Politics

Surveillance stopped NYSE bomb plot

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:09:51 GMT

Bomb plots targeting the New York Stock Exchange and the city's subway were among more than 50 terrorist acts worldwide thwarted by top-secret surveillance programs since the 2001 al Qaeda attacks on the United States, security officials said Tuesday.

The startling details disclosed at a House intelligence committee hearing reflected a unified effort by the Obama administration and legislators to defend the telephone and e-mail surveillance made public this month by classified leaks to newspapers.

Testimony by Gen. Keith Alexander, the National Security Agency director, as well as officials from the FBI, Department of Justice and the Director of National Intelligence office called the programs created under the Patriot Act in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks a vital tool against terrorist plots.

Joined by panel Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers and other legislators, they condemned the document leaks by former government contractor Edward Snowden as harmful to the United States and its allies.

The leaks also led to what officials called widespread public misinformation about the surveillance programs that necessitated the relatively rare open hearing by the intelligence panel, where they detailed previously classified information in order to set the record straight.

It was the most comprehensive and specific defense of the surveillance methods that have come under ferocious criticism from civil liberties groups, some members of Congress and others concerned about the reach of government into the private lives of citizens.

National security and law enforcement officials repeated that the programs are tightly run with significant regulation and oversight by federal judges and Congress.

Addressing the most basic questions that have emerged, Rogers asked Alexander if intelligence workers have the ability to simply "flip a switch" in order to listen to phone calls or read the emails of Americans.

When Alexander replied "no," Rogers asked again to reinforce the message for anyone listening.

"So the technology does not exist for any individual or group of individuals at the NSA to flip a switch to listen to Americans' phone calls or read their e-mails?" he repeated.

"That is correct," Alexander answered.

He and others also asserted that the leaks were egregious and carry huge consequences for national security.

"I think it was irreversible and significant damage to this nation," Alexander said when questioned by Rep. Michele Bachmann.

"Has this helped America's enemies?" the conservative Minnesota Republican asked.

"I believe it has and I believe it will hurt us and our allies," Alexander said.

President Barack Obama has defended the programs as necessary in an era of terror.

In an interview with PBS' Charlie Rose broadcast on Monday night, Obama said the situation requires a national debate on the balance between security and privacy.

Alexander told a Senate committee last week that the surveillance programs helped stop dozens of terror plots, but he was unable then to provide classified details.

Under pressure from Rogers and other legislators, Alexander joined law enforcement officials Tuesday in making public some declassified details of the Patriot Act provisions.

In recent years, Alexander said, information "gathered from these programs provided government with critical leads to prevent over 50 potential terrorist events in more than 20 countries around the world."

Details of most of the thwarted terrorism acts remain secret, but national security officials said they were working on declassifying more information and could have a report to Congress as early as this week.

Sean Joyce, the deputy FBI director, detailed how email surveillance of foreigners under one program helped authorities discover the two New York City plots.

In the fall of 2009, Joyce said, the NSA intercepted an e-mail from a suspected terrorist in Pakistan. That person was talking with someone in the United States "about perfecting a recipe for explosives," he said.

Authorities identified Afghan-born Najibullah Zazi of Denver. The FBI followed him to New York and eventually broke up planning to attack the city's subway system. Zazi pleaded guilty and is currently in prison.

In the other New York case, the NSA was monitoring a "known extremist" in Yemen who was in contact with a person in the United States, Joyce said. The FBI detected "nascent plotting" to bomb the stock exchange, long considered a target of terrorists, and the plotters were later convicted, according to Joyce.

He also said e-mail surveillance disrupted an effort to attack the office of a Danish newspaper that was threatened for publishing a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed in 2006.

The plot involved David Headley, a U.S citizen living in Chicago. The FBI received intelligence at the time regarding his possible involvement in the 2008 Mumbai terror attack that killed 164 people, Joyce said.

The NSA, through surveillance of an al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist, found that Headley was working on a plot to bomb the newspaper.

