one of the 9/11 hijackers, khlid al mendar made a phone call from san diego to a known al qaeda safe house in yemen. nsa saw that call but was not seeing that the call was coming from an individual already in the united states. the telephone metadata program under section 215 was designed to map the communications of terrorists so we can see who they may be in contact with as quickly as possible. and this capability could also prove valuable in a crisis. for example: if a bomb goes off in one of our cities and law enforcement is racing to determine whether a network is poised to conduct additional attacks, time is of the essence. being able to quickly review phone connections, to assess whether a network exists, is critical to that effort. in sum, the program does not involve the nsa examining the phone records of ordinary americans. rather, it consolidates these records into a specific area if it has a specific lead. alesa consolidation of records,e review group turned up no information that this database is abused, and i believe that the program this data is designed to meet is pre