On Sunday night, CBS’s 60 Minutes ““promised an exposé on what it’s like “behind the scenes” at the National Security Agency.” The result was brutally panned as a love note, a tongue bath, an embarrassment to both CBS and the security branch that used to known as No Such Agency. Spencer Ackerman has quite a comprehensive summary/rebuttal in the Guardian:
The National Security Agency is telling its story like never before. Never mind whether that story is, well, true.
On Sunday night, CBS’s 60 Minutes ran a remarkable piece that provided NSA officials, from director Keith Alexander to junior analysts, with a long, televised forum to push back against criticism of the powerful spy agency. It’s an opening salvo in an unprecedented push from the agency to win public confidence at a time when both White House reviews and pending legislation would restrict the NSA’s powers.
But mixed in among the dramatic footage of Alexander receiving threat briefings and junior analysts solving Rubik’s cubes in 90 seconds were a number of dubious claims: from the extent of surveillance to collecting on Google and Yahoo data centers to an online “kill-switch” for the global financial system developed by China…
In a separate article, Ackerman had already mentioned one possible trial balloon behind this publicity tour:
National Security Agency officials are considering a controversial amnesty that would return Edward Snowden to the United States, in exchange for the extensive document trove the whistleblower took from the agency…
The NSA official in charge of assessing the alleged damage caused by Snowden’s leaks, Richard Ledgett, told CBS News an amnesty still remains controversial within the agency, which has spent the past six months defending itself against a global outcry and legislative and executive proposals to restrain its broad surveillance activities.
“My personal view is, yes, it’s worth having a conversation about,” Ledgett, who is under consideration to become the agency’s top civilian, said in an interview slated to air Sunday evening on 60 Minutes…
The NSA’s director, General Keith Alexander, told CBS that granting Snowden amnesty would reward the leaks and potentially incentivize future ones. But Alexander is retiring in the spring, joining his civilian deputy John C Inglis, and Ledgett is rumored to be a top candidate to replace Inglis…
Joe Coscarelli at NYMag examines the one hand washing the other:
…“Full disclosure, I once worked in the office of the director of National Intelligence where I saw firsthand how secretly the NSA operates,” said the reporter John Miller at the start of the segment…
The cherry on top is that Miller is currently in the running, reportedly, for a “top counterterrorism or intelligence role” in the NYPD when his old pal Bill Bratton takes over, something that was not disclosed by 60 Minutes.
He’s certainly qualified. (Miller held a similar job as chief of counterterrorism under Bratton at the LAPD in addition to his work in national intelligence.) “He wants the badge, the gun and the adrenaline — to be in the center of the action,” a source told the New York Post of Miller, calling it “a 99.44 percent done deal.” And on top of describing Bill Bratton as “one of my best friends,” this was a great audition.
Finally, Dave Weigel, at Slate, has a cynical theory on “Why 60 Minutes Tanked the NSA Story”:
… When you watch the whole interview, you notice that Miller tends to ask about the NSA’s practices in the most scared-layman way. He frames the question the way some scared American who merely scanned the headlines on AOL might frame them. It’s easy for Alexander to knock these questions over the net, because they’re stupid. Miller was going for the dumbest question possible, just like the producers of Springtime for Hitler were trying to make the worst musical possible.
Hours after the Internet finished beating up 60 Minutes, Dylan Byers [Politico] reported that Lara Logan would return to work, the shame from her botched Benghazi story washing right off after a couple weeks of leave. As bad as Logan’s mistake was, falling for a story from a lying military contractor only happens because you’re looking for an angle that upsets the people in power. Miller’s story was just corporate portraiture. If law enforcement doesn’t hire him to run PR (as has been reported since before this report aired), it’s missing an easy coup…
Or, as the old punchline goes: “We’ve already established what you are; now we’re just haggling over the price.”
Joseph Nobles
Recognizing it as the NSA being given a place to put their best foot forward, should they not be allowed to do so?
J R in WV
Nice job putting this together.
@Joseph Nobles:
Sure they should be allowed to do so. The point is that they shouldn’t be able to do so as if the story was investigative journalism, when it was actually 60 minutes of PR about how hard the job they do is, and how hard they work to save us from the muslim terrorists, and what a good job they do, see, no one killed in the past 4,783 days [caution, made up number here].
It isn’t journalism when you report on yourself, patting yourself on the back in public. It’s just a long infomercial. And there’s nothing immorally wrong with an hour long infomercial, but they usually run a trailer at the bottom of an infomercial to the effect that this time was purchased by the producers of the commercial you’re watching.
NOT a big old CBS eye and the 60Minutes logo.
Baud
Bullshit. The NSA story may have been a puff piece, but Logan’s was an outright fraud. Anyone involved in journalism who thinks the former was less egregious cannot be respected.
