Spying Oversight; Interview With Michael Chertoff
JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Mr. President, meet the group of watchdogs you were supposed to be running these spying programs by. I'm Jake Tapper. And this is THE LEAD. The national lead. Did you have know that there is a board designed to call out the president and the Obama administration on any policy violations? Well, he's never, ever met with them before today because it was mostly just on paper. Suddenly, of course, he's very interested in what they has to say.</s>PAULA DEEN, CELEBRITY CHEF: Please forgive me.</s>TAPPER: The money lead. Superstar chef Paula Deen begs for your mercy after she acknowledges using racial slurs. Can her Southern pride empire survive? And the sports lead, how I spent my off-season by Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, ducking reporters, answering police questions, as investigators try to unravel the murder, the mystery of a murder not far from his home. Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. We begin with the national lead. New documents published by "The Guardian" newspaper leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden suggest that the British spy agency GCHQ -- that stands for Government Communications Headquarters -- has accessed cables carrying the world's phone calls and Internet traffic and it shares this information with the American National Security Agency. The Obama administration had no comment today, as law enforcement officials continue their feverish manhunt to locate Edward Snowden. CNN's Nic Robertson today reports the business partner of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says he has plans in place to charter a plane to fly Snowden from Hong Kong to Iceland if the government of Iceland agrees to grant him asylum.</s>OLAFUR SIGURVINSSON, ICELANDIC BUSINESSMAN: We just want to absolutely -- make sure that if we start to transport the guy, that he will not -- that he will be safe when he lands, you know, he will not be extradited to U.S.</s>TAPPER: The bigger issue of course is this massive surveillance program. A recent Gallup poll finds that 53 percent of Americans disapprove of the NSA surveillance programs. A CBS News poll shows 58 percent of Americans disapprove of the government -- quote -- "collecting phone calls of ordinary Americans." It's one of the reasons why the Obama administration is suddenly out there trying to defend the program. President Obama attempted to do so earlier this week by heralding a special panel designed to protect your rights.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I have stood up a privacy and civil liberties oversight board made up of independent citizens, including some fierce civil libertarians. I will be meeting with them. And what I want to do is to set up and structure a national conversation.</s>TAPPER: So, a privacy and civil liberties oversight board. Where was this panel when these NSA spying programs were being implemented? Well, it didn't really exist, not in any real sense. In fact, the president's first ever meeting with the group is going on right now. President George W. Bush formed a version of this panel in 2004 as part of the executive office on the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission. Then-Vice President Dick Cheney was awfully proud of that fact.</s>DICK CHENEY, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Working with Congress, he has created the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, on which Ted Olson is now a member. The president has made very clear that as we fight for our principles, our first responsibility is to live by them.</s>TAPPER: But how in the loop were members of this panel? Well, they learned about the Bush administration's terrorist surveillance program by reading "The New York Times." And a report that the board wrote was heavily edited by the White House. One memory signed in protest. Congress in 2007 made the board an independent agency. President Bush nominated members in 2008, but the Senate never took any action. President Obama's turn came next and he promptly dragged his feet. He didn't even nominate anyone to the board until 2011 and his final member was not fully confirmed until May 7 of this year, about a month before Edward Snowden began spilling the NSA's secrets. For years, the privacy oversight panel has had no offices, no staff. Let's go to their Web site. Wait, it doesn't exist. But now of course they're a vital part of this conversation. President Obama told you about this board on Monday and his first meeting with them is right now. And joining me now to talk with these issues is Michael Chertoff. He was homeland security secretary from 2005 to 2009. And he's now chairman and co-founder of the Chertoff Group, a security consulting firm. Thanks for being here. We appreciate it.</s>MICHAEL CHERTOFF, FORMER U.S. HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: Great to be here, Jake.</s>TAPPER: So, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, it was created during the Bush administration. Some members of the board complained that, first of all, they learned about some programs that they were supposed to be keeping an eye on by reading a newspaper, not from the White House, that a report that they did had been edited by the White House. It was not the bipartisan report that they put together. The White House meddled. I guess some things were changed since then. How important was this board to you and the Bush administration during the period you served as secretary of homeland security?