- 7 months ago
A report from the Washington Post on US government intelligence spending.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00The previously scheduled program will not be seen tonight, so that Frontline can bring you this special report.
00:25Tonight on Frontline, another terrorist attack.
00:30And new questions about whether Americans are safe.
00:36Two explosions near the finish line just a short while ago.
00:39Since 9-11, the government has been building a huge anti-terror apparatus.
00:44What happens after 9-11 is this tremendous ramping up.
00:49The money just came out of Congress. It was flying out.
00:53Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Dana Priest traces America's journey from 9-11 to the Boston Marathon bombing.
01:01It's shrouded in secrecy.
01:03Tonight on Frontline, Top Secret America, 9-11 to the Boston Bombings.
01:08Good morning, America. I'm Charles Gibson.
01:16I'm Diane Sawyer, and it's Tuesday, September 11, 2001.
01:19Just a few moments ago, something, believed to be a plane, crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
01:28Plane has crashed into one of the towers.
01:30Looks almost like a mushroom cloud.
01:32Trying to figure out exactly what happened, but clearly something relatively devastating.
01:36Welcome back to Fox News. We have a very tragic alert for you right here.
01:39Something hit the Pentagon on the outside of the fifth court.
01:43On a day unlike any other in the long course of American history, a terrorist act of war against this country.
01:50President Bush said, freedom is the nuts back.
01:52Make no mistake, the United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.
01:59President Bush said to us in the basement of the White House on the night of 9-11, you have everything you need.
02:13And that was true, because as soon as we went to the Congress, they said, just tell us what you need. Blank check.
02:20The president was determined to spend whatever was necessary and do whatever was necessary to conduct a new kind of war.
02:28The president turned to me and said, in my direction anyhow, he said, never let this happen again.
02:35I understood that to mean there was no end to the earth we weren't willing to go to.
02:41There was nothing we weren't willing to ask for.
02:43There was nobody we wouldn't work with.
02:46The key to the new war would be secrecy.
02:49We have to work the dark side, if you will.
02:52We've got to spend time in the shadows and in the intelligence world.
02:55In the first few days, the entire blueprint for what would happen over the next decade was written, all in secret.
03:04The public didn't know, the media didn't know, and it would take us years to find out.
03:10For 10 years, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Dana Priest has reported on hidden military and intelligence operations.
03:16A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to us.
03:24In the beginning, we saw a little bit of this world everywhere, and we were gathering bit by bit.
03:29It's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal to achieve our objective.
03:33It really took years to figure out how big it really was, and we were shocked.
03:38For Priest, one of the first hints of the secret war was revealed at this Congressional hearing.
03:46The joint and choir hearing will come to order, please.
03:49When I speak, I think the American people need to look into my face, and I want to look the American people in the eye.
03:59My name is Kofor Black.
04:02Kofor Black was in charge of the CIA's counterterrorism efforts.
04:06This is a very highly classified area.
04:10All you need to know is that there was a before 9-11, and there was an after 9-11.
04:17After 9-11, the gloves come off.
04:21Beyond that, Black refused to divulge any details.
04:25They just wanted no information out.
04:28I think the reality is that they wanted to keep it secret because they were doing things that a lot of people would not approve of.
04:36And they wanted to do them as long as they could without being found out.
04:42The plan for the secret war began here at the Central Intelligence Agency in the hours right after 9-11.
04:49The reaction in our building and among our leadership was pretty simple.
04:54Anger and resolve.
04:57We were fighting these guys, and they won a huge victory on that day, and it was a huge defeat for us.
05:03This one has finally got past all of our defenses.
05:09We had plans that had been, you know, developed in the past that had reached their due date with 9-11.
05:19He was very aggressive.
05:23He saw no boundaries to what he could do.
05:25At one point, he talks about bringing bin Laden's head on a platter with flies on the eyeballs.
05:31When 9-11 happened, it was Kofar who really took the lead in being the most vocal person, saying,
05:42OK, this is a tragedy, but the gloves are off.
05:44We're going to go out, and we're going to defeat al-Qaeda.
05:47We're going to kill bin Laden, and we're going to win this war.
05:51That night, they prepared an operational plan.
05:57Kofar and his people pulled together what was going to be the next steps as far as going after al-Qaeda, going after Afghanistan.
06:05And they were the ones that actually were able to bring the plans to the table first and present them at the White House.
06:11Where everybody else is looking for their maps on Afghanistan, we're ready to rock, ready to roll.
06:17I mean, we were waiting for the bureaucracy to catch up.
06:21Black would personally present the plan to President Bush.
06:25CIA had already done more homework on al-Qaeda than any other part of the U.S. government.
06:31And so what they were able to do then was to put together a proposal and a timeline as far as how the CIA could be the vanguard of the U.S. government move against al-Qaeda.
06:44The CIA code name for the covert program would become Greystone.
06:48They had a matrix that they offered to the White House that said, these are the countries we need to go into, go after bin Laden and his terrorist network, kill and capture them, and their supporters.
07:04Greystone was a challenge to the old ways of fighting, and the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld knew it.
07:10So the CIA was very much in front of the military, and that bothered Rumsfeld greatly.
07:19But Rumsfeld's generals had no plans for dealing with al-Qaeda or Afghanistan.
07:24We had no plan.
07:26I mean, to be honest, you have operational plans for different parts of the world.
07:31There was none for Afghanistan.
07:32We all assemble in the cabinet room, and the president lays down about 12 decisions, just like that, machine gun fashion.
07:51What did he say?
07:52Well, of course, the thing that stands out in my memory, because it hit me vividly, was he said, I want CIA in there first.
08:02That day, President Bush signed a key document, a finding, authorizing Koffer Black and the CIA to wage a covert international war.
08:11It was a very comprehensive finding.
08:14It was generally worded.
