WASHINGTON – It’s been two years since the military allowed gay troops to serve openly. But for some whose careers were hurt under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell or the earlier prohibition against homosexuality, the past scars run deep.

Marine Monique Williams, who joined the Marines in 2004 and now serves as a recruiter in Brooklyn, remembers that DADT caused its own difficulties.

“It kind of put everybody into hiding, for lack of a better word. So we did kind of sweep it under the rug and say, ‘Hey, listen. We just can’t, we can’t be out there. We can’t be comfortable with what we’re doing because now they’re actually looking for it,” Williams said.

Williams said she wound up deleting personal websites and breaking up with a girlfriend.

“Just to kind of keep everybody out of my business,” Williams said.  “And a lot of other Marines did that, too.”

Ellen Bushmiller served in the Navy from 1981 to 1983, but was discharged when it was discovered that she was a lesbian, more than a decade before DADT became policy.

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was sort of in place anyway in a really informal way. As long as nobody said anything you were mostly ignored as long as you did your job,” Bushmiller, a former Navy sailor, said.

She was told to leave after a female service member outed her and a few other lesbians. Her discharge was not honorable.

“It was a cultural knowledge that being in the military meant you couldn’t be gay,” she said.

While Bushmiller did not have the DADT policy to protect her, Michael Almy said it didn’t help him when he was honorably discharged from the Air Force in 2006 after serving for 13 years. His last position was as a major.

“I still maintain to this day that the Air Force overstepped their boundaries and that they really abused this law (DADT policy) and bent it to their own purposes to use whatever way they could – or whatever way they saw fit – to throw gays out of the military,” Almy said.

Almy claimed that the Air Force violated DADT by searching through his personal e-mails to uncover the fact that he is gay.

The Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment.

Trial by fire

“At first you feel betrayed and you are betrayed and you feel it. Keenly. And then as you grow past it you try to look at why they did what they did. And I know now for a lot of different reasons that people do things out of motivation that they sometimes don’t understand,” Bushmiller said.

While Bushmiller feels some resentment towards the woman who turned in her and the others, she has tried to come to terms with it.

“So I can only hope that she didn’t understand what she was doing. Because it wasn’t just me who was kicked out, it was other people. I was young and some of those other people weren’t,” Bushmiller said. While Bushmiller didn’t have the partial protection provided by Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Almy said DADT did little to ease life for gays in the military.

“A lot of people have the misnomer that DADT was there to protect gays and help them serve in the military when in reality it was the complete opposite,” Almy said. “It almost gave the military cart blanche to do whatever they wanted to throw gays out. And really they should have just named it ‘Don’t Be Gay’ because that’s in essence what it was.”

Almy was involved in the repeal process, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“Early 2010 was the first big event that started the whole repeal process. And that was when Secretary of Defense (Robert) Gates and Adm. (Michael) Mullen testified before the Senate Armed Services committee and that was February 2010. And that was when they both pushed-or encouraged the Senate – that they supported the repeal, which was obviously huge,” Almy said.

Featuring Lady Gaga, a rally was organized in Maine in September 2010 to encourage the state’s two senators – Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins — to support the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

“And it worked. They both eventually supported repeal,” Almy said.

Almy also did many media interviews. He was also involved with SLDN, Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, now also known as Outserve.

“I think it helped give a face to an abstract issue, it gave real-life stories of myself and several other veterans who were serving, serving their country honorably, doing their jobs, and they just got caught up in a really horrible law,” Almy said.

Williams also has gotten involved with Outserve, and is the chapter leader of the New York, New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania area.

Her new goal is to get the military to allow transgender individuals to serve.

“The transgender issue is going to be a tough one to fight for obvious reasons, the sexuality, gender change, it’s going to require medication. Obviously if you’re against LGB you’re going to be more against transgender because you’re trying to change your sex,” Williams said.

Looking forward

What do these three have to say to those LGBT service members today?

“I’d say be yourself, figure out what that means. They obviously no longer have to worry about being thrown out so that’s just automatically a huge relief and I would say try to keep some perspective on what that means as far as how far we’ve come and where we have to go, but enjoy it. And set a great example,” Almy said.

Bushmiller said, “You should be measured by your work so work well. ”

Williams said changing attitudes towards gays and lesbians will take time, but at least now the military policy isn’t fostering silence.