Headley later confessed to conducting surveillance and was convicted. He also pleaded guilty to conducting surveillance in the Mumbai case.

In a fourth case, secret surveillance "tipped us off" to a person who had indirect contacts with a known terrorist group overseas, Joyce said.

"We were able to reopen this investigation, identify additional individuals through the legal process and were able to disrupt this terrorist activity," Joyce said.

In an exchange with Joyce, Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas said the case involved someone financing a designated terrorist group in Somalia.

Rogers, who scheduled the hearing in recent days after Alexander pledged to declassify information on terror plots thwarted by the secret programs, said it was necessary to clear up public confusion caused by misinformation.

"If half the things I read in blog and other places were true, I wouldn't support it," the Michigan Republican said, later adding that skeptics "have no understanding" of what is going on.

In particular, he said Snowden disclosed only a sliver of information about the programs without knowing the full extent of what they did and the strict regulation and oversight of them.

"None of the things he talked about were accurate," Rogers said of Snowden.

The hearing came one day after Snowden defended his actions in leaking classified documents to Britain's Guardian newpaper and the Washington Post.

In a series of blog posts on the Guardian website, the 29-year-old Snowden said he disclosed the information because Obama worsened "abusive" surveillance practices instead of curtailing them as he promised as a presidential candidate.

The former NSA contractor insisted that U.S. authorities have access to phone calls, e-mails and other communications far beyond constitutional bounds. While he said legal restrictions can be easily skirted by analysts at the NSA, FBI and CIA, Snowden stopped short of accusing authorities of violating specific laws.

Instead, he said toothless regulations and policies were to blame for what he called "suspicionless surveillance," and he warned that policies can be changed to allow further abuses.

At Tuesday's hearing, officials detailed how the programs operate and the judicial and legislative oversight involved, repeating several times how access to the content of e-mails or telephone calls -- or even the names of people involved -- required authorization.

Deputy Attorney General James Cole noted that basic phone records collected under Section 215 of the Patriot Act were not protected by Fourth Amendment rights to privacy, citing a 1979 Supreme Court ruling.

In the case, Smith v. Maryland, the justices ruled that information about telephone calls -- such as their time and duration -- was different from the content of the calls and therefore not protected under the Fourth Amendment.

Cole also provided a detailed description of the legal framework of the programs, noting that the anti-terrorism surveillance effort is not "off the books" or "hidden away."

"This is part of what government puts together and discusses," he said. "Statutes are passed. It is overseen by three branches of our government -- the Legislature, the Judiciary, and the Executive Branch."

He described the U.S. phone records collected under Section 215 as basic information "just like what you would get in your own phone bill."

"It is the number that was dialed from, the number that was dialed to, the date and the length of time. That's all we get," he said. "We do not get the identity of any of the parties to this phone call. We don't get any cell site or location information as to where any of these phones were located. And, most importantly, and you're probably going to hear this about 100 times today, we don't get any content under this. We don't listen in on anybody's calls under this program at all."

Instead, it takes permission from a special court to get access to further information, based on a verifiable link to a terrorism investigation, Cole explained. Such links have mostly come from another surveillance program that collects communications information of foreign terrorism suspects living overseas.

Critics question the need to store the vast amount of U.S. phone records, saying it creates a database prone to abuses and provides little return for the risk and privacy concerns.

Alexander said Tuesday the phone database played a role in stopping 10 terrorist acts since the 9/11 attacks. At the same time, he and other officials said there were no cases they knew of in which anyone willfully misused the system to access information.

"If you're looking for the needle in a haystack," Cole said, "you have to have the haystack."

Poll: Congress' approval rating just 16 percent

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:05:36 GMT

According to a new national poll, just 16 percent of Americans approve of the way Congress is handling its job, with 83 percent of those questioned in a CNN/ORC International survey saying they disapprove. The poll was released Tuesday.

The approval rating for Congress has hovered between 11 percent and 17 percent in CNN polling over the past two years. And the new numbers are in the same ballpark as surveys conducted the past few months from other organizations.