08:15It was go out and get the bad guys, disrupt them, kill them, interrogate them.
08:23This was an overarching authorization of the CIA.
08:29I had never seen a presidential authorization as far-reaching and as aggressive in scope.
08:36It was simply extraordinary.
08:39In a post-9-11 world, we weren't going to be so prissy.
08:45We were going to work with and do what we needed to do, no matter how difficult or undesirable it was.
08:51We were going to do what we needed to do to get the information we needed to protect the American people.
08:56The finding would set the ground rules for the new war on al-Qaeda.
09:00That sets in motion the largest covert action program since the height of the Cold War.
09:07And many people inside the agency will say it's even larger than that.
09:12Now, basically, in a nanosecond, we're going from where we were staked to the ground like a junkie or a dog.
09:18You can report, but you can't do anything.
09:20Two, new authorities, new rules of engagement, lots of funding to support this.
09:27This is a whole new ballgame.
09:34Within two weeks in Afghanistan, the first phase of Greystone began.
09:38My team, there were seven officers, including myself and three aircrew, flew in on the 26th of September.
09:48When I began to distribute money, $200,000 here, $250,000 for this, I think the Afghans were convinced that we were sincere.
09:58The action was planned to be classic CIA.
10:03It's going to be a multi-prone threat attack where we work with locals, minimize the American footprint.
10:11CIA officers, of course, in Afghanistan, for the first time since, you know, World War II, are involved in battlefields and combat operations.
10:20Doing things that we hadn't done in 60 years.
10:23So I think it's kind of a shock to the military.
10:25The CIA went in right off the bat, hooked up with the Northern Alliance.
10:30And it was really quite remarkable what they accomplished with so few people on the ground.
10:44It didn't take long for the Taliban to fall.
10:48The CIA had demonstrated it could fight effectively in the shadows.
10:51We'd like the survivors of 9-11 to know that those of us in the business consider it the CIA's finest hour.
11:00We went in to kick ass, and we did.
11:03There have been dramatic developments on the ground in the war in Afghanistan.
11:13The Taliban suffered a series of defeats as Northern Alliance...
11:16Washington publicly celebrated the first victory in what they began to call the War on Terror.
11:21There were celebrations in Afghanistan's capital today...
11:25The Taliban follows a series of stunning successes by the Northern Alliance...
11:29Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States...
11:33Terrorists who once occupied Afghanistan now occupy cells at Guantanamo Bay.
11:43And this evening, we welcomed the distinguished interim leader of a liberated Afghanistan, Chairman Hamed Karzai.
11:55The victory in Afghanistan came so quickly, and the ball kept rolling in secret.
12:07And by and large, it's continued in secret.
12:12Greystone was underway well beyond the borders of Afghanistan.
12:19In more than a dozen countries, operatives were fighting a global secret war.
12:26George Tenet calls me one morning and said, we've got our target.
12:30I said, okay, we're good. I'm going down to the UAV room.
12:35The unmanned aerial vehicle room was in Tampa, Florida.
12:39A drone was flying over Yemen.
12:42The target was in an SUV.
12:45Got a vehicle moving down.
12:46One of the vehicles moving right now.
12:47I'm sitting back like this, looking at the wall and talking to George Tenet.
12:52And he goes, you going to make the call?
12:55I said, I'll make the call.
12:56He says, this SUV over here is the one that have Ali in it.
13:01I said, okay, fine.
13:02You know, shoot him.
13:04You're a great agent.
13:06They lined it up and shot it.
13:08Let's go.
13:08Roll it in.
13:11Hey, ready.
13:13Headshot.
13:14It's a pretty good-sized explosive in an SUV.
13:16You can imagine a big explosion.
13:19Open the vehicle.
13:20So we knew everybody in the vehicle was dead.
13:22An attack in Yemen this week killed a top Al-Qaeda leader.
13:27The U.S. government called the attack highly successful.
13:30The CIA had fired an armed predator at a car driving in the desert in Yemen with a weapon
13:37that we didn't know they had in a way that we had never seen anybody do anything like this before.
13:42It's just war.
13:44It's no different than going to the store to buy some eggs.
13:51I mean, it's just something you've got to do.
13:53These guys, these are the same people that had just killed over 3,000 people in the Twin Towers
14:00and killed over almost 200 people in the Pentagon.
14:05This was easy.
14:06It just begged so many questions.
14:10Is this assassination?
14:12You know, what rules are they operating under?
14:15Still, it raises a host of new questions.
14:18Does the director of central intelligence now have a James Bond-style license to kill?
14:25Drone attacks were only a part of Greystone.
14:28In Afghanistan, the military captured thousands,
14:32but some of the high-value terrorists disappeared.
14:36I know from the military people who were on the ground
14:40that not everybody was going into the military penal system.
14:47So where were they going?
14:49And what were they doing with them?
14:52Only later did Priest learn that Kofor Black and the CIA
14:55were using harsh techniques to extract information.
14:59Someone uses the term, well, these are called stress and duress techniques.
15:03And that sort of crystallizes stress and duress techniques.
15:09That doesn't sound like the military rules.
15:13In secret, the administration had authorized the CIA
15:16to use what they called enhanced interrogation techniques.
15:20The enhanced interrogation techniques were a set of techniques that would work on someone
15:26who would start to likely have information about a possible next imminent attack on the homeland.
15:35They can do a lot of things that used to be considered torture.
15:40Waterboarding, for example, by any definition, it's torture.
15:44The Justice Department called it enhanced interrogation methods
15:47and approved seven of them, including waterboarding.
15:50Al-Qaeda's Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times.
15:56It took reporter Dana Priest years to piece together
15:59where prisoners like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were.
16:03They had been hidden in a secret network of CIA prisons,
16:07known as black sites.