“At the end of the day discrimination is not tolerated,” she said.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., was the featured speaker at a recent Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation panel discussion. Steven Pifer, director of the Brookings Institution Arms Control Initiative, reiterated Feinstein’s call for more “creative thinking in considering budgets for nuclear weapons, which he considered inevitable.

Pifer said the current force structure of land, sea and air forces will remain in effect until the 2020s. However, he said that decisions taking place now will affect what takes place after that.

Feinstein said the U.S. should “maintain a much smaller nuclear deterrent at an affordable cost.”

“The risks of maintaining a large nuclear arsenal today far outweigh the national security benefits. Just look at it very practically. Large quantities of nuclear material pose a proliferation risk as non-state actors are still looking to acquire these materials for nuclear devices,” she said.

Pifer said that new ballistic missiles cost about $6 billion to $7 billion each, with about $18 billion in operational costs over the 40-year life of a submarine.

“So if you could cut two submarines, you could probably save $12 to$15 billion in construction costs, and $38 to $40 billion in operational costs,” Pifer said. “And I would argue that’s significant money.”

Meeting Russia halfway

The New Start Treaty, a nuclear weapons reduction treaty, calls for strategic nuclear missile launchers to be reduced twofold by both the United States and Russia by 2018.

According to Pifer, Russia is further along in its process of reducing current weapons, at least when it comes to deployed strategic warheads as well as deployed strategic missiles and bombers.

But the U.S. would like to modify the treaty to ensure that Russia’s reductions are in the types of weapons in which it now has an advantage by setting aggregate limits.

“The advantage of that aggregate limit is that it would force a tradeoff between the area where the Russians have a numerical advantage which is nonstrategically tactical, and the area where the Americans have the advantage, which is reserve strategic weapons,” Pifer said.

However, he said it is unlikely Russia will agree to such a plan.

Pifer argued that there’s more room for limiting American and Russian reductions before a discussion about limiting those weapons of third countries is made.

“America and Russia have about 4,500 weapons in their arsenals – not counting those in the dismantling queue – and the nearest country in terms of numbers would be China with about 300 weapons,” Pifer said.

Sens. Feinstein and Wyden and Rep. Sensenbrenner are among many senators heading up legislation to put such amendments — limiting the reach of the National Security Agency’s surveillance of Americans and others — in place. This week has been a busy one for these cybersecurity issues in Congress.

Committee action on Feinstein’s bill got under way this week. And Sensenbrenner introduced his legislation in the House on Tuesday.

At the same time, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and NSA Director Keith Alexander addressed members of the House about the reports of  monitoring of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone.

Speaking at a CATO Institute conference earlier in October, Wyden, D-Ore., said he wanted to  confront what he called the “business-as-usual brigade.” The objective of this so-called brigade, Wyden said, is to “fog up the surveillance debate and convince Congress and the public that the real problem here is not overly-intrusive, constitutionally flawed domestic surveillance, the real problem is all that sensationalistic media.”

Wyden said the NSA’s end goal is to ensure that any surveillance reform is only skin deep and he wants to make sure that doesn’t happen.

“We’ve heard that surveillance of Americans’ phone records, a.k.a. metadata, is not actually surveillance at all: it’s simply the collection of bits of information. We’ve been told that falsehoods aren’t really falsehoods,” Wyden said at the libertarian think tank.

It is likely to take some time to finalize the language of the Feinstein bill. Feinstein said earlier this month that the bill would call for increased oversight and transparency of the surveillance program.

And senators like Wyden seem ready to push on with proposed reform in the face of continuous pushback from the NSA and others who argue that the snooping is necessary to protect America from another terrorist assault similar to the 9/11 attacks.

On the House side, Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., though an original author of the Patriot Act, has remained critical of the surveillance system. His legislation would completely do away with parts of the program.

“The logic it uses to support bulk collection of phone records would also support the bulk collection of other records, raising the question: what other records is the government collecting in bulk and just how deeply is the government intruding into our daily lives?” he said during the CATO conference.

Recent revelations of the expanded NSA surveillance could change the way members of Congress perceive the system, especially how the term “relevance” is used in reference to legitimizing the collection of phone records and emails.