Control of Congress is split, with Democrats holding a majority in the Senate and Republicans the dominant party in the House of Representatives.

"Conservatives, at 21 percent, are slightly more likely to approve of Congress than liberals and moderates, among whom approval of Congress is just 13 to 14 percent," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "If you dislike an activist government, as many conservatives do, you're probably more willing to accept the go-slow approach that this Congress has been following. But that doesn't make the current Congress popular among conservatives -- eight in ten conservatives also disapprove of what's been happening on Capitol Hill this year."

The approval rating for Congress is much lower than that of the president. According to a CNN poll released Monday, 45 percent of Americans approve of the job President Barack Obama is doing in office.

The poll was conducted for CNN by ORC International June 11-13, with 1,014 adults nationwide questioned by telephone. The survey's overall sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.

Biden: 'Country has changed' on gun violence

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:05:51 GMT

In remarks Tuesday touting the Obama administration's progress in addressing gun safety, Vice President Joe Biden vowed to revisit gun control legislation that failed in the U.S. Senate earlier this year, and warned legislators that the political climate shifted after the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut last December.

"The one thing that each of us have been saying to our colleagues about these votes is the country has changed," Biden said. "You will pay a price, a political price for not - for not getting engaged and dealing with gun safety."

Before the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Biden said the minority of Americans who were opposed to gun control legislation had earned outsized power by turning up in high numbers to vote in congressional elections.

"Now those people who support rational safety measures say this will be a defining issue for me," Biden said in remarks at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House. "For the first time a clear majority of those who favor rational proposals say it will matter. It will make a difference in who I vote for. That's a fundamental change in the political calculus out there."

Citing polls that showed some moderate Democrats who supported the legislation that was backed by the president and vice president saw their approval ratings back home increase, Biden said that in recent weeks he's heard from legislators who opposed the legislation asking for another chance to vote on the issue.

"I'm optimistic because I've gotten those phone calls from those members of congress, many of whom voted no, saying can you find a way, can you find a way, can you find a way for us to revisit this, and so that's exactly what we're going to be doing," the vice president said.

Weeks after the mass shooting in Newtown, President Barack Obama issued 23 directives aimed at curbing the threat of gun violence. In his remarks, Biden unveiled a progress report that the administration says shows it is on its way to meeting nearly all of the goals the president set in January as part of that effort.

"Although we have yet to succeed in the House and Senate, but we will, he moved forward on what was within his power, what Executive Actions he could take," Biden said. "And today I can report that he announced 23 Executive Actions, 21 of them have been completed or there's been major progress made toward the total completion."

The mostly administrative steps span several federal agencies, and the majority require no approval from Congress.

For instance, the report touts action taken by the Health and Human Services Department to begin the process of reviewing healthcare privacy laws for any barriers preventing from reporting information about people with health problems that might prohibit them from purchasing guns.

The Justice Department proposed a new rule that would allow law enforcement to run full federal background checks on the owners of guns seized as part of an investigation. Officers currently are required to return seized firearms but are prohibited from running background checks on owners.

In an effort to spur new research on the causes of gun violence, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council issued a report this month recommending the pressing research questions.

Obama is calling on Congress to provide $10 million to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct gun violence research, an area that has been stalled in recent years due to its political implications.

"Why are we afraid of information?" the vice president asked, challenging critics of scientific research into gun violence. "An informed society should not be afraid of the facts."

On a conference call previewing Biden's remarks, a senior administration official said that while the report represents "significant progress," the administration continues to hold discussions with members of Congress in the hopes of getting legislation passed.

"These unilateral executive actions are in no way a replacement for concrete legislative action, which is why we're engaged in so many conversations with members of Congress, why we're engaged in trying to strengthen the political dynamics of the situation where we can actually have legislation that will tighten and strengthen background checks," the official said.

The vice president took a more emotional approach to the administration's lobbying efforts on Tuesday.

