NSA Chief: Massive Surveillance Has ‘Noble’ Intent

Says Snowden 'Betrayed' the NSA's Trust

NSA Chief Gen. Keith Alexander went on ABC today in an attempt to placate the American public’s growing disquiet about his organization’s massive surveillance of day-to-day activities.

Gen. Alexander insisted that the surveillance program was exactly what the American public should’ve expected and indeed, secretly probably wanted, after 9/11, adding that everything they did was “what you’d expect us to do,” and of “noble intent.”

Though most of the interview consisted of Alexander defending the notion of surveillance as a matter of course and condemning whistleblower Edward Snowden for “betraying” the NSA’s trust, while providing the sort of equivocation-ridden non-answers that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper famously described as the “least untruthful” things he could think of.

In the end, Alexander would only concede that the NSA is doing something surveillance related, that it works in his estimation, and that it is perfectly legal, also in his estimation.

Alexander did make some notable claims, however, particularly insisting that he doesn’t even really know who WikiLeaks is, and that he’s never followed anything related to them.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.