Jameel Jaffer discusses the reauthorization of Section 702 of FISA, noting its expiration on April 20, 2026, and its role in providing 60% of presidential briefs. He distinguishes this from the FBI's warrantless data collection debate while addressing Iran's 600 kilograms of enriched uranium and potential hidden centrifuges. The conversation evaluates military options like seizing oil infrastructure versus degrading the IRGC, concluding that significant degradation is essential for the Iranian people to overthrow their theocratic regime. [Automatically generated summary]
Questions and you complain because the TV cameras aren't in there and then they all run out.
We just tweeted a video of all the oversight committee members running out and getting on all the liberal networks being outraged at the Attorney General because she wouldn't answer their questions.
And A, they didn't ask any questions and B, they left before 90% of them had an opportunity to ask questions.
But we stayed in there and we asked questions and they were hard-hitting and they weren't soft falls, but we were asking her.
And the Democrats know it because they kept their staff in there.
I was kind of didn't kick their staff out when the members all stormed out.
But anyway, so we'll keep you updated.
Mr. Timmons is probably going to come up next and give you an update.
So hopefully we'll get some more information.
Thank you all for being here.
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Joining us at our table this morning is Jameel Jaffer.
He is at George Mason University's Law School, the National Security Institute founder, here to talk about the conflict with Iran, but also this FISA debate that's happening up on Capitol Hill.
Why does it need to, what is it, and why does it need to be reauthorized?
What we're talking about is Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
This gives the United States government the authority to collect against foreigners, non-Americans, located outside the United States.
So nobody in the United States, no Americans.
And what it allows us to do is collect that intelligence here in the United States from American telecommunications providers, because as it turns out, a lot of those communications that take place overseas pass through U.S. telecommunications providers.
So that's essentially what the authority is.
It doesn't involve any Americans, doesn't authorize the collection against Americans, targeting Americans, and nor does it allow the collection of any Americans, whether they're in the U.S. or overseas.
Only foreigners outside the U.S.
So only foreigners, and why does it need to be reauthorized?
It is the single most productive collection that the U.S. government has of intelligence.
It contributes to about 60% of the president's daily brief, that critical intelligence product the president gets every morning.
60% of that comes from NSA collection under Section 702.
What is your previous roles with Section 702 and FISA?
Well, I was working in the Justice Department's National Security Division when we actually came up with the idea of Section 702, helped write the legislation that created it, and then have been involved in the reauthorization of it first at the House Intelligence Committee, and then since I've been working on the outside at the Scalia Law School, George Mason University.
How does this tie to the conflict in Iran?
Well, obviously, given its productive capability for the president's daily brief and the amount of intelligence we collect from it for our national security purposes, it's central to our ability to prosecute this war and effectively counter threats to the homeland, identify terrorist threats, identify foreign intelligence threats, and collect on all these individuals who mean the U.S. harm.
And when is Congress expected to take up this debate and sign off on this reauthorization?
Because we heard the top Democrat, Jim Himes, he supports it, but not all Democrats do.
And some Republicans have reservations as well.
No, that's exactly right.
Well, when Congress repassed the law, reauthorized the law in 2024, they only put a two-year clock on it.
That means on April 20th, 2026, if Congress does nothing, if the House and Senate don't act and the president doesn't sign the legislation, that authority will expire and we will go dark on our ability to collect on all those terrorist and foreign intelligence targets overseas.
We're talking about 300,000 targets that are critical to American national security.
If this goes dark, 60% of the president's daily beef goes away overnight.
Yesterday at this hearing with Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI Director Kash Patel, and the CIA Director, they were testifying on global threats, as we've been talking about here on the Washington Journal all morning.
I want to show Democratic Senator Ron Wyden asking the FBI Director Kash Patel if the agency is buying information that tracks people's location history and gets you to respond on the other side.
Director Patel, a question for you.
In 2023, your predecessor testified that, and I quote, to my knowledge, we do not currently purchase commercial database information that includes location data derived from internet advertising.
Is that the case still?
