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4 Unanswered Questions About NSA Leaks

By ABBY D. PHILLIP (@abbydphillip) Jun 8, 2013, 2:11 PM

In the last week, the government has suffered major leaks of sensitive, top-secret documents thatrevealed details about the country's national intelligence-gathering programs.

Among those was a classified PowerPoint presentation obtained by The Washington Post that

detailed a program code-named PRISM that the government reportedly used to sift through large

amounts ofdata from major tech giants including Google, Apple and Microsoft relating to foreign

suspects in terror investigations.

Another report revealed a court ordergranting the government permission to collect data on phone

calls made by Verizon customers.

ABC News spoke to Marc Ambinder, co-author of "Deep State: Inside the Government's Secrecy

Industry," about how the leaker could have done it and what may happen next.

Following is an edited transcript of the interview.

ABC News: How could someone manage to leak this kind ofsensitive information?

Marc Ambinder: The first thing that caught my eye about the Powerpont document was "ORCON."

It's a phrase that is put on classified documents to refer to the control mechanisms where the

originator ofthe document is the controller -- meaning it's sensitive enough that I'm the only person

who gets to decide who sees it.

Documents with that particular marking on it are always viewed in areas that are cleared for top-

secret data. And you can't view the document, print the document or take a screen grab of the

document without leaving an audit trail. Every document that they look at is recorded internally.

Someone could print out a document like that and walk out with it and even make a copy of it. But

even making a color copy ofit leaves a record or a trial.

ABC News: What kind ofperson would do this?

Ambinder: Ifthe person who did this risked leaving a trail or clues that the government can find they

are obviously very disturbed with the foundation on which the modern surveillance state rests and

wanted to do something dramatic about it.

It's much easier to leak information that is classified as secret, but the government is obsessive about

top-secret information.

No document like this has ever been leaked from the NSA. The NSA has its own counter-intelligence

team known as the Q force whose job it is to work on preventing leaks like this.

I think there's one person or entity that's doing this [leaking both information about PRISM and thegovernment's collection of phone data records].

IfI were in the government trying to do this, I would try to recruit likeminded friends and try to

circumvent the risk ofthe secrecy apparatus. It would be very difficult and dangerous. He or she took

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enormous risks to do this.

ABC News: But what about Bradley Manning? He was able to leak sensitive information in Wikileaks

by slipping it out, essentially, on a thumb drive.

Ambinder: That was in a war zone and, at the time, flash drive and CD use were quasi-permitted.

And the information was on a computer that was classified at the secret level.

Information at the top-secret level is on a completely different level. Top secret systems are

completely different. They are internally monitored and watched much more carefully.

ABC News: What happens now? How will the government respond?

Ambinder: I don't blame the government for launching a leak investigation. From the government's

perspective, documents involving top-secret information usually involve sources and methods whose

revelation would significantly impact national security. Those are the types ofthings that are classified

at this level.

The documents are time-stamped, so the government can figure out instantly the universe of4,000people who can see them at a particular time. They'll do what they do. They may polygraph 4,000

people, which is not unusual for them to do in leak investigations like that.

We will know the identity ofthe leaker before too long. The leaker, when caught, would be treated

prosecutorially a lot harsher if they are caught -- even from Bradley Manning -- because the document

was classified at a higher level.

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