But since 2005, the authorities in Xinjiang have been trying everything from needle exchanges and drug substitution programs — approaches that first became popular in the West in the 1960s — to community outreach programs, often giving briefings to imams and mullahs.
"There is still going to be a possibility that a golden BB could get us," N. Wayne Hale Jr., the deputy director of the space shuttle program, told reporters in briefings this month.
President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, saying they wanted to avoid leaks about the eavesdropping program, previously limited all briefings on it to the so-called Gang of Eight: the leaders from each party of the two intelligence committees and of the Senate and the House.
The five official days of the program were packed with briefings and site visits.
Conceivably some views about the scope and propriety of the programs could change after closed briefings on the N.S.A. programs planned for House members on Tuesday and senators on Thursday.
Still, errors in real-time captioning, subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, increased noticeably after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 as stenographers raced to keep up with an unusually high volume of live news events, briefings, special programs and news conferences.
Spicer's briefings, broadcast live on C-SPAN, are among the most highly rated programs on daytime TV, beating out "General Hospital" and "The Bold and the Beautiful".
Lawyers for Sterling gave extensive briefings on the program to the State Department, the Pentagon and various United Nations agencies dealing with piracy.
The briefings on the program under which Americans and other people in the United States are selected for eavesdropping without court warrants were limited to the so-called Gang of Eight.
They are cast members who conduct surveillance and hold mock intelligence briefings on the program, alongside Adam Ciralsky, an NBC News producer, and David Crane, a former chief prosecutor of an international war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone.
