NSA officials claim loss of surveillance capability on terrorist targets after Snowden disclosures

298 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS suggested they had been interested in acquiring radioactive isotopes. Without the advance warning that the NSA’s surveillance of the pre- encrypted Internet had provided in the past, could the CIA now con- tend with such unconventional threats? The NSA also saw its sources disappearing from its surveillance. Before the Snowden breach, the FBI, the CIA, and the DIA, which were the NSA’s partners in the PRISM program, had compiled a watch list of highly active foreign terrorist targets for the NSA’s PRISM program. These “targets” included logistics officers, bomb builders, weapons specialists, and suicide bomber recruiters. Until June 6, 2013, many of these targets had frequently used Internet services, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Xbox Live, to send what they believed would be hidden messages. After the PRISM story broke in The Washington Post on June 6, the NSA “saw one after another target go dark,” according to a senior NSA executive involved in that surveillance. The NSA has watched about one thousand of these targets take “steps to remove themselves from our visibility.” According to the NSA’s deputy director, Richard Ledgett, in 2016, © the vanishings included a group planning attacks in Europe and the © United States. Admiral Rogers, the new NSA director, was asked about the dam- age done by Snowden. He was blunt and direct. Asked in February 2015 whether or not the disclosures by Snowden had reduced the NSA’s ability to pursue terrorists, he answered, “Have I lost capabil- ity that we had prior to the revelations? Yes.” | | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.indd 298 ® 9/30/16 8:13AM | | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019786