“The government claims it needs the haystack to find the needle, but gathering the haystack – making it larger – without the knowledge that it contains the needle is precisely what the relevant standard was supposed to prevent,” Sensenbrenner said.

Feinstein has been fairly tight-lipped about the progress of her bill. But in a statement Monday she expressed her opposition of the NSA collection of intelligence on leaders of America’s  allies, including Merkel.

She said the Senate Intelligence Committee was “not satisfactorily informed” of NSA surveillance, all the more reason for a sense of urgency of in producing a bill proposing changes to the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act  — FISA —  which would restrict  NSA’s reach.

“I think that it is totally inappropriate. There’s absolutely no justification for our country to be collecting intelligence information of some of the leaders of some of our closest allies,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said.  “I think the bigger question is whether the president was aware we were collecting intelligence on some of the leaders of some of our closest allies,” Collins said. “If the President didn’t know he definitely should have known. I would think that if the President was not informed of this program, that he would be demanding resignations of those who should have informed him.”

The White House and members of Congress are meeting with German government officials this week to discuss security issues.

“We’re making progress” was Sen. Dan Coats’s, D-Ind., response during the closed door committee mark up of Feinstein bill on Tuesday.

Thirty-four-year-old defense contractor Aaron Alexis, who had previously been involved in a series of violent outbursts, opened fire after gaining access to a Navy Yard building with a proper security badge. Twelve people were killed before Alexis was gunned down by police.

On Thursday, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee focused on the issue of security clearances in light of this tragedy.  Of particular interest were Seattle Police Department records showing that Alexis had shot at an automobile’s tires. Those doing his security check did not seek these records.

“As we have learned more about Aaron Alexis, a number of my colleagues and I have been asking each other why such a troubled, unstable individual possessed a security clearance from the U.S. government,” said Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del. chairman of the homeland security panel.

Aside from the hearing, four senators introduced legislation Wednesday to require more frequent background checks of government employees and contractors awarded security clearance.

“Many national security experts have long argued that the security clearance process is antiquated and in need of modernization,” Carper said. “Given recent events, I think we have to ask whether the system is fundamentally flawed.”

At the Capitol Hill hearing, senators from both parties agreed that the system was significantly flawed.

“This is an issue of us failing to do our job in terms of security issues,” Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. said. “Our process is obviously broken.”

Sen. John Tester, D-Mont., echoed Coburn, saying “There are real life consequences for failures in our government.”

While testifying before the committee, Brenda Farrell, of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, noted serious failings that the watchdog group  found while reviewing the Defense Department’s security programs.

In 2008, the GAO found that an estimated 87 percent of 3,500 investigative reports assessing workers’ eligibility for clearance were short on some required documentation, such as a verification of all employment information.

Additionally, 12 percent of the 3,500 reports did not require an interview with the prospective employee.

Clearance checks are currently conducted every five years for Top Secret clearances and every 10years for Secret clearances.

It wasn’t until 2011 that the GAO dropped the Defense Department from its “high-risk” list,, having had it there since 2005 because of the lengthy time the Pentagon  was taking to process clearance checks.  The GAO regularly tracks agencies at risk for waste, fraud and mismanagement.

In terms of legislative action, the senators’ bill would require the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to increase audits of security clearances.

The current time between checks of the clearances leaves the government vulnerable to security risks, according to Brian Prioletti, assistant director of the special security directorate.

Much more needs to be done, according to Elaine Kaplan, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management.

“In particular, we recognize that evolution of the security clearance process must include the ability to obtain and easily share relevant information on a more frequent or real-time basis,” Kaplan said.

Coburn went a step further, saying the number of individuals given security clearance needed to be restricted and reviewed with greater scrutiny. He also addressed the issue of over-classification of information, which often leads to growing numbers of individuals going through the security clearance process.

A process must be in place to ensure that timely reevaluations take place, Joseph Jordan, of the Office of Management and Budget, told the committee.

Sybrina Fulton’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee reignited the national debate about gun laws.

Florida was the first state to pass a so-called “stand your ground” law that allows people to defend themselves, including by the use of deadly force, if they think someone is trying to kill or grievously harm them, no matter where they are. More than two dozen states have since passed similar laws.

Martin, 17, was unarmed when he was shot to death last year by Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch patrol member in Sanford, Fla.