16:09In the investigation of the black sites,
16:12I found a worldwide system of about two dozen prisons throughout the world,
16:18run by the CIA, paid by the CIA, organized by the CIA,
16:22but with cooperation from other countries.
16:26Top CIA official John Rizzo helped authorize the prisons.
16:31Creating a prison system was something,
16:35certainly in my 25 years, we had never done.
16:37It was essential that these people be held in absolute isolation,
16:43with access to the fewest number of people.
16:48That quickly led to the conclusion that facilities had to be built overseas,
16:55secret facilities.
16:58For the first time, the White House had approved the building
17:02of an international prison system entirely in secret.
17:05The amount of secrecy is phenomenal.
17:09The desire and the willingness of government to operate in secret
17:14and to deny the public, the media, the basic facts about what they were doing
17:20was all-inclusive.
17:23We were falling deeper and deeper into a secretly run government.
17:28And the secrecy was spreading.
17:34At the Pentagon, by 2002, Donald Rumsfeld was waging his own covert campaign
17:39inside the Defense Department.
17:41The CIA was very much in front of the military,
17:45and that bothered Rumsfeld greatly.
17:48And he would write memos saying,
17:50this cannot stand, we have to create a capacity ourselves.
17:56The only defense against terrorism is offense.
18:00You have to simply take the battle to them.
18:03How do you do that?
18:05You don't do it with conventional capabilities.
18:09You do it with unconventional capabilities.
18:13Rumsfeld was something of an empire builder,
18:16you know, to create as much power in his department as possible.
18:22Quietly, Rumsfeld expanded the Pentagon's most secret group,
18:26Joint Special Operations Command, JSOC.
18:30It provided a capability within the Pentagon that the Pentagon didn't have before
18:36and was not considered appropriate for the Pentagon to have before.
18:43Buried deep inside the Pentagon bureaucracy,
18:47Rumsfeld anointed JSOC with power and money.
18:51One of the reasons that Secretary Rumsfeld became very enamored
18:55of Special Operations Forces was the readiness of Special Operations Forces
18:59to deploy and do what they were asked to do,
19:01whereas the Army presented resistance.
19:06JSOC began a systematic series of capture and targeted killing operations.
19:11Hey, hey, get ready!
19:15One by one, they aimed for al-Qaeda leaders wherever they found them.
19:21Using conventional war authorities,
19:24they did it all with less oversight than the CIA.
19:26So in the past, covert action was done by CIA.
19:31The president had to approve covert action and notify the Congress.
19:36Now, a lot of what looks like the same sort of thing, covert action,
19:41is done by JSOC.
19:43Now, they say, when they do it, it's not covert action.
19:48It's a military operation.
19:50So the president does not, by law, have to approve every operation.
19:54And the intelligence committees are not notified.
19:58Then, in Afghanistan,
20:01a story circulated that Rumsfeld wanted to use JSOC forces on a new battlefield,
20:06Iraq.
20:07You could see changes being made in the U.S. military staffing in Afghanistan,
20:13that the Green Beret units, the 5th Special Forces group,
20:17for the most part were being pulled out to refit and get ready for Iraq.
20:23And it was clear that the kind of guys that I think a lot of us believed were essential,
20:29U.S. military personnel with special operations and capabilities were being pulled away.
20:35By 2002, in the springtime,
20:38it was almost taken for granted that we were going to go to war with Iraq.
20:43The president needed a convincing reason for war with Saddam Hussein.
20:48George Tenet and the CIA said they had no evidence Saddam had helped al-Qaeda.
20:53They needed an office that would produce the intelligence that the CIA wouldn't produce.
21:06Rumsfeld said, I can solve your problem.
21:09And they created the Office of Special Plans.
21:12So they're going to do their own analysis.
21:14And they're going to show what the CIA's been missing all along
21:18about the true relationship between Saddam and al-Qaeda.
21:23They worked in a vault deep inside the Pentagon.
21:27They had what is known as all-source clearances,
21:31total access to intelligence information.
21:34I went into the system, our classified system,
21:37to see what did we know about terrorist groups and their relationships,
21:42as well as their connection and associations
21:46with not only al-Qaeda, but also with state sponsors.
21:52The information was rarely vetted.
21:56Instead, it moved up the chain of command to the office of the vice president.
22:01And this became material that was then used,
22:06sort of in white paper-like fashion,
22:07to be leaked to journalists
22:09or to create links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
22:12It was delivered to the American public and the world.
22:17Information has come to light.
22:20I want to spend time looking at that relationship
22:22between Iraq on the one hand
22:23and the al-Qaeda organization on the other.
22:26And there has been reporting
22:28that suggests that there have been a number of contacts over the years.
22:32And they began relying on a new phrase,
22:34weapons of mass destruction.
22:36But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
22:40Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction
22:43for a few more months or years is not an option.
22:47Not in a post-September 11th world.
22:52Rapid series of 40 explosions lit up Baghdad in the early morning hour.
22:56Military officials have been using the term shock and awe
22:59to describe the assault on Iraq.
23:00By the spring of 2003, the U.S. had attacked Iraq.
23:05Fast and mobile,
23:08Rumsfeld's JSOC teams secretly paved the way.
23:13Fighting a conventional war unconventionally
23:16seemed at first to work.
23:21The scenes of free Iraqis celebrating in the streets,
23:24riding American tanks,
23:25tearing down the statues of Saddam Hussein
23:27in the center of Baghdad are breathtaking.
23:29On September the 11th, 2001,
23:35our freedom and way of life came under attack
23:37by brutal enemies who killed nearly 3,000 innocent Americans.
23:43On the night of 9-11,
23:45the CIA had planned a secret war abroad.
23:48Since September the 11th,
23:50we've been on the offensive against the terrorists,
23:52plotting within our borders.
23:54At home, another front had been opened.
23:57The battle to protect the American homeland.