"Ladies and gentleman, since Newtown more people have died at the end of a gun than we have lost in Afghanistan. Pretty astounding," Biden said. "Pretty astounding. And Iraq as a matter of fact, over 5,000. That's no way to run a country. The public knows it."

Of the two Executive Actions the administration has failed to follow through on, the report predicts one will be fulfilled by the end of the year while the other is held up by congressional inaction.

As part of implementing the healthcare law championed by Obama, the report says HHS will finalize regulations later this year detailing how certain existing group health plans must cover mental health benefits, fulfilling the president's directive.

The last unfinished action may be a bit more difficult.

On the same day he rolled out his plans to reduce gun violence, the president also announced his plans to nominate B. Todd Jones to serve as the permanent director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

"Congress needs to help, rather than hinder, law enforcement as it does its job," Obama said in January. "We should get tougher on people who buy guns with the express purpose of turning around and selling them to criminals. And we should severely punish anybody who helps them do this. Since Congress hasn't confirmed a director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in six years, they should confirm Todd Jones, who will be - who has been acting [director], and I will be nominating for the post."

Five months after his nomination was announced, Jones sat down for a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, but it has yet to vote on his nomination.

Details of thwarted terror plots disclosed

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 18:11:27 GMT

Authorities disclose details of terror plots targeting the New York Stock Exchange and the city's subway system that were thwarted by NSA surveillance.

First family (minus the president) lunch with Bono

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 18:03:58 GMT

What's a visit to Ireland without a pub lunch alongside Bono?

First lady Michelle Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia partook in the quintessentially Irish experience Tuesday, joining the U2 front-man at Finnegan's restaurant in Dalkey, a posh suburb south of Dublin. Bono and the Obamas arrived and left the restaurant separately.

The first lady and her daughters are on a tour of the Republic of Ireland while President Barack Obama meets with world leaders in County Fermanagh in the North.

The Obama women visited Dublin's Trinity College on Monday, taking in the historic Long Room in the university's library. It houses a massive collection of Irish archives and historic documents, the most famous of which is the Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript of the Gospel created by Celtic monks in the ninth century.

Speaking later, the first lady told a crowd of Irish dancers that daughter Sasha thought the imposing library room at Trinity was reminiscent of Hogwarts, the fictional wizard school in the Harry Potter novels.

"It's a huge room with shelf after shelf full of books; a beautiful place, and I hope that all of you aspire to go there, if not study there, but just to go and experience what it's like to be surrounded by so much history and so much power," the first lady said.

Trinity College -- founded as a Protestant university in the sixteenth century -- holds an important place in Ireland's history. Regarded as a symbol of the Protestant Ascendancy of the island, Catholics were banned by their church from attending until 1970.

The real reason for the Obamas visit to Trinity was a genealogical exploration of their Irish heritage. The president's Irish roots have been well explored in the years he's been in office, and in May 2011 he visited Moneygall, in central Ireland, to visit the town his great-great-great grandfather emigrated from in the 19th century.

"The girls had a chance to explore those shelves and trace their Irish lineage, which was a very powerful thing to find out that these girls that were born on the South Side of Chicago can trace their roots back here to Ireland, way back to the 1600s," Michelle Obama said Monday. "That was very powerful for me, as their mother, and hopefully it will be something that they cherish for the rest of their lives."

Ahead of their lunch with Bono Tuesday, the first lady and her daughters took a tour of the Wicklow Mountains south of Dublin, including a stop at Glendalough, the countryside monastic sight that was the home of sixth-century hermit St. Kevin.

At Finnegan's Restaurant in Dalkey -- a Dublin suburb situated on the Irish Sea -- the Obamas would have chosen from a menu that includes Irish specialties like smoked bacon and cabbage, cottage pie and breaded Galway scampi.

The Obamas' visit to Dublin came just after one of the city's biggest celebrations - Bloomsday, celebrated June 16, marks the calendar day when James Joyce's "Ulysses" takes place. In Dalkey, the first lady was within a stone's throw of the Sandycove Tower, where the first episode of "Ulysses" is set.