“We’re seeing a national impact when it comes to public safety and civil rights,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said. “These laws (Stand Your Ground) have allowed shooters to walk free in shocking situations. These laws increase racial disparity in our criminal justice system.”

Fulton said that her son, Trayvon, was simply walking to the store to buy a drink and some candy while talking on a cell phone at the time of his shooting.

“He was minding his own business. He was not looking for any type of trouble. He was not committing any crime,” Fulton said. “What message are we sending if our kids – because remember these are our kids in our communities – don’t feel safe?”

Lucia McBath, whose 17-year-old son, Jordan Davis, was killed when a man opened fire on Davis and three other unarmed teenagers in the back seat of a car after an argument about loud music coming from the car, said that “stand your ground defies all reason.”

“An angry man who owned a gun took it close at hand and chose to demonstrate unrivaled hatred for reasons that I will never understand,” McBath said.

“That man was empowered by the ‘stand your ground’ statute. I’m here to tell you there was no ground standing,” McBath said.

McBath also spoke on behalf of an organization called Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, which believes the “Stand Your Ground” laws go against justice.

Jennifer Hoppe, of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, said it was founded the day after the mass shootings at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Conn., and now has more than 120,000 members.

“We’ve come here today to just say, ‘We’ve had enough of these “stand your ground” laws,” Hoppe said. “We think they’re contributing to gun violence in our country.”

David LaBahn, president of the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, said the laws leave people to guess what behavior is legal and what behavior is criminal.

But Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, supports the laws, saying they don’t apply to aggressors just to people trying to protect themselves against serious threats.

“Self defense is a bedrock liberty of every American,” Cruz said. “I emphatically agree that law enforcement should be vigorous, protecting those innocent citizens who are preyed upon by violent criminals.”

Cruz said the Judiciary Committee hearing wasn’t needed and was called only to advance the gun-control cause.

“Unfortunately, there are many who are more interested in advancing a political agenda,” he said.

The research recommended cutting bombers and land-based missiles for nuclear weapons, saying submarines are more effective.

“This paper, I hope, reflects the kind of top to bottom review that is necessary,” said Christopher Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at Cato.

Preble, Cato defense research fellow Benjamin Friedman and researcher Matt Fay of Temple University argue that nuclear weapons are essentially irrelevant in U.S. wars.

“Budgetary benefits and military use of nukes have declined,” Friedman said. “I think the cause of that is that they [nukes] aren’t used in the wars we actually fight.”

He said most of the wars the U.S. wages are against weak states that have no nuclear capabilities.

“Nuking a bunch of people in a country that doesn’t threaten the survival of the U.S. isn’t morally acceptable so nobody thinks of that as a possibility,” Friedman said.

The research said that submarines are more effective than bombers because bombers are vulnerable to sophisticated air defenses and interception while refueling but submarines can covertly approach enemy shores, making them much less vulnerable to attack.

“Submarines possess a capacity that would make even an aggressive adversary think twice,” Fay said.

But Elbridge Colby of the Center for Naval Analyses argued that cutting the current triad down to one system would be “imprudent or outright dangerous.”

“By getting rid of two legs of the triad they are prepared to buy a smaller insurance package,” Colby said.

Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project, countered that submarines may be, in fact, more vulnerable to attacks, especially because they would potentially be up against countries like Russia and China, with land-based resources.

“There is something to think about here,” Kristensen said. “How is that force [submarines] going to interact?”

The Cato researchers stood by their solo system recommendation, saying it would be less expensive, saving about $20 billion annually.

While they ultimately favor an abandonment of the air- and land-based legs of the triad, they are not nuclear abolitionists.

“We’re not going to move away from counterforce capabilities,” Friedman said. “We can’t.”

WASHINGTON – On Capitol Hill, the debate over the constitutionality of the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records rages on.

Despite the recent declassification of a top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruling from Aug. 29 – that decided that the metadata system is constitutional — the Senate Judiciary Committee called in legal experts to debate the issue last week.

Two Georgetown law professors squared off before the panel, giving different perspectives about whether the data collection is reasonable, relevant and legal.

Reasonable expectation of privacy

Professor Laura Donohue argued that the bulk collection of citizens’ metadata is both illegal and unconstitutional in its interpretation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against “unreasonable searches and seizures.”

