an implosion device and in-formation about the history of the Ira-nian nuclear effort. But there was littlesupporting evidence, and the Presidentwas frustrated that reliable intelligencewas so difficult to obtain. Soon after-ward, the C.I.A. created an Iran Opera-tions Division. There was already an Iranmission manager in the O.D.N.I., whose

job was to cordinate all the available re-sources in the community.

Those efforts were being folded intoa new N.I.E. on Iran, which had beendemanded by Congress; the report, ex-pected last spring, was mysteriously de-layed. In mid-November, McConnellsaid that he did not intend to declassifyany part of the N.I.E. On occasion, thekey judgments of N.I.E. reports havebeen made public, though they are gen-erally kept secret so that analysts can

present their findings with candor. Butheres the real reason, McConnell said.If I have to inform the public, I am in-forming the adversary. He used the ex-

I always gain five to seven enemies over the holidays.

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ample of code breakers in the SecondWorld War. On Nebraska Avenue,where the Department of Homeland Se-curity is located now, there was a girlsschool. The nation recruited many young

women gifted in science and math to thatgirls school. They were brought in andtold, If you ever tell anybody what youare doing, you will go to prison for therest of your life. The women operatedthe machinery that deciphered the Ger-man naval code, shaving months offthe war. Now, that is secrecy in itsmost powerful form, McConnell said.Changed the course of history, I wouldargue, for the good.

Secrecy imposes its own risks, how-

ever. After the collapse of the SovietUnion, in 1991, Daniel Patrick Moyni-han, who was a distinguished social sci-entist before becoming a U.S. senatorfrom New York, sought to understandwhy the American intelligence commu-nity had failed to anticipate the event.Examining the history of the Cold War,Moynihan saw a series of misguided ad-ventures steered by incorrect or poorlyunderstood intelligencefrom the pur-ported missile gap that never existed

to the confident assumption that theCuban people would rise up againstFidel Castro following an American-

sponsored invasion. In such instances,the community supported its findingswith National Intelligence Estimates orauthoritative studies that led Americanpolicymakers astray. In a 1998 book

titled Secrecy, Moynihan wrote thattoo much of the information was se-cret, not sufficiently open to critique bypersons outside government. Havingserved on the Senate Intelligence Com-mittee, he had seen how the communityhoarded secrets and overvalued them tothe point of excluding common sense.He spoke of a culture of secrecy thatinevitably gave rise to conspiracy think-ing and loyalty tests, and recommendedthat the C.I.A. be shut down.

McConnell strongly disputed Moyni-hans analysis. Moreover, he told me thathe intended to prosecute anyone wholeaks classified information, such as theIran N.I.E. That has rarely been done inthe past, largely because a trial wouldhave the unwanted consequence of ex-posing secret sources and methods. Ithink we ought to step up and pay theprice of going through an investigation,an indictment, and a trialand, hope-fully, from my point of view, a convic-

tion, he said.Like many reporters, Ive received

classified information in the past; it was

often full of errors. Because it was secret,it had never been tested, I said. The se-crecy was actually self-destructive.

I disagree with that completely, Mc-Connell said. Theres as much misinfor-mation and trash in the system on theoutside as there is on the inside. Manynewspaper articles about him, he noted,

contained errors of fact and of interpreta-tion. So it doesnt surprise me that you

would see a classified document that hadsome incorrect information in it.

Youd want to prosecute a guy thatleaked something to me?

Absolutely, McConnell said. Heought to be put in the slammer.

Youd want to prosecute me aswell?

Depending on what you did with it.And yet, three weeks after our dis-

cussion, McConnell abruptly decidedto declassify the key judgments of theN.I.E., which was titled Iran: NuclearIntentions and Capabilities. Amongthe revelations was that Iran had de-cided in the fall of 2003 to halt a secretprogram to design nuclear weapons.This finding reversed the 2005 assess-ment that had portrayed the Iranian re-gime as determined to build a nucleararsenal. If the former document hadsupported the Bush Administrations

aggressive posture toward Iran, the newone introduced a confounding note ofuncertainty. We assess with moderateconfidence that Tehran had not re-started its nuclear program as of mid-2007, the N.I.E. stated, in the probabi-listic language of intelligence. But wedo not know whether it currently in-tends to develop nuclear weapons.

The report came at a time when theBush Administration was gathering in-ternational support at the United Na-

tions to strengthen sanctions against theIranian regimean effort that appears tohave been quietly tabled. John Bolton,the former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.,told the German magazine Der Spiegelthat the N.I.E. was politics disguised asintelligence, and that the release of thedocument amounted to a quasi-putschby the intelligence community. ManyDemocratic political figures in Washing-ton, however, welcomed McConnellsdecision. The key judgments show that

the intelligence community has learnedits lessons from the Iraq debacle, Sena-tor Rockefeller stated. This demon-

Heavens, Henry, were only going away for two days.

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strates a new willingness to question as-sumptions internally, and a level ofindependence from political leadershipthat was lacking in the recent past.

I asked McConnell what had changedhis mind.

The fear that, if we didnt release it, itwould leak, and the Administration at

that point would be accused of hiding in-formation, he said. He had a personalconflict as well: the new information wasat odds with his own testimony aboutIran before Congress, and with remarksthat he had made in a background pressbriefing. He knew how that might look ifhe kept the intelligence classified.

The N.I.E. had been nearly com-pleted when, in July, new informationcaused the intelligence community torevaluate its findings. Iranian nuclear

officials were overheard complainingabout the suspension of the military pro-gram. Analysis of photographs takenduring a 2005 visit to Irans uranium-enrichment plant, in Natanz, suggestedthat it was not designed for the high levelof enrichment required to make nuclearweapons.

We had to stop and consider thenew information, run it to ground, com-pare it to hundreds of sources of data,McConnell said. Does it correlate? Is it

misinformation? Is this a counterintelli-gence plan? He compared the processto a trial: the data are evaluated in termsof the level of confidence the commu-nity places in their veracity. We also ex-amine whats missing, McConnell con-tinued. What are the gaps? Whatwould let us know more? From Julyto late November, Iran analysts vettedthe information. Every sourc