NYTimes | The National Security Agency’s
dominant role as the nation’s spy warehouse has spurred frequent
tensions and turf fights with other federal intelligence agencies that
want to use its surveillance tools for their own investigations,
officials say.
Agencies working to curb drug trafficking, cyberattacks, money
laundering, counterfeiting and even copyright infringement complain that
their attempts to exploit the security agency’s vast resources have
often been turned down because their own investigations are not
considered a high enough priority, current and former government
officials say.
Intelligence officials say they have been careful to limit the use of
the security agency’s troves of data and eavesdropping spyware for fear
they could be misused in ways that violate Americans’ privacy rights.
The recent disclosures of agency activities by its former contractor
Edward J. Snowden have led to widespread criticism that its surveillance
operations go too far and have prompted lawmakers in Washington to talk
of reining them in. But out of public view, the intelligence community
has been agitated in recent years for the opposite reason: frustrated
officials outside the security agency say the spy tools are not used
widely enough.
“It’s a very common complaint about N.S.A.,” said Timothy H. Edgar, a
former senior intelligence official at the White House and at the office
of the director of national intelligence. “They collect all this
information, but it’s difficult for the other agencies to get access to
what they want.”
“The other agencies feel they should be bigger players,” said Mr. Edgar,
who heard many of the disputes before leaving government this year to
become a visiting fellow at Brown University. “They view the N.S.A. —
incorrectly, I think — as this big pot of data that they could go get if
they were just able to pry it out of them.”
Smaller intelligence units within the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Secret Service, the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security
have sometimes been given access to the security agency’s surveillance
tools for particular cases, intelligence officials say.
But more often, their requests have been rejected because the links to
terrorism or foreign intelligence, usually required by law or policy,
are considered tenuous. Officials at some agencies see another motive —
protecting the security agency’s turf — and have grown resentful over
what they see as a second-tier status that has undermined their own
investigations into security matters.
