WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence has hard proof that almost 1,000 foreign intelligence targets, including terrorists tracked by the U.S., have changed their communications methods because they were tipped off by Edward Snowden’s leaks.
Those targets, according to Rick Ledgett, deputy director of the National Security Agency, include a group of terrorists that were actively plotting to attack the U.S.
In an exclusive interview with WTOP, Ledgett described as “significant” the continuing damage caused by the leaks. He also detailed a new program to recapture the advantage over U.S. adversaries.
“The information that Snowden leaked caused immediate risk and long-term risk to the safety of Americans around the world, and our friends and allies,” said Ledgett.
High-level foreign intelligence targets of the U.S. government, that number “in the high hundreds,” he said, have altered the way they communicate because of the Snowden leaks.
Seated at large table in his office, which is filled with artifacts from the agency’s museum serving as reminders of its mission, Ledgett said, “I’ll give you a couple of examples.
“We track, through our intelligence sources, legitimate foreign intelligence targets of the United States, who are saying to each other, ‘I’ve seen this stuff published about what NSA does and I’m concerned about it because now I’m vulnerable,’” said Ledgett.
Because U.S. adversaries and enemies now know about NSA’s highly evolved methods of tracking, listening and using modern tools such as algorithms to search though communications, many targets have simply slipped off the grid.
“’They have said, ‘I need to change the way that I communicate in order to avoid being detected by the NSA.’ And a lot of them have actually done that. And that includes at least one terrorist group that was actively engaged in operational plans directed against the United States,” said Ledgett.
The U.S., according to three senior intelligence officials with whom WTOP spoke, is targeted by entities ranging from hostile nation-states to terror groups to nations such as Russia and China, that the U.S. does not call friend or enemy.
Those agencies depend on their partnership with NSA to stay ahead those threats, which evolve very quickly.
The NSA has two missions. Number one is signals intelligence — capturing foreign communications and information to provide what Ledgett called a “decision advantage to the United States.” The second mission is to protect and U.S. government networks from the very same activity conducted by foreign agencies.
In part, because the Snowden leaks erased important elements of NSA’s advantage over foreign targets, the agency has announced a major change that will affect everything it does.
Because of the extraordinary number of new communications technologies, including end-to-end encryption and applications, available to U.S. enemies, NSA is faced with a gamble that may have far-reaching implications if it fails.
“If you think about it, we have to bet on VHS, and not bet on Betamax. We have to pick iPod, not Zune,” said Ledgett.
The agency has chosen a venture called NSA21 to script out how it plans retain its self-described crown as “the world’s preeminent foreign signals intelligence and information assurance organization,” said NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers, in announcement to the workforce.
NSA21 centers on three key themes: people, integration and innovation.
Ledgett believes people are the agency’s most important asset and everything else pales by comparison.
“If you took all the people from NSA and put them aside safely, knocked down all the buildings, knocked down all the supercomputers, destroy all the software, did that sort of thing, we could reconstitute that in five years or so, and a lot of money, and we’d be OK.”
The agency’s objective for integration is to link its two missions, signals intelligence and information assurance, into one enterprise, from the bottom up throughout the organization, not just at the top.
Ledgett said NSA plans to create an “environment where we accept and encourage innovation inside and also we are receptive to innovation that comes from outside the building.”
Six new directorates are expected to shape in the coming months: Workforce and Support Activities, Business Management and Acquisition, Engagement and Policy, Operations, Capabilities and Research.
Retooling to keep up with rapidly changing technology is only a portion of the challenge facing the agency. Recovering from the damage of the Snowden leaks, according to several intelligence officials, is a difficult proposition.
“A virtual university” is how one senior U.S. intelligence official described to WTOP the volume of information available to foreign targets because of the leaks. Ledgett agreed with that assessment.
Some of the information made available to U.S. adversaries was not leaked; it was given away by the government.
Edward Snowden’s revelations not only exposed highly classified U.S. intelligence sources and methods for the collection of signals intelligence, but created a wave of anger against NSA, charging the agency with overreach.
Soon thereafter, a presidentially appointed review board concluded, “The United States Government must protect, at once, two different forms of security: national security and personal privacy.”
The end result was a push to be more transparent about U.S. intelligence practices, which Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told WTOP is a double-edged sword.
“The downside, of course, is, when we expose what we do, others capitalize, and that’s what’s happened to us in the last two or three years,” said Clapper.
Using that and other information, U.S. adversaries are getting smarter, faster and more deadly, Ledgett says, making NSA’s work all the more important.
“With entities like ISIL, like foreign and cyber-threat actors who don’t need a huge infrastructure to be a capable cyber actor, how do we respond to that? How do we adapt? How do we, ideally, anticipate that and head off events before they happen? That’s really the goal of both the intelligence side of the house and the information-assurance side of the house,” said Ledgett.
