Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Mike Rogers (R., Mich.) said without the NSA surveillance program the country would risk another 9/11 Sunday on "Face The Nation."
In an absence of NSA phone record surveillance the national security apparatus would be prone to missing communications between foreign terrorists and domestic cells, as was the case on 9/11 Rogers noted:
BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you this, Mr. Chairman, what would happen if they stopped doing this, if they stopped collecting these phone numbers and storing them there, where they can check them against these terrorist calls? What, in your view, would happen?
MIKE ROGERS: Well, we are going to miss something, and exactly what happened on 9/11. What happened on 9/11 is a known terrorist safe house calls in to the United States to talk to a terrorist who is living amongst us. We'll miss that. We will miss that connection between what's happening here and overseas. And remember, terrorists now use the same communication system in America that we do. So they're intermingled with us, which makes it incredibly difficult. What you're doing is taking away the one tool that we know will allow us to-- nexus between a foreign terrorist overseas talking to somebody in the United States. That's how they stopped the bombing in New York from three people with bombs in backpacks from getting on the subway system. It has-- saved real lives. I mean, real folks have come home with their legs. Real folks have not been-- had their lives taken when they're commuting to work because of this program. That's why I get real nervous. But I understand why people are nervous, Bob. All of these bad ideas have collided, and this was the first opportunity, at least in the House, for people to express their anger about all of this other information that's being collected. I think we have to separate them and understand the difference.
Rogers went on to slam members in the House who voted to cut funding for the NSA, suggesting some of the questions asked by those members prior to the vote indicated a serious lack of understanding about the surveillance program.