Richard Burr has apparently stated publicly that he’s looking into not Marco Rubio’s serial leaking of classified information, but Ted Cruz’s alleged disclosure of classified information at least night’s debate. That’s particularly curious given that Rubio has gotten privileged access to this information on the Senate Intelligence Committee, whereas Cruz has not.
I assume Burr is thinking of this passage, in which Cruz explained how the USA Freedom Act phone program adds to the tools the intelligence community gets.
It strengthened the tools of national security and law enforcement to go after terrorists. It gave us greater tools and we are seeing those tools work right now in San Bernardino.
And in particular, what it did is the prior program only covered a relatively narrow slice of phone calls. When you had a terrorist, you could only search a relatively narrow slice of numbers, primarily land lines.
The USA Freedom Act expands that so now we have cell phones, now we have Internet phones, now we have the phones that terrorists are likely to use and the focus of law enforcement is on targeting the bad guys.
[snip]
And the reason is simple. What he knows is that the old program covered 20 percent to 30 percent of phone numbers to search for terrorists. The new program covers nearly 100 percent. That gives us greater ability to stop acts of terrorism, and he knows that that’s the case.
Shortly thereafter, Rubio said,
RUBIO: Let me be very careful when answering this, because I don’t think national television in front of 15 million people is the place to discuss classified information.
Of course, that means Burr — who has the most privileged access to this information — just confirmed for ISIS and anyone else who wants to know (like, say, American citizens) that the IC is targeting “Internet phones” as well as the the more limited set of call records the Section 215 phone dragnet used to incorporate, and in doing so getting closer to 100% of “calls” (which includes texting and messaging) in the US.
I’m not sure why Burr would give OpSec tips to our adversaries, all to score political points against Cruz. Obviously, his tolerance for Rubio’s serial leaks, which effectively confirmed the very same information, shows this isn’t about protecting sources and methods.
Maybe it’s time to boot Burr, in addition to Rubio, from SSCI before he continues to leak classified information?