The Surveillance Matrix: Which Terror Plots Could The NSA Have Stopped? -- Atlantic Wire
What FBI head Robert Mueller and the NSA really need this week is simple. They need a terror attack they can point to and say: "Our surveillance tools, the ones everyone is complaining about, stopped that."
Otherwise, they're in an uncomfortable position. They argue that the surveillance tools they're using (or, depending on your point of view, abusing) get the job done but (given that at least one major attack wasn't prevented and a number of others failed due to ineptitude) are having trouble coming up with a time that happened. (With an exception, that we'll get to.) The usual fall-back position ("Trust us, we can't tell you about when this stuff works because it's classified") won't get the messaging job done when the whole question is can we trust the NSA. The conundrum leads to verbal gymnastics like Mueller telling the House Judiciary Committee this afternoon that national security tools aided the Boston investigation — it helped them find Ibragim Todashev, the man FBI agents shot to death in Florida under questionable circumstances.
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My Comment: Two U.S. Senators are deeply skeptical that the NSA surveillance program was successful in stopping any terror plots, and while yesterday's closed NSA briefing appears to have satisfied some .... there still remains a great deal of confusion.