The board’s conclusion goes further than President Obama, who said in a speech Friday that he thought the NSA’s database of records should be moved out of government hands but did not call for an outright halt to the program. The board had shared its conclusions with Obama in the days leading up to his speech.
The divided panel also concluded that the program raises serious threats to civil liberties, has shown limited value in countering terrorism and is not sustainable from a policy perspective.
“We have not identified a single instance involving a threat to
the United States in which the telephone records program made a
concrete difference in the outcome of a counterterrorism
investigation,” said the report, a copy of which was obtained by
The Washington Post. “Moreover, we are aware of no instance in
which the program directly contributed to the discovery of a
previously unknown terrorist plot or the disruption of a terrorist
attack.”