it could be another element within nsa. it could be a military customer, for example who is reading some of our reporting. it could be a policymaker. i apologize, there was one other point that i wanted to make but i've lost the thread in my mind. >> i'm sorry. let's get back to masking, briefly. you spoke about masking, and trying to keep a u.s. person's identity concealed. and when it is disseminated, we often talk about in the intelligence community about the exceptions to, if somebody is masked, how you unmask them. what would the exceptions to that masking be before it's disseminated? >> so again, we use two criteria. the need to know on the person requesting us and the execution, and the second part was, is the identification necessary to truly understand the context of the intelligence value that the report is designed to generate. those are the two criteria we use. >> is that identity of a u.s. person communicating with a foreign target, is that ordinarily disseminated in a masked or unmasked form? >> no. it is norm

and nsa who are primarily going in.nt to be rejected and work with the judge to make sure that everything is in absolute perfect order. that make a lot of sense. joining me now, attorney, political analyst, gayle trotter. let's start with his incredible story that broke over the weekend that we covered this entire hour. this is a country that rely on spying sobs, and even the president of the united states is not immune from those who abuse power and say to hell with the constitution and spy on president trump. >> the mainstream media and the "new york times" reported months ago this surveillance was happening. they reported it as fact. now they changed their story and say there is no evidence supporting trump's allegations. general michael flynn was run out of d.c. on a rail based on the surveillance transcripts which nobody has seen. lou: but apparently none of us have seen. but a lot of people have seen. whether it's "the guardian," the "new york times" or the "national review." you go through all of these outlets it

lines, if the nsa had wanted to disseminate unmasked u.s. persons identification, who in the nsa would have approved such dissemination? admiral rogers: it would have been one of the 20. i provided that in my initial response to the committee and have outlined the procedures, the specific 20 individuals. >> thank you, admiral. i look forward to working with you on the subcommittee moving forward. mr. chairman, i yield back. >> thank you, mr. chairman. director comey, we will begin this line of questioning that will finish at the next round. fisa and other similar related counterterrorism programs have been described even this morning as vital, critical, and indispensable to our national security. many of us on both sides of the aisle believe fisa and similar counterterrorism programs prevent terrorist attacks and save american lives, but fisa in other surveillance programs are intentionally designed to preserve the privacy of u.s. citizens. they are intentionally designed to ensure the information is forected and used only legitimate nationa

i will say this, the nsa has been very, very, very helpful. they know how important these programs are and they are in constant munication with our team and as you know, they've partially complied with our request last week and i expect them to get us more information by friday and i have spoke to admiral rogers about these concerns and he wants to comply as quickly as he can. [inaudible] no. what we have to agree when we talk about intelligence products here we have to be careful. from what i know right now, it looks like incidental selections, we don't know exactly how that was picked up but were trying to get to the bottom of it. [inaudible] it's possible. we won't know until we get the information on friday and that's why -- look i think the nsa will comply and i am concerned that we don't know whether the fbi will comply i placed a call and i'm waiting to talk to director call me later today. hold on. [inaudible] that's a great question. so, i believe it was all done legally. i think it was all obtained legally but the question is was it

admiral last week ut at the nsa. we visited and spoke of some of these things, and what we can talk about today publicly, if you can go into -- if you can't, you can't -- but i think this is important for the people in the room and listening outside understand. is it true that the nsa would need a court order based on probable cause to conduct electronic surveillance on a u.s. person inside the united states? adm. rogers: yes, sir. rep. rooney: just to be clear, the section of fisa expiring later this year, the 702, cannot be used to target u.s. persons in the united states, is that correct? adm. rogers: yes, sir. rep. rooney: section 702 focuses on non-us persons outside the united states, correct? adm. rogers: yes, sir. ep. rooney: do you believe section 702 is important and valuable for u.s. national security? adm. rogers: yes, sir. rep. rooney: so it is safe to say that without having this tool it would be a threat to our national security? adm. rogers: it would impact my ability to generate the inside this natio

persons more than the nsa does. we may be conducting -- we only conduct operations in the united states to collect electronic surveillance. i can find out the exact number. representative gowdy: given the fact that you and i agree this is critical, indispensable, a similar program is coming up for reauthorization this fall. it would be nice to know the universe of people who have the power to unmask a u.s. citizen's name. that might provide something of a roadmap to investigate who might have actually disseminated ked u.s. citizen's name. director comey: what i hope the u.s. people realize is that the culture behind. the training, discipline. -- obsessiveses about fisa. is fisa.g that is fisa we treat fisa in a special way. representative gowdy: i agree culture is important, but if there are 100 people who have the bill ability to unmask and is 100wledge to -- there -- and the smaller the number is, the easier your investigation is. the number is relevant. i can't see the culture is relevant. nsa, fbi -- what other

