Did NSA snooping stop 'dozens' of terrorist attacks?

By Peter Bergen and David Sterman
CNN

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• National Security Agency chief says NSA has prevented "dozens of terrorist events" 
• Peter Bergen says publicly available information minimizes value of NSA surveillance 
• Bergen: Most effective weapons against terror are traditional law enforcement techniques 

Editor's note: Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst and a director at the New America Foundation. David Sterman is a graduate student at Georgetown University's National Security Studies Program.

(CNN) -- Testifying before Congress on Wednesday, Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, asserted that his agency's massive acquisition of U.S. phone data and the contents of overseas Internet traffic that is provided by American tech companies has helped prevent "dozens of terrorist events."

On Thursday, Sens. Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, Democrats who both serve on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and have access to the nation's most sensitive secrets, released a statement contradicting this assertion. "Gen. Alexander's testimony yesterday suggested that the NSA's bulk phone records collection program helped thwart 'dozens' of terrorist attacks, but all of the plots that he mentioned appear to have been identified using other collection methods," the two senators said.

Indeed, a survey of court documents and media accounts of all the jihadist terrorist plots in the United States since 9/11 by the New America Foundation shows that traditional law enforcement methods have overwhelmingly played the most significant role in foiling terrorist attacks.

This suggests that the NSA surveillance programs are wide-ranging fishing expeditions with little to show for them.

(More here.)