24:00We had to move from proving what happened
24:03to preventing something from happening
24:05because of the costs
24:06that came with a mass destruction event like 9-11.
24:12We can't allow that.
24:14The president asked the nation's largest
24:16and most secret intelligence agency
24:18to step forward.
24:20A couple weeks into the war,
24:22we were asked,
24:23is there anything more we can do
24:24to defend the homeland?
24:26At that time,
24:27Michael Hayden ran the National Security Agency,
24:30the NSA.
24:32We began a conversation with the vice president
24:34and then with the president,
24:35saying that here are some additional things
24:37we could do,
24:38but we cannot do them
24:39because we do not currently have authorities
24:41to do them.
24:43That was the basis of the evolution
24:46of what became the Terrorist Surveillance Program.
24:49The Terrorist Surveillance Program
24:51authorized the NSA
24:53to intercept certain telephone calls
24:55and emails of American citizens
24:57without a warrant.
25:01It clearly was atypical
25:03when it came to where
25:05the traditional boundaries
25:06of the National Security Agency
25:08had been,
25:09when it came to communications,
25:11one end of which was in the United States.
25:14That was a change.
25:15Nobody was in a mood
25:16to say,
25:17well, wait a minute,
25:18are you infringing on privacy?
25:21You know, privacy
25:22versus another 9-11 attack.
25:24There was no real question
25:25about what was going to win over that.
25:27From inside their secure Maryland headquarters,
25:31the NSA was now focused
25:33on trying to prevent
25:34the next terrorist attack.
25:36I began to lay out
25:38to the people of NSA
25:40what our mission had become,
25:42and it was clear
25:43it was going to be counterterrorism.
25:45I said we would be shifting over
25:47to the offense
25:47and that we would be
25:49an integral part
25:50of that offensive move.
25:52The NSA created
25:55a global electronic dragnet
25:57capable of reaching
25:59into America's communication networks,
26:02capturing 1.7 billion intercepts every day.
26:06The National Security Agency
26:08has a huge vacuum cleaner
26:09around the world,
26:11and it is sucking down information
26:13from computer networks,
26:15from radios,
26:16from telephone calls,
26:17all over the world.
26:18So much information
26:20that no human being
26:21could ever go through it
26:22on a daily basis.
26:24Other basic challenge
26:25is in sorting through
26:27the huge volume of information.
26:30The analogy is not so much
26:32a needle in a haystack.
26:33It's a needle
26:34in a stack of needles.
26:36But finding the exact needle
26:38would take manpower,
26:40lots of it,
26:41and in a hurry.
26:44The NSA turned to a new force
26:46in the covert war,
26:47private contractors.
26:50You had this boom
26:51in the corporate intelligence world
26:54as well.
26:55Companies like Khaki,
26:57Lockheed Martin,
26:58General Dynamics,
26:59just all the old-fashioned,
27:02industrial,
27:03we're building ships
27:04and submarines-type corporations
27:05quickly moved
27:07into the intelligence
27:08and information space.
27:11The NSA spent billions of dollars
27:14on more than 480 private companies.
27:17Michael Hayden led the effort
27:18in the days right after 9-11.
27:21I did it at NSA.
27:23George did it at CIA.
27:25We all did it.
27:26It was a way to go out there
27:27and to get these capabilities
27:30into the flow
27:31infinitely more quickly
27:33than you would have been able to do
27:35had you gone through
27:37the government personnel system.
27:38In office parks
27:40near the NSA,
27:42thousands of private contractors,
27:44many making much more money
27:46than federal employees,
27:48helped digest data.
27:49This war was not a war
27:51that required a lot of tanks,
27:54a lot of fighter jets.
27:55It required information,
27:57and information flows
28:00in a different way
28:01and is analyzed by machines.
28:05Exactly how much money
28:08the NSA was spending
28:09in the years after 9-11
28:10is one of the government's
28:12most closely guarded secrets.
28:15The agency's budget,
28:17like its work,
28:18is a state secret.
28:23Well, have you actually looked
28:25at this building
28:25on a satellite map yet?
28:27No.
28:28It's gigantic.
28:29I mean, it's...
28:30In Vermont,
28:31a reporter
28:32and former defense analyst
28:33William Arkin
28:34spent years
28:36trying to track
28:36the post-9-11 growth
28:38of America's
28:39hidden intelligence world.
28:40It's a government organization.
28:42It shows up nowhere.
28:44It's in a pizza parlor.
28:45It looks like
28:46it's a cover address.
28:48There's no defense organization there.
28:50I'll have to go look at it
28:51or you'll have to go look at it.
28:53Okay.
28:53Working with Dana Priest,
28:55the two would do
28:56what no one else had done,
28:58identify one by one
29:00in the buildings and companies
29:01in what they called
29:03top-secret America.
29:05Defense policy analysis office.
29:07Defense program support.
29:09Asymmetric warfare group.
29:11Project 7-1.
29:12The special security organization.
29:14CIA and FBI and NSA
29:16and all the other agencies.
29:18It took me about a year
29:20to complete a decent catalog
29:23of the government entities
29:25and corporate entities
29:27that work in this world.
29:30They discovered
29:31they were the only people
29:33in the country
29:33collecting such detailed information.
29:36The only way they could verify
29:38any of it
29:38was to go there in person.
29:42Hundreds of secret locations
29:44hiding in plain sight
29:45in office parks.
29:46This is a gate to the NSA.
29:49There's a government facility
29:51back in there.
29:51You'll see it better
29:52after we turn down this road.
29:53Inside buildings like these.
29:56They launch drone strikes.
29:59Gather and spread secret information.
30:02Engage in cyber conflict.
30:04You've got Titan in here.
30:06CSC is in one of these buildings.
30:08General Dynamics.
30:10So you really have the big
30:11mega firms.
30:13The giants of this whole industry here.
30:15Northrop Grumman.
