NSA: NYSE Bombing Foiled By Spying [Breaking]

NSA spying prevented a potential NYSE bombing along with 50 other potential terror threats, FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce claimed today in Congressional hearings to address the controversial revelation of National Security Agency surveillance programs.

According to CNBC, the NSA surveillance actions now the subject of international scrutiny helped foil the alleged plot against the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), as well as several others.

As the site reports, NSA and other officials refused to give specifics on the terrorist threats they claim were intercepted by the spy program, and CNBC says:

“The official, Deputy Director Sean Joyce, said that the programs also linked an American citizen in Chicago to the 2008 terror attacks on hotels in India and to a plot to bomb the offices of a Danish newspaper that published a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad … Joyce, testifying before the House Intelligence Committee, gave few details and did not spell out what role the surveillance programs played in helping foil the plots.”

NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander made the claim that dozens more potential terror threats had been quashed, defending the program to the committee by adding:

“I would much rather be here today debating this point than trying to explain how we failed to prevent another 9/11.”

As Alexander was introduced, Rep. Mike Rogers, (R-MI), claimed that “inaccuracies, half-truths and outright lies” about covert NSA surveillance of American citizens and those outside our borders posed a threat to US safety, stating:

“It is at times like these when our enemies within become almost as damaging as our enemies on the outside.”

NBC references an alleged subway plot also foiled by NSA surveillance programs, separate from the NYSE plot officials say was prevented:

“In the subway plot, he said, the NSA intercepted an email from a terrorist in Pakistan in 2009 who was talking with someone in the United States about perfecting a recipe for explosives. He said that person turned out to be Najibullah Zazi, who later pleaded guilty in the plot and is in federal prison.”

The hearings on NSA spying and NYSE attack claims came as a result of the actions of former security contractor Edward Snowden, who revealed details of the NSA’s actions after fleeing to Hong Kong.