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Last night’s episode of 60 Minutes on CBS included what basically amounted to an uncritical commercial for the embattled National Security Agency, led by a journalist who used to be a government colleague. While the show — which has faced recent problems of its own, from the Benghazi debacle to the Amazon drone PR stunt — celebrated its own “unprecedented access to NSA headquarters,” it’s clear the meeting was on the NSA’s terms. In fact, NSA Director General Keith Alexander “made the call to invite us in,” a 60 Minutes producer admitted. They pretty much let him say his piece, nodding along excitedly. “Full disclosure, I once worked in the office of the director of National Intelligence where I saw firsthand how secretly the NSA operates,” said the reporter John Miller at the start of the segment.

While no critics of the NSA programs were given a chance to make the case against the potentially extralegal spying, which has resulted in international outrage, CBS did assist in the discrediting of master leaker Edward Snowden. Take, for example, this galling exchange with the head of the Snowden task force within the NSA, following Miller’s dismissive description of Snowden as a “twentysomething-year-old, high-school-dropout contractor”: John Miller: Did you sit in his chair?Rick Ledgett: I did not. I couldn’t bring myself to do that. […] At home, they discovered Snowden had some strange habits. Rick Ledgett: He would work on the computer with a hood that covered the computer screen and covered his head and shoulders, so that he could work and his girlfriend couldn't see what he was doing.John Miller: That's pretty strange, sitting at your computer kind of covered by a sheet over your head and the screen?Rick Ledgett: Agreed.

Media observers, some less personally involved in the Snowden leaks than others, could not believe what they were watching: 60 Minutes forgot to ask about how James Clapper & Keith Alexander routinely lied to Congress & FISA courts - just ran out of time.— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 16, 2013 Wow, the 60 Minutes piece about the NSA was just embarrassing. Kudos to the NSA communications staff. You guys should get a raise.— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) December 16, 2013

The embattled National Security Agency is about to get new leaders to deal with the ongoing fallout from whistleblower Edward Snowden’s surveillance disclosures.Vice-admiral Michael Rogers, the commander of the US navy’s tenth fleet and its Fleet Cyber Command, will take over from NSA Director Keith Alexander, who reluctantly became a global figure in the wake of the Snowden revelations.Richard Ledgett, the head of the agency’s investigation into Snowden – who publicly floated the prospect of an amnesty for the former contractor – will become the NSA’s new deputy director and top civilian leader.The appointments, both long anticipated, were announced by the Pentagon on Thursday. Rogers is a longtime cryptologist in the Navy, whose informal turn it was to nominate a director for the NSA. Alexander is an Army general; and his predecessor, Michael Hayden, hailed from the Air Force.

American intelligence and law enforcement investigators have concluded that they may never know the entirety of what the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden extracted from classified government computers before leaving the United States, according to senior government officials.

“They’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of man-hours trying to reconstruct everything he has gotten, and they still don’t know all of what he took,” a senior administration official said. “I know that seems crazy, but everything with this is crazy.” That Mr. Snowden was so expertly able to exploit blind spots in the systems of America’s most secretive spy agency illustrates how far computer security still lagged years after President Obama ordered standards tightened after the WikiLeaks revelations of 2010.

In recent days, a senior N.S.A. official has told reporters that he believed Mr. Snowden still had access to documents not yet disclosed. The official, Rick Ledgett, who is heading the security agency’s task force examining Mr. Snowden’s leak, said he would consider recommending amnesty for Mr. Snowden in exchange for those documents. “So, my personal view is, yes, it’s worth having a conversation about,” Mr. Ledgett told CBS News. “I would need assurances that the remainder of the data could be secured, and my bar for those assurances would be very high. It would be more than just an assertion on his part.”

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee has questioned whether Edward Snowden acted alone in leaking details of the National Security Agency's surveillance programs to U.S. and British newspapers last year. In a prerecorded interview due to air on NBC's "Meet The Press" Sunday, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., describes the former NSA contractor as "a thief whom we believe had some help. "Let me just say this. I believe there’s a reason he ended up in the hands, the loving arms, of an FSB agent in Moscow," Rogers said, according to an early transcript provided by the program. "I don’t think that’s a coincidence."

Reuters, today (11 days later) - reporting on "a rare interview at NSA's heavily guarded Fort Meade headquarters" from "Richard Ledgett, who leads a task force responding to the leaks":   The NSA's internal review has determined about 98 percent of the scope of the material that Snowden had accessed, and officials have found no evidence that he had help either within the NSA or from adversary spy agencies.

New York Times, today: According to senior government officials, F.B.I. agents from the bureau’s Washington field office, who are leading the investigation, believe that Mr. Snowden methodically downloaded the files over several months while working as a government contractor at the Hawaii facility. They also believe that he worked alone, the officials said.

President Barack Obama has conceded that mass collection of private data by the US government may be unnecessary and said there were different ways of “skinning the cat”, which could allow intelligence agencies to keep the country safe without compromising privacy. In an apparent endorsement of a recommendation by a review panel to shift responsibility for the bulk collection of telephone records away from the National Security Agency and on to the phone companies, the president said change was necessary to restore public confidence. “In light of the disclosures, it is clear that whatever benefits the configuration of this particular programme may have, may be outweighed by the concerns that people have on its potential abuse,” Obama told an end-of-year White House press conference. “If it that’s the case, there may be a better way of skinning the cat.”

Though insisting he will not make a final decision until January, this is the furthest the president has gone in backing calls to dismantle the programme to collect telephone data, a practice the NSA claims has legal foundation under section 215 of the Patriot Act. This week, a federal judge said the program “very likely” violates the US constitution. “There are ways we can do this potentially that give people greater assurance that there are checks and balances, sufficient oversight and transparency,” Obama added. “Programmes like 215 could be redesigned in ways that give you the same information when you need it without creating these potentials for abuse. That’s exactly what we should be doing: to evaluate things in a very clear specific way and moving forward on changes. And that’s what I intend to do.”

The president would not comment on a suggestion last weekend by Richard Ledgett, the NSA official investigating the Snowden leaks, that an amnesty might be appropriate in exchange for the return of the data Snowden took from the agency. Obama said he could not comment specifically because Snowden was “under indictment”, something not previously disclosed. While the Justice Department filed a criminal complaint against Snowden on espionage-related charges in June, there has been no public subsequent indictment, although it is possible one exists under gag order. The Justice Department referred comment on a Snowden indictment to the White House. Caitlin Hayden, the chief spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, clarified that Obama was referring to the criminal complaint against Snowden. It remains unclear if there is an indictment under seal.