the nsa and fbi tell congress that russia did not influence electoral process, this tweet has gone out to millions of americans, 16.1 to be exact. is the tweet, as i read it to you, the nsa and fbi tell congress that russia did not influence the electoral process, is that accurate? >> well, it's hard for me to react. let me tell you what we understand the state of what we've said is. we've offered no opinion, have no view, have no information on potential impact because it's never something we looked at. >> okay. >> so it's not too far of a logical leap to conclude that the assertion that you have told the congress that there was no influence on the electoral

elections and the nsa continues to employ standards. and thorough in providing policy makers and war fighters with ammunition to make informed decision to protect our nation's freedom and they're diligently monitoring and share that information with colleagues and counterparts to produce timely reporting in their entirety. i look forward to your questions. thank you, sir. >> thank you, admiral rodgers. director comey, you're recognized for five minutes. >> mr. chairman, ranking member schiff and members of the committee i'm honored to be here representing the people of the fbi. i hope we have shown you through our actions and our words how much we at the fbi value your oversight of our work and how much we respect your responsibility to investigate those things important to the american people. thank you for showing both are being taken very seriously. as you know, our practice is not to confirm the existence of ongoing investigations. especially those havings that involved classified matters. but in unusual circumstances where it is in

i've got to get -- >> do you think right now the nsa or members of the intelligence community were spying on trumped? >> well, i guess it all depends on the definitions of spine. the bothers me enough. i'm not comfortable with it and want to make sure that the white house understands it and that's what i briefed the speaker this morning on this speed but do you think -- >> look, i'm not going to get into legal definitions here, but clearly i have a concern. all right, guys. i've got to run to the floor to vote. thank you so very much. >> congressman nunes later met with the president at the white house. he spoke to reporters after that meeting. >> good afternoon. i know a lot of you are not from the u.s. congress, so i haven't had a chance to read a lot of you in the past, but just in order to keep you all polling update on what's happening with this investigation. today i briefed -- all fully -- briefed the president of the concerns i had about incidental collection and how it relates to president-elect trump and his transition team and the concerns that i have. as i said earlier, there

, admiral, last week out at the nsa.oke some of these things. what we can talk about here today publicly if you could go into, if you can't, you can't, but i think this is important for the people in the room and listening outside understand, is it true that the nsa would need a court order based on probable cause to conduct electronic surveillance on a u.s. person inside the united states? >> yes, sir. >> just to be clear the section of the fisa that is expiring later this year, that's 702, which we'll be talking about a little bit, cannot be used to target u.s. persons or persons in the united states, is that correct? >> yes, sir. >> section 702 focuses on non-u.s. persons outside the united states primarily, correct? >> yes, sir. >> do you believe that the section 702 is important and valuable for u.s. national security? >> yes, sir. >> so it's safe to say that without having this tool it would be a threat to our national security? >> it would significantly impact my ability to generate the insights i believe this nat

along those lines, if the nsa had wanted to disseminate unmasked u.s. person's information related to either the presidential campaign, who in the. >> again, it would have been one of the 20 and i approach described that in my initial response to the committee. i've outlined the specific 20 individuals. >> thank you, admiral. i preesh your answers. i look forward to working with you on the subcommittee moving forward. mr. >> we'll begin it line of questioning and finish it the next round. fisa and other similar related vital, many of us on both sides of the aisle believe isis and similar counterterrorist programs prevent terror attacks and save lives. but they are intentionally designed to observe the privacy of u.s. -- to make sure the kmfgs collected is used only for legitimate national security and criminal investigative purposes. there are statuary safeguards, there are warrants based on probable cause, there is aifiesia court that is involved, there are audits on the back end and we think show highly of this information, it is for up to ten years i

it is possible we would receive documents from the nsa as we requested. the original deadline was on march 15th. but i want to caution i don't expect the entirety of everything we need today so i would hope by early next week we will have a better accounting of what the nsa is able to provide us. i am telling you so you know you will not need to hang out down here because we will not have more information today on this. lastly and forthly, yesterday the council for paul man fork contacted the committee yesterday to offer the committee the opportunity to interview his client. we thank him for volunteering and encourage others with knowledge of these issues to voluntarily interview with the committee. so those are the four things i wanted to alert you to this morning. stay tuned for more. >> does paul's name appear in the new files you have received? >> no. no. there documents i viewed this week? no. >> follow-up. are you recalling director comey because you believe he was not forthcoming in his earlier testimony based on the new documents? >> it has nothin

