intelligence reporting on terrorists threats, leadership plans, intentions, counter proliferation, counter intelligence and many other issues that affect us. it is subject to multiple layers of oversight and reporting requirements from the executive, the judicial and the legislative branches. the foreign intelligence surveillance court must approve minimization procedures for each relevant ic agency before the agency can review collected information. at the end of the day, fisa provides our government with the foreign intelligence that our nation needs to protect americans at home and abroad and in many cases our allies. i understand there is an ongoing debate pinning privacy against national security and there are argumentments within the debate that have merit.
period and they re known to each other. what you re seeing in terms of government the way it s shaking out in this trump era, we ve got two groups of people that are going to lead this country in terms of law enforcement, crime and the military. mcmaster, and kelly. now in terms of law enforcement and the judiciary, we ve got four individuals that all worked together and that s going to be very different from what trump really proposed. he proposed that he was going to come in and shake things up and bring in outsiders. these are old hands that have worked together and really know how to do this governance and the rule of law and that can backfire on him if he continues to do these outrageous things, like trying to pressure the fbi director. as somebody who used to be in the agency, what would your reaction be if you weretill there to the naming of chris ray as your next boss? i don t think it woulde that surprising. if you look back, fbi directors are not really known to the
today, i am not going to talk about theoreticals or can you can i could finish, please. sure. anything i ve had with the president of the united states. i ll make the following comment. in the three plus years iave en t director of the national secury agency, to the best of my recollection, i have never been directed to do anything i believe to be illegal, immoral, unethical or inappropriate. to the best of my recollection, during that same period of service, i do not recall ever feeling pressured to do so. but have in your course prior to the incident that we re going to discuss, was it in any regular course where a president would ask you to comment or intervene in any ongoing fbi investigation? not talking about this circumstance but any prior experience with that? i m not going to talk about theoreticals today. let me ask you specifically. did the president, the reports that are out there, ask you in any way, shape or form, to back off or downplay the russia