◆ SpookStack

CAPRONI: Not to my knowledge. FORBES; Mr. Fine, you don't have that? FENE: I don't have that information, no. FORBES: And just the balance that we've talked about -- we know the harm that comes from violation of privacy interests of our citizens. That's huge. But I wish you would go back, Ms. Caproni, and, again, just take a minute and talk about what Mr. Fine has put in here about -- it says that these tools are indispensable to the FBi's mission to detect and deter terrorism and espionage. We know there's been a Jot on your plate since 9/11 and you had io do that. Can you tell us with as much specificity as you can exactly how these NSL letters have helped to do and accomplish that mission? CAPRONI: Again, national security letters provide the basic building blocks of an investigation, and starting with phone records. Phone records are critical to the counterterrorism agents to figuring out who is connected to whom. And that permits us to trace foreign terror acts that have occurred, obviously, since 9/11 and trace them in to individuals who are in the United States, and to determine whether those individuals are up to no good or, in fact, there's just an innocent connection. But for national security letters, I don't know how we would do that. They've also been absolutely indispensable in the area of terrorist financing. We've done a tremendous amount of work of getting bank records on individuais that we believe were funneling money to foreign terrorist organizations overseas. And again, without national security letters, I'm not -- you know, could we go through a FISA order? We probably could. But we certainly couldn't do that very efficiently. So a national security letter is an efficient way for us to get the basic building blocks of an investigation. FORBES: Have they stopped any terrorist attacks that you know of that could have possibly happened in the United States? You may not have that information. CAPRONI: I'm sorry, I don't. FORBES: OK. That's good. Thank you both. And, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.