>> i'm talking about, in the nsa alone. >> within the national security agency we're talking about nsaple like director comey also be able to request that? >> yes. >> and the attorney general and director clapper, are those type of people also on this list? >> again i'm not going -- in general they would be. >> generally speaking -- >> would be able to come and we'll not talk about specifics of individual or hypothetical scenarios. >> here is what i'm trying to get at. if what we're talking about is a serious crime as has been alleged, in your opinion would leaking of a u.s. person who has been unmasked and disseminated by intelligence community officials, would that leaking to the president hurt or help our ability to conduct national security matters? >> hurt. >> okay, if it hurts, this leak, which through the 702 tool, which we all agree is vital or you and aat least agree to that, do you think that that leak actually threatens our national security? if it's a crime, and if it's unveiling a masked person, and this tool is so important that it could potentially jeopardize this tool w

the nsa responded to one of the five questions and told us they are working to respond to the others and we have every confidence they. we welcome mr. manafor's testimony and welcome it in an open session. similarly, if it is necessary to have any in a closed session that can be arranged. with that, i am happy to answer questions >> the hearing will be closed and classified. will you urge him to make that a public hearing? >> we had a public hearing with directors comey and rogers already. so i have no objection to bringing them back in and having a closed hearing. if there is additional information we can make public, that would certainly be welcome also. but i don't think anyone should be -- should have questions about what is going on. it isn't a conflict with witnesses who have scheduled and agreed to appear. we welcome them coming back at any time but the cancelation of the open hearing is what is involved here. >> he said that was canceled because -- >> you know, i think that there must have been a very strong pushback from the white house about the nature' monday's hearing. it

it is possible we would receive documents from the nsa as we requested. but i want to caution that i don't expect the entirety of everything we need today. i expect next week we will have a better accounting of what the nsa is able to provide a spirit i'm telling that so you know you don't need to hang out down here because we won't have any more information on those today. last, and fourthly, yesterday, the council for paul manafort contacted the committee yesterday to offer them the opportunity to interview his client. we thanked him for volunteering and encouraged others with knowledge of these issues to voluntarily interview with the committee. those are the four things i wanted to alert you of this morning. stay tuned for more. >> congressman, does paul manafort name appear in the new files that you have received? >> no. the documents that i have reviewed this week, no - in follow-up, are you recalling director comey because you believe he was not forthcoming in his earlier testimony based on the document. >> it has nothing to do with the documents i

we do not have the full response from the nsa yet. they did respond to one of the five questions we asked and told us they are working to respond to the others. finally, with respect to mr. manafort, we welcome his testimony before the committee. we also wish that begun in public session so the public can hear what he has to say. if there's anything that needs to be done in closed session, that can be arranged. as much of the investigation we can do in public, i believe we should do. with that i'm happy to respond to any questions. >> the hearing tuesday with the fbi director and nsa director will be closed and classified. will you urge him to make that a public hearing. >> we had a public hearing with director james comey and rogers already. i have no objection to bringing them back in for closed hearings. if there's additional information we can make public and do a public hearing with them, that would be welcome also. i don't think anyone should be, should have any question about what's going on here. this is not a desire to have t

i know the nsa does, the cia does, obviously the fbi does. i don't know for sure beyond that. >> how about main justice? >> main justice i think does have standard minimization procedures. >> so that's four. nsa, fbi, cia, main justice. does the white house have the authority to unmask a u.s. citizen's name? >> i think other elements of the government that are consumers of our products can ask the collectors to unmask. the unmasking resides with those who collected the information. and so if mike rogers' folks collected something and they sent it to me in a report and it says u.s. person number 1, and it's important for the fbi to know who that is, our request will go back to them. the white house can make similar requests of the fbi or of nsa but they don't on their own collect so they can't on their own unmask. do i have that about right? >> yes. >> i guess what i'm getting at, director comey, you say it's vital, critical, indispensable. we both know it's a threat to the reauthorization of 702 later this fall, and oh, by the way, it's also