J R in WV
@Baud:
Was it Logan’s fraud, or was it her source’s fraud that she was tots unaware of?
Because the 60 minutes story was deliberate fraud, selling an infomercial isn’t fraud, but showing it as news certainly is.
Realistically, did Logan know there was no way her source was telling her the truth? Probably, but it’s hard to tell for sure from out here in fly-over land. I can’t believe how short her paid vacation was.
Shame she’s going to be around there posing as a newsperson!
Baud
@J R in WV:
The result was a lie, which is far worse than an infomercial.
Carolinus
There was no trial balloon. Ledgett, who has no authority to offer anything, simply gave his opinion in response to a question, that it was “worth having a conversation about” it and at the same time set an insurmountable prerequisite on even that:
Snowden hasn’t even offered to somehow try and secure the data, and Greenwald / Poitras would never give it back even if he wanted them to (Peter Omidyar’s 250 million is obviously contingent on continuing to exploit & monetize the stolen document trove for years to come).
Mustang Bobby
Somewhere, Edward R. Murrow is puking his guts out.
geg6
@Baud:
I so agree. Weigel is full of shit there. And puff pieces are a longstanding journalistic tradition. Lying is not supposed to be. Fuck Weigel. He should know that.
Chyron HR
@Baud:
Yes, but any amount of lies, racism and/or conservatism is acceptable to a True Progressive, as long as they’re sticking it to Obama.
Marc
@Baud: Exactly. Logan was looking for a story that upset the blah person in power. Other people in power–say, the House government oversight committee–liked it just fine.
Ash Can
@Carolinus: Not only that, but I think we can safely assume that all that information is in the hands of the Chinese and Russians now anyway, so the damage is done. The horse has left the barn, boarded a tramp steamer, and sailed around the world a couple of times.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
59 minutes did a puff piece?
Shocked, I tell you.
Violet
Thanks for putting this together AL. Good posts.
Edmund in Tokyo
@Ash Can: It’s hard to imagine the Russians and Chinese didn’t have most of it already. For this one system administrator who decided to give up his lucrative job, go public and spend the rest of his life in exile, there must be hundreds who would quietly sell what they knew to the Russia or China.
C.V. Danes
Just so you know, we’re only one terrorist attack away from sweeping this all under the bridge.
Not that I agree with what the NSA and its enablers are doing, in any way what so ever. I think the way they are playing fast and loose with privacy is a very dangerous thing, indeed. But let a terrorist organization set off another bomb in the U.S., and we’ll see just how deep and lasting all this navel gazing really is.
C.V. Danes
@Edmund in Tokyo:
Not only that, but consider all those nice, juicy back doors that the NSA has gratuitously provided them.
Suffern ACE
@Baud: I actually agree. Why would we need to accept Lara Logan’s return? Isn’t this just another instance of 60 minutes being an untrustworthy news source? If steal, do I get my job back because you sell drugs?
Cacti
In another story, unlikely to see the light of day from his BJ front page fan club…
Dudebro messiah Edward Snowden offers to help Brazil over US spying in exchange for asylum.
Maybe they can add treason to that indictment after all.
El Cid
The value added is the ’60 Minutes’ reputation, which supposedly involves ‘journalism’ and stuff, whereas the NSA could easily have produced its own in-house web/YouTube video which would have been seen as less effective.
Ash Can
@Edmund in Tokyo: Given the (now, thanks to the Snowden affair) obviously unreliable nature of outsourcing national security work, this could very well be true. It wouldn’t excuse Snowden’s actions, however — and would make him look all the stupider on top of it, for going public with his espionage.
Also, what Cacti said. (And BTW, I find it amusing to see how furiously Greenwald is scrambling to deny that this is what Snowden actually meant.) How obvious does Snowden have to be about his intentions before people start realizing just what he is?
muricafukyea
Gotta say I am really getting a kick out of the reactions at the orange satan dkos. That site can be so fucking embarassing to real progressives like me. In this case they are just so over the top it’s funny. Their caption should be “the face palm of the left wing”
Tone In DC
Lara Logan is back after less than a month. After that foul Benghazi shit she perpetrated.
Dan Rather is still pretty much out of work after going after Du(m)bya over eight years ago. Phil Donahue is no better off after MSNBC caved in a most cowardly fashion to the warmongers back in 2003.
I need a shower.
JustRuss
He’s giving Logan way too much credit. Sure, some people in power were upset by Logan’s angle, but about half of Congress, and their corporate backers, were delighted by it.
JoyfulA
@JustRuss: It isn’t “people in power” Logan sought to discredit; it’s “person in power.” Now does that make sense?
liberal
@Marc: yes, that much should be obvious to anyone.
liberal
@Cacti: Brazil is an enemy of the US? Do tell.
kc
Hehehe.
kc
@Cacti:
Snowden’s just trolling you now.
Yes, you.