Sentence examples for briefing on the program from inspiring English sources
"Halfway through 2004," said a briefing on the program in February that appears on a Pentagon Web site, "we started overlaying ethnicity codes and telephone numbers".
In an interview on Wednesday, Ms. Harman, of California, said she had been invited to another briefing on the program at the White House on Friday and had urged senior administration officials to open the session to the full committees.
Last year, President Obama asked Michael Hayden, the C.I.A. director, to give a classified briefing on the program to three intelligence experts: Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator from Nebraska; Jeffrey Smith, a former general counsel to the C.I.A.; and David Boren, the retired Democratic senator from Oklahoma.
told reporters following an hours long, closed-door briefing on the program.
For example, after attending that secret briefing on the program on Tuesday night, Senator Bob Corker has been arguing the government needs to vastly expand the dragnets, even while refusing to explain what the NSA does not collect because it remains classified.
"It was pressing how far you go before you do something illegal or immoral," recalled one senior official who was briefed on the program.
These multiple logistics streams throughout the winter formed what one former American official who was briefed on the program called "a cataract of weaponry".
Rep. Jane Harmon, then the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee who was one of the few members of Congress briefed on the program at the time, called it "essential to U.S. national security".
But members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who have been briefed on the program, called the testimony deceptive.