30:16Northrop Grumman.
30:17Boeing.
30:18With a security station here
30:20in front where they check out
30:21the cars and look underneath.
30:23Yeah, so maybe you should
30:25put the camera down now.
30:27You just never know
30:28who's watching over here.
30:32All right, so
30:33can we just go over
30:34what you have?
30:35Sure.
30:35At the Washington Post,
30:37Priest and her team
30:38compiled what they found.
30:40This is the picture
30:41that I went up to that
30:42public parking lot
30:43and it was totally legal
30:44to be there.
30:45For the rest of my life,
30:46I will never see the world
30:47the same way again,
30:48especially around Washtenow.
30:49So had it not been
30:50for the leaves off the trees
30:51and at night,
30:52you would never see this thing.
30:54And yet it's gigantic.
30:55Yeah.
30:56These buildings that,
30:58they might only be
30:59four stories high,
31:00but they go down
31:01ten stories.
31:03And there's a whole world
31:04down there,
31:05like shops and places to eat
31:07that you don't know about.
31:09That's just for them.
31:13They had uncovered
31:14a new secret world
31:16that had grown up
31:17in the years after 9-11.
31:19You put the dots on the map,
31:21you had an alternative geography
31:23of the United States,
31:24a secret geography
31:25that is so important
31:28that guides how this country
31:30keeps itself safe,
31:31and yet it is not revealed
31:33to the public,
31:35even though it may be
31:36next year back door.
31:39They didn't put it
31:40in one place.
31:41If they had,
31:42it would have been the size
31:43of the District of Columbia.
31:44What they did instead
31:46was scatter it around
31:47so it fits into the fabric
31:50of metropolitan Washington
31:52and on up into Baltimore,
31:54and it looks like
31:56commercial office space.
31:58A huge new bureaucracy
32:00that you can't really see.
32:08There's more fierce fighting
32:09between U.S. forces
32:10and the Shiite militia.
32:12In Iraq,
32:13by 2004,
32:15the war was going badly.
32:17It was one of several places
32:18where there was violence
32:19in Iraq over the weekend.
32:24The number of American troops killed
32:25is now over 1,000.
32:27Reports of border attacks
32:28have been impacted.
32:29Several others were wounded
32:30when a car bomb...
32:32Rumsfeld's light force
32:33wasn't able to stop
32:34the growing insurgency.
32:35...by roadside bombs...
32:36There aren't enough troops,
32:38and worse,
32:38they're in the middle
32:39of an insurgency
32:40that they don't know
32:41how to conquer.
32:45And they hadn't found
32:47any sign of those weapons
32:48of mass destruction.
32:51Early on in the war,
32:52it seemed quite clear
32:54that they were not going
32:56to find major stockpiles
32:59of weapons,
33:00that we were looking
33:01at kind of an empty shell.
33:05David Kaye had been given
33:06the job of finding the weapons.
33:08From very early on,
33:10I said,
33:10things are not panning out
33:12the way you thought
33:13they existed here,
33:15and it was specific cases,
33:16whether we're talking
33:17about the aluminum tubes
33:19or we're talking
33:20about the nuclear program
33:22in general
33:22or the biological program.
33:25After eight months
33:26of searching Iraq
33:27for weapons
33:27of mass destruction,
33:28David Kaye reached
33:29a simple conclusion.
33:31There aren't any.
33:32The political stakes
33:33are rising
33:33in the overestimation
33:34of Iraq's weapons.
33:35It was an intelligence failure
33:37that reverberated
33:38throughout Washington.
33:40One of the most damaging
33:41intelligence failures
33:42in recent U.S. history
33:44and says the harm
33:45to U.S. credibility
33:46will take years
33:47to undo.
33:48I think the intelligence
33:50community understood
33:52that if the American people
33:55and the policymakers
33:56really understood
33:58the message
33:59I was delivering,
34:00that there would have
34:02to be a major shakeup
34:03of the way
34:04American intelligence
34:05is done,
34:06because this was just
34:08inexcusable.
34:11George Tenet
34:12and the CIA
34:12took most of the blame.
34:14Outrage lawmakers
34:14are demanding to know
34:15whether the CIA
34:16was pressured
34:17to come up with answers
34:18the administration wanted
34:19to justify going to war.
34:23The bipartisan 9-11 commission
34:25proposed stripping the CIA
34:27of its oversight
34:28of national intelligence.
34:30The 9-11 commission
34:31actually suggested
34:33that the countries
34:35have a director
34:36of intelligence
34:38to make sure
34:41that all the different agencies
34:42would share their dots
34:43and who could be
34:45in charge of the agencies
34:47in order to make sure
34:48that they weren't overlapping,
34:50that they were playing
34:50well together,
34:51that they were getting
34:52efficiencies out of the system.
34:53Today I'm asking Congress
34:57to create the position
34:58of a national intelligence director.
35:01The national intelligence...
35:02Congress starts working
35:03on the bill,
35:03and they produce a bill
35:05in almost no time at all.
35:07And there's very little debate,
35:08and there's very little consideration.
35:11As the bill
35:11made its way
35:12through Congress,
35:13the existing intelligence agencies
35:15pushed back.
35:16The Secretary of Defense
35:18led the charge.
35:19The Secretary of Defense
35:21was not anxious
35:22to lose power,
35:24direct authority
35:25over the intelligence assets
35:26in the Department of Defense.
35:28He felt very strongly
35:29and fought very hard
35:30not to lose that authority.
35:33The authority of the DNI,
35:35which was written into the law
35:37as it was drafted,
35:38was gradually reduced
35:39day after day after day
35:41to the point
35:42where it became
35:42almost meaningless.
35:43John Negroponte
35:46was the first nominee
35:47for director
35:48of national intelligence.