And if so, can you commit this morning to not buying Americans' location data?
Thank you.
The FBI uses all tools, Senator.
Thank you for the question to do our mission.
We do purchase commercially available information that's consistent with the Constitution and the laws under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and it has led to some valuable intelligence for us to be utilized with our private and partner sectors.
So you're saying that the agency will buy Americans' location data.
I believe that that's what you've said in kind of intelligence lingo.
And I just want to say, as we start this debate, doing that without a warrant is an outrageous end run around the Fourth Amendment.
It's particularly dangerous given the use of artificial intelligence to comb through massive amounts of private information.
This is exhibit A for why Congress needs to pass our bipartisan, bicameral bill, the Government Surveillance Reform Act.
Jamil Jaffer, he said, Americans, Americans' information.
So this isn't about Section 702, right?
This is something different.
Something different, right?
The question is, can or should the FBI purchase or other agencies purchase commercially available data, data that you and I could buy, data that all the big tech companies buy, data that Amazon or Macy's buys about where you shop, where you might be, right?
All the data that we leave on the internet, right?
A lot of that data is collected by commercial data brokers and is sold at public, and anyone can purchase it.
The question is, should the government be allowed to purchase that data and use it for its own purposes?
This is a debate.
Senator Wyden has been talking about this for years.
He's had legislation to take away the government's ability or at least require a warrant to go buy that.
But I guess the big question for the American people is, do we think something that you or I could buy or that a company could buy, the government should have to go get a warrant for it?
It's a fair debate, has nothing to do with Section 702, an important debate, and actually, interestingly, a debate that Anthropic raised in its fight with the Department of War over whether the Department of War could use its AI capabilities for this purpose.
Now, there's no evidence to suggest the Department of War is doing that or might do it.
Anthropic has raised this claim, but it's a totally different debate.
And the question is, does Congress want to pass a law?
Iran as an Imminent Threat00:14:37
They could.
Pass a law so you have to get a warrant.
Senator Wyden's bill has not gotten enough support to get out of committee, much less to the floor, much less to a vote and a signature by the president.
But he's arguing for it, and it's a fair debate.
All right, Jamil Jaffer here with us to take your questions and your comments about this debate over reauthorizing Section 02 of FISA as well as the conflict with Iran.
We're about 10 minutes out from the top of the hour where we will get a Pentagon briefing by the Defense Secretary and the Joint Chiefs Chair, Dan Kaine.
We will bring you live coverage here on C-SPAN of that briefing, as well as in its entirety over on C-SPAN 2.
Until then, Dee, Reno, Nevada, Democratic Caller, you're up first.
Hi, good morning, love C-SPAN.
Yeah, I listened to the briefing yesterday.
Out of the three directors, Radcliffe seems like he knows what he's doing.
Other two.
I don't know.
Gabbard is never wants to answer, but I find it interesting.
They always keep saying war with you know, Iran for 47 years wants to annihilate us.
It's interesting that this war broke out with this Trump 47th president.
I think that's gonna make a mark for him.
I just I don't know.
I find that interesting.
All right Dee, I'm gonna pick up on your point of Iran being a threat, because this was brought up in the hearing yesterday and the CIA director reinforcing that point that Iran has been a threat to the United States and others in in the in the Middle East for decades.
Well look, a lot of people are asking the question, what was imminent about this threat?
Why was it?
Why did the president need to act now?
And there's a lot of people who've said, well, you know, there's nothing has changed about Iran fundamentally in the last six months last year.
Why is it an imminent threat?
And here's the real truth about it.
Iran has been an imminent threat for a long time.
For years Iran, recent years, Iran has killed hundreds of Americans directly through proxies.
They've targeted U.S. Facilities in the Middle East for attacks, ballistic missiles and the like, and Iran has plotted against killing American officials here in the United States for the better part of a decade, named individuals in the United States, including former members of the Trump administration and members of the Biden administration.
So Iran?
Now, the fact is, we did.
We haven't done anything substantively about it right, President Obama, President Biden, President Trump, although President Trump did kill Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards goods force, we haven't done anything about it.