Michelle Obama and her daughters join the president later Tuesday for the second leg of his European trip in Berlin.

Boehner: Immigration bill needs GOP support

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:45:08 GMT

Under pressure from House conservatives opposed to comprehensive immigration reform, House Speaker John Boehner said Tuesday, "I don't see any way of bringing an immigration bill to the floor that doesn't have majority support of Republicans."

Until now, Boehner has sidestepped questions about how he will move forward in the House on immigration reform and whether he would allow a vote on a bill that failed to garner support from at least half of the 234 GOP members.

The Senate is considering its version of immigration reform, and Boehner's comment raises new questions about whether any major immigration bill will get through Congress.

The condition that any bill must garner support from a majority of the GOP conference adds a new hurdle for immigration legislation that already faced a number of obstacles in a divided Congress.

House Republicans are deeply split on the issue, and many oppose giving the 11 million undocumented workers in the United States any path to citizenship. Many rank-and-file House GOP members vehemently oppose the bipartisan Senate bill and instead prefer to work on bills that are more narrowly focused on border security.

A group of outside conservative groups has been pressing House Republicans to codify the so-called Hastert rule, created by former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R- Illinois, who vowed he would not bring any legislation to the House floor for a vote unless it had the support from a majority of House Republicans. Boehner has not expressly voiced support for that rule, and he has faced backlash from his own members when he allowed bills, such as the fiscal cliff deal and the Violence Against Women Act, to clear the House with only a small minority of Republicans voting for them.

'We have plenty of leverage'

Boehner talked to reporters after the weekly GOP conference meeting on Capitol Hill. A source who attended Tuesday morning's closed-door meeting said Boehner assured House members that he has no plan to pass an immigration bill without majority GOP support.

"This town thrives on nonstories. And the biggest nonstory of the week is this speculation that I'm somehow planning secretly to pass an immigration bill without a majority of Republicans," Boehner said, according to the source.

"The only time any speaker allows a major bill to pass without a majority of the majority is when there is zero leverage. Denny Hastert did it on campaign finance reform and several other bills when he had no leverage and no other option. Nancy Pelosi did it on Iraq war funding and other bills when she had no leverage and no other option. And yes, it has happened to me a couple times, such as the fiscal cliff and hurricane relief, where we had no leverage and we faced a worse alternative, politically or in terms of policy.

"Let me be clear: Immigration is not one of these scenarios. We have plenty of leverage. And I have no intention of putting a bill on the floor that will violate the principles of our majority and divide our conference. One of our principles is border security. I have no intention of putting a bill on the floor that the people in this room do not believe secures our borders. It's not gonna happen."

When asked if Boehner's comments were a sign that immigration reform is essentially dead, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, appealed for unity.

"I hope that's not true," he said. "We were only able to reach an agreement on comprehensive immigration reform because we did it on a bipartisan basis. I hope that Speaker Boehner realizes the only way to success in the House on the same issue is on a bipartisan basis. If he insists on this being a Republicans-authored and (Republican)-inspired program, it has limited chance of success."

House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer predicted that if the Senate passes its bipartisan bill, "Republican leadership is going to be under great pressure to let the House work its will." He noted that GOP leaders regularly say they follow that pledge, and said at his weekly session with reporters, "either they mean it or they don't mean it. They're either hypocrites or they're not."

Bipartisan group's work continues

A bipartisan group of seven House members -- three Republicans and four Democrats -- is still finalizing its own comprehensive immigration bill that mirrors many of the provisions in the Senate bill, including eventual citizenship for undocumented workers. According to an aide familiar with those discussions, that bill could be unveiled as early as this week. But even the GOP members of that group admit that the measure isn't likely to gain significant support within the GOP conference.

House Republican leaders have scheduled a special conference meeting for July 10 to discuss the next steps on immigration. Senate Democratic leaders hope to vote on their bill before Congress takes a break for the Fourth of July holiday.