35:50I got a call
35:51from Andrew Card,
35:52the chief of staff
35:52of the president,
35:54asking me,
35:55how would you like
35:55to be the first director
35:57of national intelligence?
35:59I didn't know anything
36:00about how Congress
36:01had envisaged
36:02the position or anything else,
36:03so the first thing I did
36:04was to download
36:05the law,
36:07all 200-plus pages of it,
36:10to get some kind of sense
36:11of what was envisaged.
36:16To run America's
36:18$80 billion intelligence community,
36:21Negroponte was given
36:22a small staff
36:22and a few rooms
36:24in the old
36:24executive office building.
36:26The actual director's office
36:28is non-existent.
36:30There wasn't even
36:30somebody to answer the phones
36:32when I first got there.
36:35I recall one time
36:35the secretary of defense
36:36coming into the office
36:37and the secretary of state
36:38walking by and peeking in
36:40and just chuckling.
36:42And it was all funny
36:43to see them crowded
36:44around the small table,
36:46kind of the national security team.
36:49We covered the walls
36:51with butcher paper
36:51and said,
36:52well, how about
36:52this organizational structure?
36:54I mean, we really did.
36:55And then tried to lay it out.
36:58Negroponte quickly discovered
36:59he had little authority
37:00to bring order
37:01to the sprawling
37:02intelligence community.
37:04There were some things
37:05that were lacking,
37:07authority to hire and fire.
37:09I believe
37:10that it would have been better
37:11to have more
37:12budgetary authorities
37:14than in fact
37:15I actually ended up having.
37:18If you're going to maintain
37:19true authorities
37:20over a subordinate organization,
37:23you have to have
37:24some control
37:25over policy formulation
37:26of that organization
37:27and also
37:28the resources
37:29that are applied to it.
37:31And much of that
37:32does not exist
37:33in that position.
37:34So, you have a sort of
37:38an emperor
37:38without any clothes.
37:42Negroponte served
37:43as director
37:44of national intelligence
37:45for just two years.
37:47In the seven years
37:48it has existed,
37:49there have been
37:50five different DNIs.
37:52We gave the DNI
37:54a lot of responsibilities
37:56and high expectations.
37:57In my view,
38:00we did not give
38:00that person
38:02the authority
38:03over the intelligence community
38:05to realize
38:06the benefits
38:07that were supposed
38:08to be derived.
38:10Despite the inability
38:11to control
38:12other intelligence agencies,
38:14the DNI did
38:15what other bureaucracies
38:16inside Top Secret America do.
38:19It grew.
38:19It started out
38:2211 people
38:23in the old
38:23executive office building
38:25but that wasn't
38:26big enough.
38:27So they moved
38:28to some of the
38:30priciest real estate
38:31in the Washington area.
38:33And now they are gigantic.
38:35500,000 square feet.
38:37Five Walmarts
38:38stacked on top
38:39of each other.
38:40And if you ask
38:40most people
38:41in the intelligence world,
38:43they don't know
38:45exactly what
38:45they do still.
38:46It's the inauguration day
38:53of the nation's
38:54first African-American
38:55president.
38:56In 2009,
38:57the new president
38:58would inherit
38:59a war in Iraq,
39:00a war in Afghanistan,
39:02and terrorism threats
39:04abroad and at home.
39:05This will be
39:06the largest security
39:07challenge here
39:07since 9-11.
39:08The tightest security
39:09for an inauguration
39:10ever.
39:12There had even been
39:12a threat
39:13to the president-elect.
39:15A week before
39:15they had gotten
39:16a reasonable tip
39:18that there was a plot
39:19on the part
39:20of a Somalian
39:21immigrant
39:22to disrupt
39:24the inauguration
39:25and they took
39:25that seriously.
39:26There was enough
39:27there that you
39:28understood,
39:29even if it turned out
39:29later not to be real,
39:31they had an obligation
39:32to take it seriously.
39:35The Bush administration
39:36national security team
39:38briefed the incoming
39:39national security team
39:40about that threat
39:41and it was mentioned
39:43that perhaps
39:44they should consider
39:45canceling the inauguration.
39:49But all of
39:50top-secret America
39:51was on hand
39:52to protect the president.
39:54What was happening
39:54behind the scenes
39:56was phenomenal.
39:58It was an unprecedented
40:00virtual security
40:02cocoon.
40:04We have the
40:05Intelligence Operations Center,
40:06Tactical Operations Center,
40:08and then we have
40:10our bomb technicians,
40:11our WMD experts,
40:12our evidence response team.
40:15They used
40:16eye-in-the-sky
40:16satellites
40:17and hundreds
40:18of closed-circuit cameras.
40:20A lot of camera footage,
40:22a lot of live footage
40:22being fed into
40:23the command post.
40:24So everybody's
40:25looking at the crowds
40:26in real time,
40:27everyone's looking
40:28at hot spots
40:29in real time.
40:30They watched
40:31the entrances
40:32into the city.
40:33Police and their
40:34technology were everywhere.
40:35You had license plate
40:38scanners all up
40:39and down
40:39the eastern seaboard
40:41on alert.
40:43You had
40:43sharpshooters out.
40:45They used
40:46the most
40:47exquisite technology.
40:49Sensors scattered
40:50around the city,
40:51picking up the wind,
40:53analyzing it
40:53every minute
40:54to see what's in it.
40:56And all of that
40:56information being fed
40:58in real time
40:58into the operations center.
41:02Everybody was watching
41:03and working
41:04and it was like
41:04a crescendo.
41:06Everybody's anxiety
41:07level builds up.
41:08The phone calls
41:08are getting more
41:09and more phone calls.
41:14I, Barack Hussein
41:15Obama,
41:15do solemnly swear.
41:17You can feel
41:18the tension in the air.
41:19Protect and defend
41:20the Constitution
41:21of the United States.
41:21And then you can
41:22see the collective
41:23cyber release
41:24when the president
41:25was sworn in.
