WASHINGTON — The Senate will take steps to prevent another leak like the recent release of information on an National Security Agency program monitoring domestic phone records, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein said.
“We will certainly have legislation which will limit or prevent contractors from handling highly classified technical data,” Feinstein told reporters Thursday following a closed briefing on the NSA program.
Forty-seven senators attended the briefing and were given the opportunity to ask questions of seven officials involved with the program, including Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, NSA Director General Keith Alexander, FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce and the former chief judge of the foreign intelligence surveillance court John Bates, according to Feinstein.
The legislation comes after Edward Snowden, a former contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton, leaked documents detailing NSA programs monitoring domestic phone records and emails.
The ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Saxby Chambliss, speaking to reporters later, said that there are “some changes that we’re gonna look at.”
“I think it’s pretty clear that we need to do a better job making sure that our top secret clearances go to only those individuals that deserve it, and that we monitor all of those people who have a top secret clearance from time to time, and we review their cases to determine whether or not there’s any reason to suspect that they may have compromised US intelligence in some way,” he said.
But, he said, “I don’t know whether what we need to do needs to be done legislatively or not.”
Officials have justified the programs, saying they have prevented numerous terrorist attacks. Feinstein said the number of attacks prevented was “more than you think,” and that Alexander hoped to provide senators with an exact number on Monday.