She sought to refute the FISA court’s ruling that the Fourth Amendment question was irrelevant when individuals have no reasonable expectation of privacy in metadata. Donohue said citizens do have privacy expectations that NSA’s collection system ignores.

Donohue mentioned a 2012 Supreme Court case dealing with the use of GPS tracking devices in police investigations. In the opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia said that “at minimum, the 18^th Century guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure must provide the degree of protection it afforded when it was adopted.”

Donohue said the program allows for unjustified warrants and an arbitrary collection of information from American citizens. She also disagreed with the use of “relevant” as it is used to determine which records are searched, as well as other statutory issues. Donohue argued that the “use of relevant is so absurd as to render the use of statutory language irrelevant.”

In the August ruling, the FISA court said Congress decided to leave the key term “relevant” undefined. The court document also stated that the definition of relevance was interpreted broadly and held to a “relatively low standard.”

 ”I don’t want to see us go backwards”

On the opposing side, another Georgetown law professor argued that proposals to change the law concerning the metadata system have gone too far and threaten national security.

“In the years leading up to and following 9/11, the FISA court was subject to the exact opposite criticism that it’s receiving today,” Professor Carrie Cordero said. “It was criticized of being too cautious, too unwilling to be aggressive under the law to protect matters of national security.”

Cordero urged the committee to use caution in considering quick fixes that sound appealing but that she believes could have lasting negative consequences.

She said arguments maintaining that the system is unconstitutional are based on misinterpretations of the law.

Cordero also suggested that adding a public interest advocate to the FISA court process would not increase public confidence, since the advocate would be part of the secretive court process that the public could not see.

“Very, very gray”

National security attorney Mark Zaid said in a telephone interview that the issue of the system’s constitutionality is not black and white, but instead “very, very gray.”

“As far as I can see, the programs are constitutional unless you can demonstrate how policy and practice of abuse is present,” Zaid said Monday.

He cautioned that the uncovering of abuses doesn’t necessarily deem the system unconstitutional, but rather subject to policy changes.

Without Supreme Court action, Zaid said he doubted that much about the metadata system will change.

“It’s very easy to drop a bill into the process but it’s a totally different story to have that bill go through hearings, a different story to have it voted on, and a different story to have it enacted,” Zaid said.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has scheduled a markup of Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s bill for Thursday. Feinstein’s wants to make changes in the metadata system, including a call for more statistics showing the number of calls searched and analyzed by NSA.

“You scared the hell out of all of us,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. “For our Republican party not to try to end this mess is irresponsible.”

While Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said he didn’t think politics should be to blame, he hoped for a quick fix.

“I hope we can see bipartisan cooperation today to agree to come together,” Cruz said.

Essential intelligence

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., called for a policy change to revise the current “non-essential” percentage standard of 70 for intelligence organizations, and Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., echoed this thought.

“As you are aware of, two days ago we passed some legislation quickly, very quickly – unanimously – to protect the military from this shutdown,” Flake said. “Have you recommended to the president that he recommend to the Congress that we do something similar for the intelligence services?”

Clapper said he planned to make such a recommendation, and Flake seemed sure Congress would accept it.

“I can guarantee both the House and Senate would move expeditiously to do this if it really is a problem, and I believe it is,” Flake said. “I trust you will make that recommendation to the president.”

‘Painful choices’

“I can’t believe that 70 percent of the intelligence community is being furloughed and we’re still able to meet our national security responsibility,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said.  “That concerns me very much.”

Clapper said painful choices as to who is deemed “necessary to protect against imminent threat of life and property” are made on a day-to-day basis.

He added that unlike the obvious impact the closing of the public parks is having, in the case of intelligence it’s insidious.

“As each day goes by, the jeopardy to the security of this country will increase,” Clapper said.

Sen. Amy Klobouchar, D-Minn., seemed particularly concerned about the shuffling in and out of people to deal with threats as they are encountered that Clapper mentioned.

“These threats change day to day as I’ve learned and you need people on the ground to be able to respond to them,” she said.

More than 70 were killed and 200 injured during the attack at the Westgate Nairobi mall on Sept. 21.

Seth Jones, associate director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center, told the committee that al-Shabab should be perceived as a significant terrorist threat to the U.S. and other countries because it is capable of mounting significant operations abroad.

He said that mall attack was a “stark reminder that this Somalia-based group and al-Qaida affiliate remains lethal.”