</s>CHERTOFF: When I was at DHS, we actually had our own privacy officer. And that was kind of the department analogue to the board. Our privacy officer was very, very helpful to us. It was important to be able to get a perspective from the privacy standpoint about some of the regulations and measures we were considering, and we viewed that person as an ally and as a valued adviser and not as an adversary. Now, I think properly used, the government-wide board, the oversight board, can play that important function.</s>TAPPER: A new document was published by "The Guardian," leaked by Edward Snowden, the NSA leaker. It indicates that this FISA court has rules and it depends on your perspective, I suppose, but one of the things that came out in this document, and it dates from 2007, when you were at the DHS, is that they can hold on to details of Americans' data for five years, and they can retain and make use of information that is called inadvertently acquired, stuff that they didn't mean to acquire but they have. They can use that. Should Americans not be concerned about that? That does seem to be a giant loophole through which any analyst could do almost anything if it's -- quote, unquote -- "inadvertently acquired."</s>CHERTOFF: Actually, I think it ought to comfort people. So, there are two parts to this. First of all, all of these rules are reviewed and approved by an independent court. And if there's a breach of the rules, the court polices that and if necessary sanctions the government. I know some of the judges of the court from when I was a judge, not on that court, and I would tell you they take very seriously their responsibilities under the law. The second thing is, we talk about inadvertent monitoring. I will give you a practical example. Let's say you're monitoring a phone call involving a terrorist overseas and they call a number and it turns out that it's an American number. Now, normally, you would say, well, it's an American citizen, we're going to discard that. But let's say during the conversation before you ascertain who it is they're talking about a bombing attack. Well, at that point, you have the right to say, look, even though I'm not targeting the American, something has now emerged that indicates that this American is in fact involved in terrorism. Then you go back to the court. The court then allows you to pursue that further. So, at each step of the process -- now, this was true prior to 9/11 -- there's a set of rules, there's a set of requirements, and then if someone wants to move to the next level, a court get involved.</s>TAPPER: There's a report that Snowden is trying to get to Iceland, although there is an extradition treaty the United States has with Iceland. Do you think that the government knows where Snowden is and can the government, based on your knowledge of its capabilities, prevent him from getting to Iceland?</s>CHERTOFF: Well, first of all, I don't know if they know where he is. Obviously, if you're traveling and you're transversing countries that have treaties with the United States, those countries could, when you land at an intermediate point, arrest you, pull you off the plane, provided there's an arrest warrant issued by the government. Now, there may be one. It may be sealed. This whole idea of going to Iceland when you first go to Hong Kong seems a little bit odd to me. In fact, it seems odd that he would go to China and say, oh, this is the place I go to get my freedom. So there are elements to this story that I suspect are not clear yet and we're going to see some interesting things perhaps unfold in the next few weeks.</s>TAPPER: And the last question. The U.S. and the Taliban are in negotiations right now. I know, as Moshe Dayan, the foreign minister of Israel, once said, you don't make peace with your friends, you make peace with your enemies. But there are a lot of people who are wringing their hands over whether or not the U.S. should be negotiating with the Taliban. What do you think?</s>CHERTOFF: I think there are a couple dimensions to this. Look, it's obvious sometimes you have to negotiate with people who have been your enemies, and now, for example, we are very close friends with Japan and Germany. At one point, we were mortal enemies. On the other hand, there are some people who are off-limits. People who have committed gross acts of terrorism or gross acts of savagery or atrocities really shouldn't be people who are party to negotiation. We also have to be very, very careful about releasing people who are the worst of the worst and enabling them to go back to the field of battle.</s>TAPPER: So, if you worked for President Obama right now, you would tell him not to -- there is this hypothetical trade right now between Bowe Bergdahl, the sergeant who is being held captive, in exchange for five senior al Qaeda operatives. You would tell him not to do that trade?</s>CHERTOFF: I would say that trading hostages, even though we desperately want to get our own back, is a very dangerous road to go down. The Israelis faced this over a number of years. The problem is when you do that, you're sending a signal that people who are captured improperly become bargaining chips. And that's a dangerous signal to send. You can never say never, but I would be very, very careful before I made any kind of a deal involving releasing very bad guys in return for either negotiating a resolution to some conflict or getting a prisoner back.</s>TAPPER: All right. Former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, thanks so much for joining us.</s>CHERTOFF: My pleasure.</s>TAPPER: Coming up on the money lead, crisis management. She admitted to using ugly, racist language. How does Paula Deen begin to pull out of this tailspin? See her attempt at an apology next. And in our world lead, nuclear winter avoided? Vladimir Putin makes an offer to Patriots owner Robert Kraft, but bottom line, Kraft ain't getting his Super Bowl ring back.