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.”