But just because somebody, if a bully, keeps punching your kid on the on on the playground day in, day out, day in, day out the next day, that bully is still an imminent threat to your child.
Right, it doesn't mean anything.
Your child hasn't fought back.
If, on one day, your child does fight back and wins, guess what?
That bully's not going to bother him anymore, and neither are the rest of the bullies, and so that's an important part of this conversation.
Imminence doesn't mean something has to have changed.
It means, is there a threat to us right now?
That's real, and I would say with Iran, there is a very real threat from Iran.
Why?
Because they've been killing Americans for years.
They continue to want to plot to kill Americans in the United States and abroad.
They're funding terrorist proxies like Hezbollah Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and they continue to pursue a nuclear weapon.
Right, the reality is, Iran today has over 600 kilograms of highly enriched uranium.
About 440 kilograms of that, 60 enriched, which is 90 of the way to building a nuclear weapon.
Why then, does the DNI director and others say their Iran, their nuclear capabilities, have been obliterated?
What I think we've done is we have done a good job of taking out some of their centrifuge capability, the ability to make more highly enriched uranium.
Now the real truth is, not only do they have this supply of highly enriched uranium, they could use to build a weapon beyond that.
My guess is and there's no, there's no intelligent reporting yet to demonstrate this but my guess is, if they've buried that deep enough, they know how capable our bombs are.
If they bury that, he you deep enough to keep that safe, I would bet you thousands dollars that they have centrifuges down there as well that could be used to enrich more uranium.
We don't have proof of that, but unless the Iranians are crazy, they know what our capabilities are.
They've buried more centrifuges deep down and they've always had covert programs.
We've always found out about them later.
All right well, let's go to Stephen in Connecticut, Independent Stephen question or comment.
You did a great job there, Professor.
I'm going to take the opposite side.
Ukraine, if we land Marines on Karg Island, we're going to have an example of what FPV drones can do to an unprepared force.
Ukraine took out 1,700 people, supposedly, just yesterday.
80% with FPV drones.
Expanding this war in Iran is going to be an economic disaster.
I can see gas prices.
And they think about the November election.
All right, Stephen, I'm going to jump in because what he's referring to is the latest on this conflict, and that is Israel striking the PAR gas field, Iran retaliating against Qatar, gas prices soaring overnight.
Look, it's an important point.
I think Stephen is right to raise this question of what happens if we deploy these Marines from the 30th Marine Expeditionary Unit that are coming over from Okinawa.
We'll be in theater in about a week.
And there's some discussions.
We don't know what the administration is going to do with that, with that, with that Marine Expeditionary Unit.
There are suggestions that it might go to Karg Island to take that really important oil export terminal that they have there, that Iranians had there, to prevent them from exporting oil.
The challenge, of course, is, to Stephen's point, is that those Marines are then exposed and they're vulnerable, right?
And they may be attacked by these FPV, these first-person drones that might actually attack them.
Now, of course, there's significant oil infrastructure there as well.
Iran doesn't want to blow that up, right?
So if our Marines are co-located with that, they might not do that.
Now, again, we don't know.
Those Marines might be there to simply guard U.S. facilities.
They might be there to go after.
Yeah, let me read a little bit from the Wall Street Journal's reporting on what they're expected to be doing.
The U.S. could use the unit to seize one or more of the islands off the southern coast of Iran to use as leverage or as a base to counter Iranian attacks on shipping, former and current U.S. officials told the Wall Street Journal.
It goes on to say U.S. forces are attempting to reopen the strait by targeting Tehran's ability to threaten the choke point, its launch sites, production capability, and warehouses of missiles, drones, and sea mines.
On Tuesday, the U.S. military dropped multiple 5,000-pound munitions on Iranian sites along the coastline that are used to house anti-ship cruise missiles, according to the U.S. Central Command.
That's exactly right, Greta.
On Karg Island are two really important things.
There's an oil depot where Iran exports most of its oil through.
And then there are military facilities where they stored a lot of those mines that are used to mine the Gulf, mine the Straits of Hormuz.