Recruitment of vulnerable youth

Mohamed Farah, executive director of a Somali-American youth organization – Ka Joog – said that the top issue that the U.S. should deal with regarding al-Shabab is the recruitment of American youth in personal meetings and through social media sites like Twitter.

He said disenfranchised, uneducated youth are targeted. There now have been a number of American recruits eventually traveling to Somalia to become suicide bombers for the group, he said.

Ironically, al-Shabab translates to “youth” in Arabic.

“Sure, any of us sitting here would not dream of strapping explosives on let alone fight along side extremists for whatever glorified cause,” Farah said. “But why? Because we have all been educated, well-educated, to understand that our human potential is worth far more than an explosive vest and that our human purpose transcends the agenda of extremists.”

Farah said Somalia’s government should do more to protect its youth and “illuminate the cancerous ideology” of al-Shabab.

“We have to treat al-Shabab like a gang, that’s what they are,” Farah said.

Turning a profit

Al-Shabab seems to be getting its funding from kidnapping and charcoal smuggling, Jones said.

“Kidnapping can be quite profitable,” he said.

Richard Downie, deputy director of the Africa program of the Center for Strategic and International Studies at johns Hopkins University, added that the group is not only profitable but extremely dangerous.

“Whether this attack involves al-Qaida funding or blessing of al-Qaida I certainly am not aware of that,” Downie said. “But certainly the two groups have been moving closer together.”

Don Borelli, former FBI official and chief operations officer of The Soufan Group, emphasized the impeding threat of al-Shabab.

“Their intention is to fight more abroad, but with the fear of the global Jihad mentality, the fear is that they could be turned to come back here,” Borelli said.

Borelli, using al-Qaida as a model of a terrorist organization whose strength ebbed and flowed but eventually changed to become the number one terrorist enemy of the U.S., said that al-Shabab could also “morph and become more of a global threat than it is now.”

A weekend New York Times article reporting that the agencies “exploiting its huge collection of data to create sophisticated graphs of some Americans’ social connections” is inaccurate, Alexander said.

It was revealed in June that the NSA has been collecting the telephone metadata of millions of Americans as well as online information on Americans abroad. The Times article said the NSA was using social network analysis to track patterns.

“Is NSA compiling profiles of the American people for the use of intelligence authorities?” Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., asked.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper responded that this was the case only in the context of “plots foiled.” Alexander also noted that the article should have specified that the analysis was only used to target foreigners, not Americans.

“We aren’t creating social networks on our families,” Alexander said, calling the metadata system the “least intrusive.”

Leahy argued otherwise.

“I would say that it’s the most intrusive,” Leahy said. “Americans elect their security but they elect their privacy, too.”

Leahy has introduced legislation to eliminate Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which authorizes NSA’s access to metadata. Leahy said the provision has led to  an “unprecedented scale” of collection that violates Americans’ privacy.

“In my view, it’s time for a change,” Leahy said. “Additional transparency and oversight are important parts of that change, but I believe we must do more.”

In his written statement, Leahy said that the NSA violated a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court order by regularly searching the database of phone records without meeting court standards.

“Just because something is technically possible and just because something is deemed technically legal does not mean that it is the right thing to do,” Leahy said

Same story, different day

Both Clapper and Alexander had similar messages when they testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last Thursday.

“As Americans we face an unending array of threats,” Clapper said. “We focus on the secret plans of terrorists. What we don’t do is spy unlawfully.

Clapper said the NSA will continue to declassify more information, which he believes is the only way to reassure the public about the metadata collection system.

‘I was totally wrong’

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., reflected back to 9/11 when she said she attended a meeting where former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet informed her there was a major possibility of a terrorist incident within the next three months.

“I never believed there could be training schools for pilots who would teach pilots to fly and not to land in this country. But I was totally wrong,” Feinstein said. “That can never be allowed to happen in the U.S. again.”

She said the intelligence programs still too often operate hierarchically rather than collaboratively, which makes it unable to collect enough data to be able to target the whereabouts and timing of a potential terrorist attack.

“Our great strength in protecting this homeland is to have the kind of technology able to piece together data while protecting rights,” Feinstein said.

Feinstein proposed many measures of increased transparency for the program during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last week, but said this week that she will “do everything (she) can do to prevent this program from being canceled out.”