It is the first of May, a famous holiday celebrated by the former Soviet Union and its satellites as a victory for the proletariat. It is not as big a deal as it was before Communism collapsed, but Venezuela might disagree.

NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers formally retired on May 4, 2018, just a couple days short of a year ago. He was Director of the National Security Agency in the dramatic days of the 2016 Presidential election. I am not sure that the pace of the current frantic media cycle has permitted us to get an appreciation of the courage and integrity he displayed in defense of our Constitutional Republic.

I saw him while he was still on active duty two years ago at the Professional Association Spring Meeting, and made a point of approaching him to tell him how much we appreciated the fact that he saved what is left of the Republic.

Mike achieved some landmark things in his tenure- including the troubling unintended consequences of the USA Patriot Act, a deeply troubling piece of legislation passed in the wake of the 9/11 terror attack.

I mean that. I believe in the integrity of our National Security institutions- or at least I did over the course of a career that lasted through five decades.
Mike is among the best of all of us- certainly better than the modest contributions of someone like me. In retrospect, I would hope to have the same resolution to ignore the wishes of the Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper and his henchman John Brennan at CIA.

The whole thing is very much inside-baseball talk about how Washington really works, and how far off the rails this gigantic bureaucracy has taken us.
That has a long track record. I wrote a book about the career of our 93-year-old drinking buddy Mac Showers, whose account of the beginning of the Radio Wars in the Navy and the establishment of the now infamous Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court after the “Crown Jewels” of covert action abuses were revealed to the Congressional Pike and Church Committees.

It is fascinating history, and to share it with someone who lived it was remarkable. The book- three long files- is on the website if you care. Mac had a ringside seat. Mike Rogers might have done one of the most heroic acts of any serving leader in a time of turmoil and talk of impeachment.

I served at the same time that Mike did, though we were members of opposing tribes within Naval Intelligence. Mike was a surface warrior before transferring to the Cryptologic Community. I came in as an Intelligence Officer when the recruiter screwed up and hired me. Thus, Mike and I participated in the long and prickly struggle between the technical collectors- the Cryppies- and the all-source crowd that I served.

Long story short, breaking into other people’s communications was a dog-bone between the leadership of Big Navy about who controlled the information acquired by an agency whose task ultimately included saving the contents of the internet each day, and the meta-data- the electronic envelopes of telephone calls- for further research and reference.

NSA’s leadership was rotated between the Armed Services, and when it was Navy’s turn, the generalists normally got the nod for the Directorships. Mike Rogers was the first Cryppie to serve as director of the Cryppie Agency. Actually, it was about time. But you can understand how emotional all this was, and how glad I was to leave the Radio Wars behind when I took off the uniform for the last time.

Attorney General Barr is on the Hill this week, trying to placate a bitterly divided partisan Congress. For those less familiar, here’s a timeline of events transpiring at the NSA. Sorry for the details of how it went down, but I think you should know why I walked up to Mike at that luncheon and thanked him for saving America:

· November 2015-April 2016 – The FBI and DOJ’s National Security Division (NSD) uses private contractors to access raw FISA information using “To” and “From” FISA-702(16) & “About” FISA-702(17) queries.
·
· March 2016 – NSA Director Rogers becomes aware of improper access to raw FISA data.
·
· April 2016 – Rogers orders the NSA compliance officer to run a full audit on 702 NSA compliance.
·
· April 18 2016 – Rogers shuts down FBI/NSD contractor access to the FISA Search System.
·
· April-September 2016 – Rogers continues his investigation.

· September 26 2016 – DOJ’s NSD Head John Carlin files the Government’s proposed 2016 Section 702.. The filing does not disclose the FISA Abuses. Carlin is aware of Rogers’ compliance review. The 2016 certifications are scheduled for Court approval on October 26, 2016.
·
· September 27, 2016 – Carlin announces he is resigning. Mary McCord will later assume his position.
·
· October 15, 2016 – Carlin formally leaves the NSD.

· Mid-October 2016 – DNI Clapper submits a recommendation to the White House that Director Rogers be removed from the NSA. Clapper’s effort fails.

· October 20 2016 – Rogers is briefed by the NSA compliance officer on the Section 702 NSA compliance audit and “About” query violations.

· October 21 2016 – Rogers shuts down all “About Query” activity. Rogers reports the activity to DOJ and prepares to go before the FISA Court.
·
· October 21, 2016 – DOJ & FBI seek and receive a Title I FISA probable cause order authorizing electronic surveillance on Carter Page from the FISC. At this point, the FISA Court is unaware of the Section 702 violations.
·
· October 24, 2016 – Rogers verbally informs the FISA Court of Section 702(17) violations.
·
· October 26, 2016 – Rogers formally informs the FISA Court of 702(17) violations in writing.
·
· October 26, 2016 – The FISA Court refuses to formalize the 2016 Section 702 certifications. A complete overhaul of Section 702 processes ensues.
·
· November 17 2016 (morning) – Rogers travels to meet President-Elect Trump and his Transition Team in Trump Tower. Rogers does not inform DNI James Clapper that he is going..

· November 17, 2016 (evening) – Trump Transition Team announces they are moving all transition activity to Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey.

The DOJ & FBI were fully aware that initiated a compliance review in April 2016. They were aware of the review’s relative status.
Sorry for the government jargon- this story is filled with Section 302 and “702 Section 17” things, but in my day violations thereof could wind you up playing long term rock-hockey at the Discipline Barracks out at Fort Leavenworth.

What I am trying to say is that we now live under a government in which the old standards have been completely reversed. The Government can collect on all of us and does. It is not the Government who is obligated to do the right thing.

Mike Rogers is one of those Great Americans who actually did the right thing. He blew the whistle on a scheme in which private contractors were permitted to search the NSA data-bases and incorporate that privileged information into political shenanigans.

I do not know how to put that toothpaste back into the tube. But Mike Rogers sure as hell tried.

Copyright 2019 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com