how would the nsa determine whether disseminating the u.s.information is necessary to understanding the foreign intelligence or assess its importance? >> try to understand the nature of the conversation. is this something that involves intelligence or national security implication for the united states or just very normal reasonable conversations in which case we have no desire to have any awareness of it. it's not applicable to our mission. normally we're purge the data. we'll ask ourselves is there criminal activity involved, is there threat, potential threat or harm to u.s. individuals being discussed in the conversation for example. >> if there was criminal activity what would you do then? >> when we disseminate -- if there's criminal activity we disseminate the information and if the fbi is on the reporting stream in some cases, i also will generate a signed letter under my signature and specific cases to the department of justice highlighting that what we think we have is potential criminal activity but because we are not a law enforcem

i've asked the directors of fbi, nsa and c.i.a. to expeditiously comply with my march 15th letter which you all received a couple of weeks ago, and to provide a full account of these surveillance activity. i informed speaker ryan this morning of this new information, and i will be going to the white house this afternoon to share what i know with the president and his team. before i get to questions, i want to say that, as you know, there's been what appears to be a terrorist attack in the united kingdom. obviously very concerned and our thoughts and prayers go out to our strong friends and allies over across the pond. and with that, i'll open it up to questions. >> mr. nunes, with any of these communications, were they picked up from trump tower? >> we don't know that yet. that's why we need to get the information. i will say this, the nsa has been very, very helpful. they know how important these programs are. they are in constant communication with our team. and as you know, they've partially complied with our request last week.

the nsa has been very, very helpful. they know how important these programs are. they are in constant communication with our team, and as you know they have partially complied with the request last week, and i expect them to hopefully get us more information by friday. i have spoke to admiral rogers about his concerns, and he wants to comply as quickly as he can. >> was the present also part of that collection? >> yes. >> excuse me, let me just clarify. the president united states first of all -- were intercepted as -- >> i think what we have to, we talk about intelligence products we have to be very careful. from what i know right now it looks like incidental collection we don't know exactly how that was picked up, but were trying to get to the bottom of it. >> the present united states in personal communications, incidental collection, not specifically targeted? >> it's possible. we won't know until we get information on friday, and that's why, look, i think the nsa is going to comply. i am concern that we don't know whether not the fbi is going to comply. i've

it was a secondary focus for the nsa. of overzealousn secrecy, policymaker disinterest, and the eclipsing vocus -- focus on the offensive side of cyber security meant that the government was purchasing computers and connecting them to networks at a tremendous pace, there was not a great interest in cyber security. six will mock you teenagers who met at -- milwaukee teenagers who met it venture scouts use their parents home teenagers and rudimentary hacking skills to break into 60 computer and that's networks of agencies across the united states, including that of the national laboratory. this was a wake-up call to congress, who was seeking to , and theya deterrent did so march 1984. . this act identified hacking as a potential national security threat. un-authorized ofional or acquisition restricted data and offense -- on offense. it is a great story of how this occurred. it was suggested that the strategic defense initiative of reagan's came from experiences he had from films and ideas he there.om their -- 1920's, resear

so, i know the nsa does, i know the cia does, obviously the fbi does. i don't know for sure behind that. >> how about the department of -- how about main justice? >> i think they do have standard minimization procedures. >> all right, so that's four. nsa, fbi, cia, main justice. does the white house have the authority to unmask a u.s. citizen's name? >> i think other elements of the government that are consumers of our products can ask the collectors to unmask. the unmasking resides with those who collected the information. and so, if mike rogers' folks collected something and they sent it to me in a report and it says "u.s. person number one," and it's important for the fbi to know who that is, our request will go back to them. the white house can make similar requests of the fbi or nsa, but they don't on their own collect, so they can't on their own unmask. did i get that about correct? yeah. >> so i guess what i'm getting at is you say it's vital, it's critical, it's indispensable. we both know it's a threat to the reauthorization of 702 later this f

the nsa said they'll deliver materials today.ill wait and see what's in them before i see what's in them. >> so james rosen is right about that what about a source saying there could be a smoking gun. have you picked up any chatter because we see whistleblowers going to chairman nunes giving him information. are you picking up any suggestion the nsa are not only turning over pieces of paper but have something that may back up the president's charges? >> i want to wait and see but what has come out so far is significant. this is scandalous you allow americans' names on the foreign wiretaps to be disseminated. it's wrong. there's no excuse for it and it looks like surveillance. the nsa will bring documents i'll wait to see myself and go over it today and next week. >> the consequences could be grave and we appreciate your insight. congressman, have a good morning. >> thank you. >> shannon: accusations of a brutal crime by an illegal immigrant deported four times and kept coming back. another community outraged by the suspect and wh