So the Marines might go there, take that facility.
They might take Bandur Abbas on the mainland of Iran that guards that choke point to the Straits of Hormuz.
They might simply remain embarked on the Miu on the African-Ready Group and conduct literal operations in the waters around the Straits of Hormuz to allow shipping to get through and to go after Iranian small gunboats.
We're not sure what the Marines are there to do.
Let's be clear, though.
If we do put them on Bandur Abbas or Karg Island, that's boots on the ground, right?
No question.
Now, the president might say, look, we put boots on the ground in Venezuela as well, short-term targeted incursion.
But if you stay there for a while, that gets more challenging politically for the president because we're coming up to a set of elections.
This war is raising challenges, raising oil prices.
The president's going to feel the pressure, particularly if boots end up on the ground in Iran in some way and those Marines are exposed.
If we see casualties, obviously a real challenging situation, both politically and as a national security matter for our country.
And pressure from lawmakers who say, you need to come to us.
If you're going to put boots on the ground, you're going to need to come to Capitol Hill and get authorization.
That's right.
Or at least make the case.
At least make the case.
So that debate has happened, but it has failed so far to stop the administration from this conflict in Iran without congressional approval, likely to come back up again.
And more than likely, the questions that we're talking about get asked in just minutes to the Defense Secretary and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair.
That's exactly right.
Let's go to Paul in Democratic Caller in Indiana.
Good morning.
Good morning to you.
Morning.
Paul, go ahead.
Question or comment?
Well, my comment is I have absolutely no confidence in this national security team and all these conflicts that we've sent troops to, and I'm talking about going all the way back to President Johnson up to now, have been based on absolute lies.
And I don't want to see a bunch of 19, 20-year-old kids going there.
That was my biggest fear in high school was going to Vietnam.
And the Iraq war was based on weapons of mass destruction, which never happened.
And I think we should avoid wars unless we are attacked.
Okay.
Are we in a similar situation to the conflict with Iraq?
Well, look, I think Paul raises an important question, a question that a lot of Americans have.
And frankly, a question that President Trump campaigned on both in 2016, in 2020, and now.
He said, I'm going to end endless wars.
I'm not going to get in these overseas conflicts.
I'm going to focus on home.
I'm going to make America great again.
And at some level, President Trump has done that.
He's focused here at home.
He's talking about the border.
You look at the Director of National Intelligence Threat Assessment.
The first thing threat assessment is homeland security.
It's about drugs.
It's about cartels.
It's about the Western Hemisphere.
And yet, President Trump has gone to war or gotten into a conflict in Venezuela.
He's gotten into a conflict now in Iran.
And so the president has been flexible about what he thinks he can and should do to protect America's national security.
Now, look, I think Paul makes an important point about when we get into war, why we get into war.
Let's be clear.
After 9-11, we had no choice.
That was not a war that we chose.
It was a war that was brought to our shores.
Over 3,000 Americans killed on that day.
We went to war in Afghanistan.
We fought a war around the globe chasing down al-Qaeda.
The director of national intelligence report issued yesterday, the 2026 Worldwide Threat Assessment, says that Al-Qaeda has nearly 30,000 members worldwide.
ISIS has another 18,000 worldwide.
That is 50,000 committed fighters who want to kill Americans wherever they are.
That doesn't even account for Iranian supported terrorist groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestine, Islamic Jihad.
These are very real threats to the American homeland, to American people, and to our interests globally.
There is a real threat.
We need to address it.
And while Paul is right, we want to be careful about getting into conflicts, protracted conflicts, particularly abroad.
We can't avoid the fact that we live in a very dangerous world.
And Telsi Gabbard, the DNI director, the CIA Director John Ratcliffe, FBI Director Cash Vatel, they're back up on Capitol Hill this morning in just 30 minutes.
They're going to be asked about the threat assessment, the conflict with Iran, once again for hours.
And C-SPAN cameras will be there.
Watch live on C-SPAN 3, C-SPAN Now, our free video mobile app, and online at c-span.org.
