Read More of the Same Day's Blog

The National Security Agency was Story of the Day for the second day in a row, and for the seventh weekday out of the last nine. This time it was not Edward Snowden, the confessed leaker, making headlines, but Keith Alexander, the NSA's director. Last Wednesday when he testified before a Senate committee, Alexander did not elaborate when he testified that his spies had helped prevent dozens of terrorist events. Now, before a House panel, he specifies what he means by "dozens:" ten domestic attacks, and 40-or-so overseas. CBS estimated that the NSA's secret operations cost around $10bn annually. All three newscasts led with Alexander's testimony. ABC used George Stephanopoulos as its substitute anchor.

Among the terrorism that the NSA claimed credit for helping to prevent, there was Najibullah Zazi's scheme to blow up subway trains in New York City, David Headley's plan to attack a newspaper office in Copenhagen (CBS' John Miller provided details), a Yemeni-inspired tourist trip by Khalid Ouazzani from Kansas City in order to case the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange in 2008 (ABC's Gio Benitez filed a follow-up), and a plan to wire funds from San Diego to militias in Somalia. CBS' Miller reminded us that, before the Danish plot, Headley (aka Daoud Gilani) had helped plan the Pakistani-based raid by Lashkar-e-Taiba guerrillas on luxury hotels in Mumbai. The NSA's eavesdropping had been unable to prevent that attack, which killed about 120 people in November 2008.

The Alexander hearings were covered by ABC's Brian Ross, CBS' Bob Orr, and NBC's Andrea Mitchell. Mitchell, as she likes to do, used her own lunchtime Reports program on MSNBC to gather soundbites, and used two of them in her coverage. A major piece of television newsgathering was Charlie Rose's (see UPDATE) interview on NSA surveillance and on the civil war in Syria with President Barack Obama. Both ABC's Ross and NBC's Mitchell aired Obama soundbites, giving credit to Rose on PBS. Rose is also an anchor in the mornings for CBS, and that network aired almost five minutes of excerpts from the PBS interview in its newscast.

The NSA hearings eclipsed dual landmarks in Afghanistan. On the military side, leadership of NATO operations was handed over to national commanders. On the diplomatic side, the State Department announced that it was holding direct talks with the Taliban at its newly-opened offices in Qatar. In return, the Taliban pledged to discontinue all military operations outside the borders of Afghanistan proper. NBC had Dustin Golestani cover both developments from Kabul. ABC's Muhammad Lila observed the handover of power on the unit level in the eastern village of Paktika. The diplomatic demarche was covered in brief stand-ups by a pair of White House correspondents traveling with the President in Berlin: CBS' Major Garrett and ABC's Jonathan Karl (at the tail of the Lila videostream).

UPDATE: the excerpt includes the portion of the interview in which the President called the FISA court "transparent" -- a claim that Rose did not challenge at the time, but that Politifact subsequently rated a Pants on Fire lie.


Andrew Tyndall 6/20/13 5:21:35 pm

© 2010 Tyndall Report