Director of National Intelligence McConnell: Debating FISA in Congress will kill Americans

Director of National Intelligence McConnell: Debating FISA in Congress will kill Americans

Well, one of the things you do is you talk to reporters. And you give them the
facts the best you can. Now part of this is a classified world. The fact we’re
doing it this way means that some Americans are going to die, because we do this
mission unknown to the bad guys because they’re using a process that we can
exploit and the more we talk about it, the more they will go with an alternative
means and when they go to an alternative means, remember what I said, a
significant portion of what we do, this is not just threats against the United
States, this is war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The American system is all about balance and there must be some point of balance between meeting the needs of a democratic government that can check the power of the executive to prevent abuse and protect resources and tactics so that they are effective. This is probably the most important debate we can be having as a nation right now, and it needs to be a public debate. We need to think about this as a society, what we value more - our right to know and limit government power or the security of the nation and the lives of those that could be lost by information being released.