We are waiting for a Pentagon briefing to start live here.
We're going to bring you live coverage here on C-SPAN, and you can watch it in its entirety over on C-SPAN 2.
It looks like the Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chair General Dan Kane, are about to come out here momentarily.
We'll go back to your calls after we hear from these two gentlemen.
They will be taking reporters' questions, and clearly the questions will be about the latest, the strike against the gas fields in Iran, the Iranian retaliation against Qatar, and the President Truth's social post last night saying that Iran will not, Israel will not attack again unless Iran work to continue with its retaliation against Qatar.
If you were in the room.
Jamil Jaffer, what would you ask?
What's the first question?
What's the plan for ending the war?
What does victory look like?
Is it regime change like the president called on the Iranian people to do on the first day of this conflict?
Is it eliminating their ability to build nuclear weapons?
Because then the question is, how are you going to get that highly enriched uranium without boots on the ground or without Israeli or American special forces?
Is the goal prevent their terror proxies from being able to operate?
If so, how do you destroy the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Kudz Force?
Is it the naval issue the President's talked about?
We destroyed a lot of naval vessels.
We might have success there.
Is it ballistic missiles?
They still have about 2,000 ballistic missiles.
We have degraded 70% of their launch capabilities.
That's pretty good.
Is that a permanent victory?
How do we sustain that?
What does the end look like?
And when do we expect that end to come?
Is it a week out?
Is it three weeks out?
The president just last week said we've won, just not enough.
Not sure what that exactly means.
These are real questions the American people have.
And with gas prices rising, the American people want to know, how long are we going to be in this conflict?
For where I sit, the truth of the matter is you don't eliminate threat from Iran until that regime is removed and the Iranian people get what they've wanted for 40 years, which is a regime that doesn't oppress them, that doesn't oppress women, that gives them the right of freedom of speech.
You know, the Iranian people, they care about freedom.
They like rock music, right?
It's a young population.
They like wearing blue jeans.
They don't want to wear hijabs.
And yet they're run by a theocratic regime that doesn't reflect their aspirations.
We're not going to go in and change that regime.
The Iranian people might have the opportunity to.
For them to do that, however, we've got to do a significant degradation of their security services.
Remember, 190,000 IRGC, 300,000 regular army, 600,000 Basij, that militia, the ones who beat women on the streets for wearing the wrong kind of clothing.
You've got to downgrade that before the Iranian people can rise up.
That's a tall order.
It's not going to take two weeks of airstrikes.
We've been told to stand by for this Pentagon briefing real quickly, though.
The regime is still intact.
Well, that's what the DNI said.
Still intact, but severely degraded.
Is that enough to get the Iranian people to rise up?
Probably not yet.
We probably need a lot more damage to the regime.
Probably take out a few more supreme leaders.
We've got one in Ali Khomeini, a lot of senior national security leaders.
Majabah Khomeini's son is now in power.
A son, apparently, that the Supreme Leader didn't want to take power.
He's now in charge.
If he goes and the next one or two after him go, that might be enough to get the Iranian people the confidence they need.
If you're also degrading those militia forces, that they might very well rise up.
Remember, 93 million Iranians, 1 million people under arms for the government.
Jamil Jaffer, thank you.
U.S.-Israeli Combat Operations Against Iran00:01:17
C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington, D.C. to across the country.
Coming up Friday morning, Reuters Transportation reporter David Shepardson will talk about the impact of the partial government shutdown on air travel and airport personnel.
And then Congressman Mike Haradopoulos on U.S.-Israeli combat operations against Iran, Department of Homeland Security funding, and Congressional News of the Day.
Also, author and journalist Human Maj discusses U.S.-Israeli combat operations and President Trump's desire to see regime change in Iran.
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The hour to which the House will arrive.
Adjourned.
Having arrived, the House will be in order.
Prayer will be offered by the Reverend Chaplain.
Chair's examiner general last day proceeding announced the House approval thereof.
Pursuant to clause one of Rule I, General Stance approved.