As he faced mounting pressure from his own members about how to proceed, Boehner attempted to place the blame for any problems with immigration reform on President Obama and Democrats.

"I'm increasingly concerned that the White House and Senate Democrats would rather have this as an issue in the 2014 election rather than a result," he said.

While Boehner did say he wouldn't move an immigration bill that didn't get majority support from his own members, one senior House Democratic aide noted that he did not rule out breaking the "majority of the majority" test on an immigration bill that could emerge from a conference committee negotiated between the House and the Senate, if both bodies pass different measures.

Hoyer acknowledged that while House Republicans may not feel pressure to back comprehensive reform, national GOP leaders from the "presidential wing" of the party do want Congress to act on this issue because the party did so poorly among Latino voters in 2012. "I think there will be a lot of pressure from Republicans on the Republican House."

A new CNN/ORC poll released Tuesday shows a small majority of Americans support the approach in the Senate bill. The poll shows that 51% say they support a bill that would attempt to increase border security and create a pathway to citizenship for many undocumented immigrants, with 45% saying they are opposed to such a measure.

Boehner is scheduled to meet with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus on Wednesday to discuss immigration reform.

Up to 2 years for women in elite combat roles

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:28:19 GMT

It may be another two years before women can start training for jobs in Army Ranger and Navy SEAL units under plans to be announced by the Pentagon on Tuesday, a Defense Department official familiar with the matter said.

The official declined to be named because the plans are not yet announced.

It is part of the next step in a longstanding effort to open as many combat jobs as possible to women.

The plan now is for jobs in special operations to be available to women possibly in mid-2015.

The official argued the latest development is not a delay, but is more of an acknowledgment by the military that it needs more time to study the issue.

Full implementation of women into combat positions, including infantry and armor units, is to be completed by January 2016.

The military has gradually been opening more jobs to women.

But in January, then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta ordered all jobs open to women unless a specific "exception" was requested by the military services.

The Pentagon since has been working on plans to implement those orders with the plans expected to be announced on Tuesday.

Baseline physical fitness requirements will continue to vary on the basis of gender and age.

The services are determining job performance standards that everyone equally will have to meet, such as the ability to reload tanks, artillery and other heavy weapons.

This had the impact of now allowing women to serve in frontline Army and Marine combat units, as well as unique jobs such as putting enlisted women on submarines.

In 2012, the Army opened over 14,000 positions to women. The latest move, to be announced Tuesday, could open approximately another 6,000 jobs to women in the Army.

Obamas explore their Irish roots

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:09:00 GMT

While President Barack Obama is in Northern Ireland for the G-8 Summit, his daughters are getting to explore their Irish heritage. Obama's maternal great-great-great-grandfather was born in a small town in Ireland.

Obama says he's no Dick Cheney on snooping

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 13:26:56 GMT

Critics who have compared President Barack Obama's stance on government surveillance to that of hawkish former Vice President Dick Cheney are missing his insistence on proper systematic balances, Obama said in an interview that aired Monday.

Defending at length the recently revealed government programs that gather information about phone calls and Internet usage, Obama said his focus has always been on allowing information to be gathered while ensuring necessary oversight.

"Some people say, 'Well, you know, Obama was this raving liberal before. Now he's, you know, Dick Cheney.'" Obama told PBS' Charlie Rose. "Dick Cheney sometimes says, 'Yeah, you know? He took it all lock, stock, and barrel.' My concern has always been not that we shouldn't do intelligence gathering to prevent terrorism, but rather are we setting up a system of checks and balances?"

Obama's administration has faced a litany of questions since the disclosure of government programs that allow the National Security Agency to collect millions of records from U.S. telecommunications firms and Internet companies in the name of preventing terrorism. The source of the information, former CIA employee Edward Snowden, said he was moved to leak the top-secret documents because he felt the government was far overreaching its constitutional bounds in collecting the data.