the nsa i cooperative. the fbi has not told us whether or not they're going to respond to our march 15 letter, which is a couple weeks old. >> does this describe what the the president was talking about? talking about "wiretapping" which they said was broader surveillance? >> when you -- what i've read seems to be to be some level of surveillance activity, perhaps legal, but i don't know that it's right and i don't know that the american people will be comfortable with what i've read. let us get all the reports -- >> was the president directing it? >> it's possible. >> the president said that president obama tapped his phone. >> no, no, no. that didn't happen. i've said this for many, many weeks, including the day after -- a couple days after in front of the press. that never happened. so that never happened. >> did president obama order any kind of surveillance of the president? >> well -- >> the president-elect. >> we don't know who sent the taskings, if the taskings were changed in what went in the intel

that is not, however, what the fbi and nsa said at all and director comey said so. and this isn't true what sean spicer said today about the campaign's former chairman. >> there's been discussion of paul manafort who played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time. >> trying to minimize paul manafort as time. >> i have fantastic people. paul manafort just came on. he's great. >> paul is amazing. he helped us get through the primary process. >> i brought paul in because a very, very smart mine who knew him very well said he was fantastic. >> paul manafort remains as our chairman. >> bringing in a professional like paul made the campaign. we need ten more of him. >> that's a small amount of the items we could have put together there. >> what we saw and heard today is not business as usual in washington. it was extraordinary. pamela brown tonight sets the stage. >> reporter: fbi director james comb comey wasting no time dropping this bombshell. >> this includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the trump campaign and

nsa, fbi, what other u.s. government agencies have the authority to unmask a u.s. citiz citizen's name? >> i think all agencies that collect information pursuant to fisa have what are called standa standard m standard minimization procedures -- >> how about main justice? >> main justice i think does have standard minimization procedures. >> that's four, nsa, cy, fbi, main justice. does the white house have the authority to unmask a u.s. citizen's name? >> i think other elements of the government that are consumers of or products can ask the collectors to unmask. the unmasking lies with those who collected the information. if mike rodgers collected seasoned and it says u.s. person number one and it's important to know who it is, our request will go back to them. the white house can make similar requests but they don't on their own collect so they can't unmask. >> you say it's vital, critical, indispensable, we both know it's a threat to the reauthorization of 702 later on this fall and it's also a felony punishable by up to ten years so how would you begin your inve

judge napolitano says the nsa tracks our phones right now.say that there's no doubt that the nsa or the obama administration wiretapped the trump campaign and donald trump himself. why do you say there's no doubt? >> because we know what happened to general flynn. okay? those were intercepted communications. we know that there were fisa warrants presented to the secret court that apparently were granted. we know that the intelligence agencies, and i have a client we talked about last time i was on, dennis montgomery, a whistle-blower who has more information than edward snowden who came forward to the fbi, 400 hard drives, 600 million pages of information. some of it classified. i've never seen it happen. the fbi has it. montgomery testified under oath. he was videotaped. he has a brain aneurysm, so he preserved the evidence. director comey has this information. and what they were doing is mass surveillance, not just hundreds of millions of americans. but the supreme court chief justice john roberts, other justices like ginsberg, 156 judges.

or nsa? >> both, both. >> rose: but not the cia. >> the cia on rare occasion. >> couric: so the other complaint of adam schiff and john mccain made this point as well is that rather than bringing it to the house intelligence committee, he went right to the white house. >> so i think, i think you know, he took it to the white house and the media. >> rose: right. >> right. i think he had a responsibility but i think he acted inappropriately. >> rose: right. >> i think what he should have done and what practice says he should have done, is number one he should have gone back to the relevant agency. whether it be the fbi or whether it be cia or nas, to go back to the relevant agency and said i was given these. how do i think about these? are there any more like these? help me understand these. that should have been step one. step two should have been to take that answer and share it with the entire committee before taking any action of briefing the president, let alone the media. >> rose: you sai

