Martin Heinrich: “I thank my friend from Oregon and begin by saying that despite what we may have heard from talking heads on the Sunday…”

“I thank my friend from Oregon and begin by saying that despite what we may have heard from talking heads on the Sunday shows and on the cable news networks, the answer is no. There is simply no evidence to support those claims. When this mass surveillance was first revealed to the public 2 years ago, the executive branch initially responded to questions like this by claiming that various post-9/11 authorities had resulted in the thwarting of approximately ``54 terrorist events in the U.S. homeland and abroad.'' Now, a number of us, including my friend from Oregon and my former colleague from Colorado, Senator Udall, began to pull on that thread to really parse down and see just what the executive branch was talking about. First, of those 54 terrorist events, it turned out that only 13 were actually focused in the United States. But more importantly, those numbers conflated multiple different programs, including authorities under section 215 and different authorities under section 702. On June 19, 2013, my colleague from Oregon and Senator Udall pointed out that ``it appears that the bulk phone records collection program under section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act played little or no role in most of these disruptions.…”