Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain is urging President Obama to fire National Security Agency (NSA) bigwigs — but not because he is mad about spying.
“There has not been sufficient congressional oversight, and there has been an absolutely disgraceful sharing of information that never should’ve taken place,” McCain told the German Der Spiegel on Sunday.
He pushed President Obama to pursue a “wholesale housecleaning” at the NSA. “It’s outrageous, and someone ought to be held accountable,” he said.
Other lawmakers have also called for increased NSA oversight. Wisconsin Republican Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner — whose new bill aims to curb invasive domestic surveillance — believes the agency’s information dragnet “goes far beyond what Congress envisioned or intended to authorize.”
But McCain seems angry that agency chiefs let themselves get caught in the first place.
“Why did Edward Snowden have that information?” the senator asked, referring to the former defense contractor who revealed the NSA’s massive data collection campaign. “And what are we doing as far as screening people who have access to this information?”
McCain blamed information sharing between intelligence agencies — policies instituted after the September 11 attacks — for the security breach. “For many years, we had an absolute provision that any classified information, which was going to be shared, is based on need-to-know information.” he explained.
“Then along came 9/11 and we said, “Oh, one of the reasons why we didn’t know about 9/11 is that we didn’t do enough information sharing,’” he continued. “Now we have a contractor employee . . . who has access to information which is, when revealed, most damaging to the standing prestige of the United States and our relations with some of our best friends.”
“We no longer hold anybody accountable in Washington,” McCain lamented. He insisted that NSA executives and the contractors responsible for background checks “should resign or be fired.”
On Monday McCain denied reports he had demanded the immediate resignation of NSA head Keith Alexander, with a spokesman claiming the senator had spoken about NSA leadership more generally. Alexander is accused of lying to Congress about his agency’s domestic snooping on two occasions, once in March 2012 about the program’s existence and again in June 2013 about it’s usefulness against terrorism.
McCain also said President Obama should say sorry to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose personal cell phone was tapped by the NSA since 2002. “Knowing how angry Angela Merkel was, he should have apologized,” he said. “You know, I’ve had to do that on numerous occasions in my life. The pain doesn’t last very long.”
The senator made no mention of an apology to the millions of Americans who have also had their phone call, email and social networking activities examined by the NSA.
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