41:25So help you God.
41:26So help me God.
41:27Congratulations,
41:28Mr. President.
41:34The reports
41:35of the Somali threat
41:36turned out
41:36not to be true.
41:38But as the new
41:39president took office,
41:41there was an open question
41:43about the future
41:43of top secret America.
41:51On the campaign trail,
41:53candidate Obama
41:54had said it should
41:55be dramatically reined in.
41:57That means no more
41:58illegal wiretapping
41:59of American citizens.
42:00Barack Obama came in
42:02pledging a new era
42:03of transparency.
42:05My administration
42:06will take a top
42:07to bottom review
42:08of the threats we face
42:09and our ability
42:10to confront them.
42:12Too often,
42:13this administration's
42:14approach to homeland
42:14security has been
42:15to scatter money around
42:16and avoid hard choices.
42:19Now the president
42:20would be read
42:21into the classified programs,
42:24receiving daily briefings
42:26on threats
42:26to the homeland.
42:27He begins to get
42:28the intelligence brief.
42:30He begins to see
42:31the substance behind
42:32and the inner workings
42:33of government.
42:35You start getting reports
42:36about individuals.
42:38This known terrorist
42:40may be on the move
42:41from here to there.
42:42This known terrorist
42:43was intercepted
42:44talking about
42:45a planned attack.
42:47I think all of that,
42:48including what he had
42:49to go through
42:50in terms of a security briefing
42:51for the inauguration
42:52influences then
42:55how he sees the threat
42:57and his own responsibility.
42:59It didn't take long
43:01for the new president
43:02to make clear
43:03where he stood.
43:05His people were signaling
43:07to us,
43:08I think partly
43:08to try to assure us
43:10that they weren't going
43:11to come in
43:11and dismal the place,
43:13that they were going
43:15to be just as tough,
43:17if not tougher,
43:18than the Bush people.
43:19No one in the Obama
43:21administration
43:22would talk to Frontline
43:23about top-secret America.
43:26But the president
43:26had reauthorized
43:28almost all
43:28of the dark side operations.
43:31Greystone,
43:32the hunt for bin Laden
43:33and al-Qaeda,
43:35continued.
43:36Authorities were continued
43:37that were originally granted
43:39by President Bush
43:40beginning shortly
43:41after 9-11.
43:43Those were all picked up,
43:45reviewed,
43:45and endorsed
43:46by the Obama administration.
43:49At home,
43:52the president decided
43:53to expand the growth
43:54of top-secret America.
43:57They've done nothing
43:58to roll it back.
43:59They've done very little
44:00to look inside of it
44:01to say,
44:02what is it that works,
44:03what doesn't work,
44:04what do we really need,
44:05and in this time
44:06of economic hardship,
44:08what don't we need?
44:10The president understood
44:12the political realities.
44:13There's going to be
44:15a terrorist strike someday,
44:17and when there is,
44:19if you've reduced
44:20the terrorism budget,
44:22the other party,
44:23whoever the other party is
44:24at the time,
44:25is going to say
44:26that you were responsible
44:28for the terrorist strike
44:29because you cut back
44:30the budget.
44:30And so it's a very,
44:32very risky thing to do.
44:36In his first year in office,
44:38the massive Department
44:39of Homeland Security
44:40began construction
44:41of their new
44:42$3.4 billion headquarters.
44:46It will rival the Pentagon
44:47as the largest government complex
44:50ever built in Washington.
44:51And DHS has continued
44:57a nationwide spending spree,
45:00sending billions of dollars
45:03to state and local police.
45:05What DHS wants to do
45:07is to turn all of the local
45:09and state law enforcement personnel
45:12into the tipsters for the FBI,
45:16into the front line foot soldiers
45:18looking for possible terrorists.
45:22DHS funded high-tech terrorism centers
45:25around the country.
45:26Every state has at least one.
45:29There's 74 fusion centers
45:30in the United States.
45:32Contractors went in,
45:34put in the large flat-screen TVs,
45:36put in the mission control
45:37to the moon kind of facilities.
45:40Now, state and local police
45:42are using surveillance cameras,
45:45biometric scanners,
45:47high-tech license plate readers,
45:48the software with the system.
45:51When it sees what it thinks
45:53is a license plate,
45:55it will read it
45:56using OCR,
45:57optical character recognition,
45:58and make a cross-check
46:00against a database.
46:03While it's been
46:04a high-tech bonanza for the states,
46:06there are questions
46:07about its effectiveness.
46:11You can look,
46:12if you're objective,
46:13at all of this money
46:14and all of this effort
46:15and say,
46:16what would have happened
46:16if we hadn't done that?
46:17And in almost every case,
46:20nothing would have happened.
46:22One troubling example.
46:24At Christmastime in 2009,
46:27a young Nigerian boarded a plane
46:29from Amsterdam to Detroit.
46:31Somehow evading the security net,
46:34he was carrying a bomb
46:35in his underwear.
46:36Trying to blow up
46:37more than 250 fellow...
46:38What exactly went wrong?
46:40He actually got to the point
46:41of triggering the device,
46:44which means at that point,
46:45the only thing that's going to stop that
46:47is what happened.
46:48It's a technical failure
46:50or maybe a human failure.
46:52There had been early warnings
46:53about Umar Farouk Abdul Muttalib.
46:56The kid had gone to Yemen
46:58for training.
47:05His father had gone
47:07to the American embassy
47:08to say,
47:09my son is now with Al-Qaeda.
47:11I think he's,
47:12he may be a terrorist.
47:13There are more questions
47:14than answers to that.
47:15There were no red flags raised.
47:17But no one
47:17in top-secret America
47:19had connected the dots.
47:21The information on that person
47:23was buried in the 5,000
47:27other pieces of information
47:29that the Counterterrorism Center
47:30gets every day.