along those lines if the nsa wanted to disseminate unmasked u.s. person's information who would have approved such disseminations? >> again, it would have been one of the 20 and i provided that in the initial response and to the committee i outlined the procedures and the specific 20. >> thank you. i look forward to working with you on the subcommittee working forward. i yield back. >> thank you. mr. goudy is recognized. >> we will start this round and finish it next round. fisa and other anti-terrorism programs have been described as vital and critical to the national security, and many of us on both sides of the aisle believe that fisa and similar counterterrorism programs prevent attacks and save american lives, but fisa and other surveillance programs are intentionally designed to preserve the privacy of u.s. citizens. they are intentionally designed to ensure the information is collected and used only for legitimate national security and criminal investigative purposes. there are statutory safeguards, and there are warrants based on the probab

persons a whole lot more than the nsa does. because we may be conducting -- we only conduct our operations in the united states to collect electronic surveillance. so i can find out the exact number. i don't know as i sit here. >> i think, director comey, given the fact you and i agree this is critical, vital, a similar program is coming up for reauthorization this fall with a pretty strong headwind right now, it would be nice to know the universe of people who have the power to unmask a u.s. citizen's name. that might provide something of a road map to investigate who might have actually disseminated a masked u.s. citizen's named. >> the number is relevant. what i hope the u.s. -- the american people realize is, the number's important, but the culture behind it is in fact more important. the training, the rigor, the discipline, we are obsessive about fisa and the fbi for reasons i hope makes sense to this committee. but everything fisa has to be labeled in a way, that this is fisa, we treat this in a special way. so we can get

didn't use the nsa, didn't use the cia. didn't use the fbi didn't use the department of justice.ed gchq. what is that? initials for british intelligence spying agency. >> reporter: adding britain to the list of countries with possible grievances against the new administration. the gchq denied those allegations stating they are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored. >> when is this going to stop? when the crisis comes and at some point in his term we'll have a crisis not of his own making but a crisis from north korea or iran, country is going to need to believe its president. he is making that very, very difficult. >> reporter: and north korea is already turning up the heat. this past weekend, announcing it tested a new rocket engine. another step in its attempt to develop a nuclear weapon tipped missile capable of reaching the united states. president trump responding from "air force one" sunday. >> doing well. a lot of meetings on that. and meetings on north korea. he is acting, very, very badly. i will fell you he is acting very badly. >> they're looking at washington sayin

so anyone in nsa or anyone for whom nsa works like the president of the united states, like and i talking on the phone with each other last week, they can get that transcript because nsa has the digital version of it. this is lawful under the fisa statute. it is profoundly unconstitutional under the fourth amendment which says the government can only do this when it gets a search warrant, particularly identifying the place to be searched or the thing to be seized. so i saw a warrant once which said, nsa is authorized to capture the telephone calls of all customers of verizon. tall customers of verizon? that's 113 million people. liz: i think telecomes are immune from reporting of any this. judge napolitano: they are prohibited from interfering with the statutory, mandatory hookup nsa has with their computers. er in prohibited from discussion tonight public and prohibited from challenging it in court. that's an infringement on their free speech. the computer service and telecom providers have complied with them. liz: white house press secretary sean spicer says the wikileaks release is a n

the nsa is cooperating very, very well. lastly, i'll say that the reports that i was able to see did not have anything to do with russia or the russian investigation or any ties to the trump team. with that i'll take any questions that you have. >> why is it okay for you to give. >> because what i saw has nothing to do with russia and nothing to do with the russian investigation. it has everything to do with possible surveillance activities and the president needs to know that these intelligent reports are out there. i have a duty to tell him that. >> doesn't appear that you'll be drying conclusions before it was completed, chairman ? >> i'm not drawing any conclusions. i'm only telling what the president what is existed in reports. >> i don't want to get into too many details but these were intelligence reports and it brings up a lot of concern about whether things were properly minimized or not. i will tell you i've only seen some, a dozen, but i don't have the full scope of all the intelligent reports that were produced

>> i'm talking about -- >> in the nsa. >> in the national security agency we're talking about nsa reporting. >> but would people like director comey also be able to request that? >> yes. >> and the attorney general and -- director clapper or those type of people on this list? >> again, i'm not going to -- in general yes. >> not with regard -- >> not going to talk about the specifics of an individual or hypothetical scenario. >> here's what i'm trying to get at. if what we're talking about is a serious crime as has been alleged, in your opinion would leaking of a u.s. person who has been unmasked and disseminated by intelligence community officials, would that leaking to the press hurt or help our ability to conduct national security? >> hurt. >> okay. if it hurts, this leak which through the 702 tool, which we all agree is vital or you and i at least agree to that, do you think that that leak actually threatens our national security? if it's a crime, and if it's unveiling a masked person, and this tool is so important that it could potentially jeopardize this tool when we have to try to rea