But Obama argued in the interview on Monday that the system in place includes steps to prevent Americans' rights against unlawful search and seizure from being violated.

"What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a U.S. person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls, and the NSA cannot target your e-mails," Obama said.

"On this telephone program, you've got a federal court with independent federal judges overseeing the entire program," the president continued. "And you've got Congress overseeing the program, not just the intelligence committee and not just the judiciary committee -- but all of Congress had available to it before the last reauthorization exactly how this program works."

Some members of Congress, including Senate Intelligence Committee members Jay Rockefeller and Susan Collins, have questioned the notion they were given proper briefings on the NSA's program, however, and many lawmakers have said they first learned of the programs when they were revealed in news reports two weeks ago.

Asked in the interview whether the NSA's process should be more open, Obama said, "It is transparent. That's why we set up the FISA court."

That body, however, operates in secret, and its locations are considered classified. It has approved the vast majority of the requests it has received for warrants, though those orders are also kept secret.

An administration official said Monday that Obama had asked his intelligence chief James Clapper to determine whether additional information about the data collection programs can be made public, part of what the official described as a "broader effort the president is undertaking to have a dialogue on protecting privacy in the digital age."

The swirling debate is grist for a "national conversation" about privacy and national security, Obama said.

"Not only about these two programs, but also the general problem of data, big data sets, because this is not going to be restricted to government entities," he said.

Christie to 'probably' make White House decision in 2015

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 13:16:07 GMT

Answering a question about when he'll make a decision on a 2016 presidential bid, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie went farther than usual in acknowledging interest in the race, saying Tuesday he "probably" won't make up his mind until 2015.

The outspoken Republican governor weighed in on the qualities he sees the GOP needs in a leader in Washington -- and joked about one of his favorite perks of being governor. Hint: It involves women in swimsuits.

Appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Christie said the Republican Party is struggling on the national level because it's not mirroring the policies and actions taken by politicians at the state level.

"We've got 30 of 50 Republican governors in this country. Why? That's because at the state level, they see the Republican Party as being doers. That we actually get things done for people," he said, arguing that's what people see in New Jersey. His state has a Democrat-controlled state legislature, and a Republican governor.

Christie has been known for blasting Washington politics, and emphasized Tuesday that nation's capital has a serious lack of bipartisanship.

"Almost everything that I see that comes out of the floor of Congress from both parties shocks me," he said. "What you've seen in Congress is that people are in both end zones, and that nobody's playing in the middle of the field."

The governor said Washington needs "someone who takes some leadership down there" and criticized the president for not reaching out to members of Congress on a social level until this year. In what some have called a "charm offensive," President Barack Obama had dinner with lawmakers from both sides multiple times this year in order to discuss policy.

But Christie said the president should have started this years ago.

"The fact that all the sudden now we're in ... June of 2013 and we're just talking about a charm offensive, and trying to get to know Congress -- your fifth year of the presidency? It's a little bit late in the dating game to get to know somebody," he said.

Regardless of his disagreements with Obama, Christie has publicly commended the president on his support for the Northeast following Superstorm Sandy. The two have appeared together twice when the president came to visit New Jersey, leading some to joke that the Republican governor and Democratic president have formed a "bromance."

Asked if he's concerned about his political future when he makes appearances with top Democrats like Obama and former President Bill Clinton, the Republican said every politician thinks about his or her future but "if that's what rules your decisions, you're not going to last in this business."

"People are going to see you for the phony you are," he said. "I'm not worried about it, I recognize that there will be some people who are going to use the fact that I've done my job against me."

Talking about the recovery of the Jersey Shore since the storm, Christie also told a story about his experience on the sand the day prior.

"I had more young women coming up from the beach to come up and take pictures with me and stand around and take photos. And this one guy, older guy, was looking at me, taking pictures. And I looked at him and said, 'Isn't being governor the hardest job in the world?' And the guy just burst out laughing," Christie said. "You know, you got to have fun in this job. And that's what I do, too. I have a good time. People in New Jersey are having a good time now, too."