47:33Because the Nigerian guy's name
47:36was misspelled by one letter,
47:37he did not pop up.
47:38The little bits of data
47:39about him did not,
47:40were not correlated.
47:41Those dots were not connected.
47:43Google does it.
47:44If you mistype something on Google,
47:46it says,
47:46did you mean this?
47:47Despite spending
47:48all the billions of dollars
47:49on databases,
47:51that simple spell check,
47:52did you mean this kind of software?
47:54It wasn't operating.
47:57And then,
47:58five months later,
48:00the Times Square bomber.
48:02Be assured that the FBI
48:03and their partners
48:04in this process
48:05have all the tools
48:06and experience they need.
48:08The Times Square bomber
48:09was a horrendously run operation.
48:12A bunch of vendors
48:13in Times Square
48:14said to the cops,
48:15there's a problem with this car.
48:17Both those cases,
48:19it was not
48:20the intelligence agencies,
48:21it was private citizens.
48:23On the plane,
48:24it was a private citizen
48:25who jumped the guy.
48:26Times Square,
48:27it was a vendor.
48:29Say,
48:29something's wrong there.
48:30Letting law enforcement
48:31authorities know it.
48:34So,
48:34we were lucky
48:35and because we have
48:36an alert citizenry.
48:41Then,
48:42the Boston Marathon.
48:43two explosions here
48:53would finish
48:53like just a short while ago.
48:55Looks increasingly
48:56like some sort of
48:56a terrorist attack
48:57in the city.
48:58A mass casualty terror attack
48:59on American soil
49:01in a dozen years.
49:04In the immediate aftermath,
49:07there were again questions
49:08about why top secret America
49:10had not prevented the bombing.
49:11Did the FBI
49:13miss a chance
49:14to stop the bombing?
49:15Was there a missed opportunity
49:17when a warning
49:17was perhaps given
49:18to the FBI?
49:19What if anything
49:19did they miss
49:20and that's going to be
49:21heavily screwed?
49:21The government
49:22asked the public
49:23for their help.
49:25Today,
49:25we are enlisting
49:26the public's help
49:27to identify
49:27the two suspects.
49:29They are identified
49:30as suspect one
49:31and suspect two.
49:33They appear to be...
49:34Even though
49:34one of the suspects
49:35had been on the radar
49:36of America's
49:37intelligence agencies
49:38years before,
49:39the high-tech tools
49:41of top secret America
49:42never identified him
49:44as a danger.
49:45We consider them
49:46to be armed
49:47and extremely dangerous.
49:48No one should approach them.
49:50Just hours after
49:53the FBI plea for help,
49:55the suspects went
49:56on a violent rampage.
49:57They set up a perimeter.
49:58A gunfight on the streets
50:00of nearby Watertown
50:01left one suspect dead,
50:03suspect number one.
50:05There are police
50:06and SWAT vehicles
50:07streaming in that direction.
50:09The overwhelming presence
50:10of law enforcement.
50:12The hardware
50:13of top secret America
50:14rolled out
50:15in hot pursuit.
50:16Police have told people
50:17to stay home
50:18with the windows.
50:19Police are going
50:20door to door
50:20looking for the remaining
50:21bombing suspect.
50:23Suspect number two
50:24has been cornered
50:25in the backyard
50:26of a home.
50:28We heard police
50:28talking about
50:29he's in a boat,
50:30he's in a boat channel.
50:32Once again,
50:33it was only after a tip
50:34from an observant citizen
50:36that police finally
50:37got their man.
50:38Apparently a woman
50:38called in a report
50:39of blood in a backyard
50:40leading to a boat.
50:42She called authorities.
50:43That led them
50:44to this scene.
50:46The suspect's in custody.
50:48Nobody has to come
50:49in the perimeter.
50:49It's still on scene.
50:52In the wake
50:53of the Boston bombing,
50:54the question remains,
50:57has top secret America
50:58made us any safer?
51:00We're never going
51:04to bat a thousand
51:04in stopping terrorist
51:06attacks.
51:07And we're always
51:09going to be that
51:10hockey goalie
51:11that unfortunately
51:12lets one puck go
51:14by every once
51:14in a while.
51:17Even if we're
51:18at the top
51:19of our game,
51:20it does not guarantee
51:21that bad things
51:22won't happen
51:23to America.
51:27When something happens,
51:29it's very important
51:31that we as a society
51:32not panic
51:33the way we did
51:34after 9-11.
51:36And we all panicked.
51:40And we all engaged
51:41in sort of
51:41wretched excess.
51:45More is good.
51:47A hell of a lot more
51:48can be bad.
51:53Sometimes our expectations
51:54of being all-knowing
51:57is somewhat unrealistic.
51:59At the end of the day,
52:01there are people
52:02out there
52:02who mean harm to us
52:04or thinking about
52:05doing harm to us
52:06and motivated to do it
52:07and we don't know
52:08what that is.
52:11And that's the reality
52:12of it.
52:13This report continues online
52:23with more on this
52:24administration's expansion
52:25of Top Secret America.
52:27Things we still don't know.
52:29How many secret programs
52:30and how effective are they?
52:32Read an excerpt
52:33from the reporter's book.
52:35Okay.
52:35Plus more of our
52:36exclusive interview
52:37with former top CIA lawyer
52:39John Rizzo.
52:40They were going to be
52:41and other key officials.
52:43Huge new bureaucracy.
52:44Follow Frontline
52:45on Facebook and Twitter
52:47or join the discussion
52:48at pbs.org.
52:58For more on this
52:59and other Frontline programs,
53:01visit our website
53:02at pbs.org.
53:15Frontline's Top Secret America,
53:179-11 to the Boston Bombings,
53:19is available on iTunes.
53:20and also vocales,
53:34at pbs.org.
Be the first to comment