WASHINGTON, June 9: A US intelligence agency Requested a criminal probe on Saturday into the leak of highly classified information about secret surveillance programs run by the National Security Agency, a spokesman for the intelligence chief’s office said.
Confirmation that the NSA filed a “crimes report” came a few hours after the nation’s spy chief, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper launched an aggressive defense of a secret government data collection program.
Clapper blasted what he called “reckless disclosures” of a highly classified spy agency project code-named PRISM.
It was not known how broad a leaks investigation was requested by the super-secret NSA, but Shawn Turner, a spokesman for Clapper’s office, said a “crimes report has been filed.”
The report goes to the Justice Department, which has established procedures for determining whether an investigation is warranted. Prosecutors do not accept all requests, but they have brought a series of high-profile leak investigations under President Barack Obama. US officials said the NSA leaks were so astonishing they expected the Justice Department to take the case.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.
In a statement earlier yesterday, Clapper acknowledged PRISM’s existence by name for the first time and said it had been mischaracterized by the media. The project was legal, not aimed at US citizens and had thwarted threats against the country, he said.
“Over the last week we have seen reckless disclosures of intelligence community measures used to keep Americans safe,” Clapper said in a statement.
He said the surveillance activities reported in the Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper were lawful and conducted under authorities approved by Congress. “Significant misimpressions” have resulted from recent articles, he said.
ESCALATING BATTLE
Clapper’s comments were the latest development in an escalating battle over government spying and civil liberties, involving the Obama administration and news organizations that have published details of US data-mining efforts.
Clapper’s statement discussed in general terms what had been until Thursday an unknown and highly classified program. It made a rare public acknowledgement that US spy agencies obtained data from US telecommunications providers, but defended the practice as legal and regulated by courts.
“The United States Government does not unilaterally obtain information from the servers of US electronic communication service providers. All such information is obtained with FISA Court approval and with the knowledge of the provider,” said a fact sheet accompanying Clapper’s statement, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court.
PRISM, characterized in news reports as a top-secret National Security Agency program for extracting data from the computers of internet companies, in reality is an “internal government computer system” used to “facilitate” the government’s handling of information it collects from service providers, according to the fact sheet.
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(AGENCIES)
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