August 23, 2007

McConnell Spills New Details On Wiretapping, Border Security

Speaking to a local newspaper in Texas last week, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell may have felt he was at a safe enough remove from Washington to drop the standard political evasiveness and talk plainly. Turns out he was wrong.

In a candid interview with the El Paso (Texas) Times, McConnell revealed new details about the government's warrantless wiretapping program and its efforts to secure the border with Mexico. The story went largely unnoticed at first, and might have languished in obscurity had the paper not posted a transcript of the interview on its Web site yesterday.

Among other revelations, McConnell said that the government was monitoring the communications of "100 or less" individuals in the U.S. and "thousands" more overseas. He also gave the first official confirmation of previous reports that private companies had been involved in facilitating the government's domestic spying operation.

The disclosures didn't end there. McConnell had a few bombs to drop about security along the country's southern border, revealing "there are some" cases in which terrorists have crossed into the U.S. from Mexico. "The vast majority [of successful interceptions] you don't hear about," he said in the interview. Iraqis are among those smuggling themselves across the border in increasing numbers, McConnell added. "The point is it went from a number to [triple] in a single year, because they figured it out," he said. "Now some we caught, some we didn't."

The revelations are particularly unexpected at a time when the Bush administration seems to be working harder than ever to close itself off from outside examination. McConnell may not have expected to see his comments transcribed on the Internet, however. AP reports that he told the El Paso (Texas) Times reporter to "consider whether enemies of the U.S. could gain from the information he just shared in the interview.... McConnell left it to the paper to decide what to publish."

Posted at 3:41 PM
Posted to: Bush Administration, Homeland Security, Mike McConnell
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