Lawrence Wright discusses the United States’ intelligence strategy with Mike McConnell, the director of National Intelligence. In a rare interview, McConnell, who has been charged with bringing unity to a set of agencies that, for years, have been “brutally competitive, undermining one another and hoarding vital information,” speaks candidly with Wright about cyber-security, torture, intelligence leaks, and the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Cyber-security is one of McConnell’s top priorities; as he said in one Oval Office meeting, “If the 9/11 perpetrators had focussed on a single U.S. bank through cyber-attack and it had been successful, it would have an order-of-magnitude greater impact on the U.S. economy.” “My prediction is that we’re going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens,” McConnell tells Wright. He is drafting a Cyber-Security Policy that seeks to protect not just government but also American industry and individuals from attack, but may be seen by some as violating privacy. Ed Giorgio, a former N.S.A. official working with McConnell on it, explains that the policy would give government “the authority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer, or Web search.” Giorgio tells Wright, “Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation,” and warns him, “Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.” Wright emphasizes this tension between security and privacy, saying, “Americans will have to trust the government not to abuse the authority it must have in order to protect our networks, and yet, historically, the government has not proved worthy of that trust.”

Wright questions McConnell on the U.S.’s use of torture in intelligence investigations. McConnell denies that the U.S. tortures detainees, but says of the C.I.A.’s “special methods” of interrogation, “Have we gotten meaningful information? You betcha. Tons! Does it save lives? Tons! We’ve gotten incredible information.” When Wright asks him to define torture, McConnell answers, “My own definition of torture is something that would cause excruciating pain.” On the subject of waterboarding, he says, for him, “Waterboarding would be excruciating. If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can’t imagine how painful! Whether it’s torture by anybody else’s definition, for me it would be torture.”

Wright also discusses “the continuing failure of the intelligence community to capture or kill bin Laden and dismantle his organization.” David Shedd, McConnell’s deputy director for policy, tells Wright, “The trail is cold. It’s as hard a target as we’ve ever faced.” Wright notes that the C.I.A. shuttered its unit in charge of tracking bin Laden in 2005, and a former agency official tells Wright that “there’s a sense that there’s not a quarterback” in the fight against Al Qaeda. Regarding rumors that bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan, McConnell st... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]