share of their signals intelligence. From the perspective of defending

202 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS share of their signals intelligence. From the perspective of defending themselves from potential threats, the deal that these allies had with the NSA was mutually advantageous. The NSA‘s overseas intelligence gathering was not limited to adversary nations. With the exception of the Five Eyes allies, it gathered data that was deemed important by the president and the Defense Department in friendly countries. These operations had been approved by every American president and funded by every American Congress since 1941. After all, even in the realm of allies, activities take place that run counter to American interests. The 9/11 conspiracy, for example, was hatched in Hamburg, Germany, and financed in Dubai and Saudi Arabia. Nor were American allies unaware of the reach of the NSA. “Yes, my continental European friends, we have spied on you. And it is true we use computers to sort through data by using keywords,” the former CIA director James Woolsey wrote in The Wall Street Journal in 2000. “Have you stopped to ask yourselves what we are looking for?” Whether or not it was appreciated by other countries, © the global harvesting of communications intelligence by the NSA © was hardly a secret. As the NSA expanded further, it delegated part of its work to regional bases, including ones in Utah, Texas, Hawaii, and Japan. The paramount task of the NSA remained monitoring the channels of communications that an adversary might use. The vast prolifera- tion of these channels in cyberspace, which included e-mail, social media, document sharing, and other innovations of the Internet age, greatly complicated this task. Even so, this challenge was not insur- mountable, because most of the Internet actually traveled through fiberglass landline cables that crossed the territories of the United States, Britain, and Australia. So the NSA found the technical means, including voluntarily gaining access to major Internet companies, to “harvest” vast amounts of this Internet data. America’s other intel- ligence agencies quickly recognized the value of the communica- tions intelligence gleaned from foreign telecommunications. John E. McLaughlin, who was the CIA’s acting director in 2004, described the NSA as nothing less than the “very foundation of U.S. intel- ligence.” It served as a “foundation” for the CIA because intercepted | | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.indd 202 ® 9/30/16 8:13AM | | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019690