[inaudible] >> another right-wing outlet. >> let's continue. >> new york times again, nsa nsa gets morehare intercepted communications will. [inaudible] they have expanded the power of the nsa to share personal communications with the government 16 other agencies before applying privacy protection pad why would they do this on the way out the door? march 1, exhibit six. obama administration rush to preserve intelligence of russian election hacking. in the obama administration last day, some some white house officials scrambled to spread information about russian efforts to undermine the presidential election and about possible contacts between associates of president trump and russia across the government i am not done. exhibit seven. new york times. where did they get this off information. the court is always monitoring the russian ambassador so how do we know that? maybe they are, maybe they're not. there is an awful lot of other activity. u.s. investigators have examined contacts of jeff sessions and russian officials during the time he was advising donald trump campaign. the focus o

joining me an architect of the nsa surveillance program, former nsa senior intelligence officer, also whistle-blower william benny. good to have you with us. first i've got to get your reaction to what is without question a blockbuster development with chairman nunes revealing that he's looked at apparently dozens of reports showing surveillance of the trump transition team after the president had been elected. >> well, it even goes long before the president was elected. this is all part of the upstream collection of nsa that fundamentally is after everything, and under executive order 12333 section 23 c they interpret that with secret interpretation as allowing them to collect everything on the fiber network inside the united states, because surely somewhere in there, there is a terrorist or drug dealer, we're up to that, but we'll collect everything and store it and have the ability under the authorization of the executive order to mine it and manipulate it and do anything we want to. fundamentally it's collecting everything on everybody in the country. lou: devin nunes using the ex

. >> tucker: bill benning worked at the nsa.e was a famous and highly regarded employee there, but he resigned in 2001 saying the agency was building legal mass surveillance networks. he says that president trump almost certainly hast been spied on the government. was being spied on and probably for a long time. bill benning joins us now. bill, thanks a lot for coming on. >> thanks for having me, tucker. >> tucker: just in my intro you spent 30 years there. you aren't s someone who is speculating. you believe it's entirely possible the president was, in fact, spied on? >> yes, in fact, they are taking in fundamentally the entire fiber network inside the united states and collecting all that data and storing it in a program for -- they call it it's stellar wind is the name for their program. that's the domestic collection of data on u.s. citizens. u.s. citizens to other u.s. citizens. everything we are doing. phone calls, emails and financial transactions. credit cards, things like that. all of it. >> tucker: so if you found some

that's the extent of the data collection the nsa is doing. >> tucker: i grew up believing that the nsa allowed to be collecting evidence. you are saying that that's been perverted for many years. >> yeah, since 2001. >> tucker: so, what do you make of considering what you said the nsa has all the information so presumably they could prove or disprove the claims about russian tampering in this election. prove or disprove russia's tweet about being spied upon. why wouldn't they? >> well, that would get into the extent of which they have penetrated the network inside the united states. there is another program going on here that too many people aren't talking about. i think you were trying to get at it with your previous guest. inside nsa there is a set of people and we got this from another nsa whistle blower who witnessed some of this. they are inside there. they are targeting and looking at all the members of the supreme court, the joint chief he is of staff, congress, both house and senate, as well as the white house. and all of this data is there inside nsa in a small group where the

citizen's name is always masked in the very beginning by the nsa. there are only 20 officials there including the nsa director who can decide to unmask a name. the way it works, if the nsa accidentally hears the name or voice of an american while spying on a foreign national, they retkabgt the name and replace it with u.s. citizen number one or u.s. citizen number two. but if somebody sees that report and wants to know who u.s. citizen number one is, then the nsa makes a decision like this. >> criteria need to know on the person requesting us and the execution of official duties and the second part was, is the identification necessary to truly understand the con tech of the intelligence value that the report is designed to generate. those are the two criteria we use. >> there's a lot of chatter here on the hill as well at that hearing about whether or not section 702, that is the foreign intelligence surveillance act section 702 was violated or abused while flynn's name was being made public? and that means that section 702 could go away when it's u