WASHINGTON — FBI Director Robert Mueller defended the amassing of widespread phone records, before a House Committee, saying had it been in place before the Sept. 11 attacks, the attacks could have been “derailed” and that it was used to track a friend of the Boston Marathon bombers.
Monitoring calls between a Yemen safe house and an organizer in San Diego, “could have derailed the plan, in any case, the opportunity was not there,” Mueller told the House Judicary Committee. “If we had this program that opportunity would have been there.”
He said the phone program was also used to track Ibragim Todashev, who was shot by agents while being interrogated, saying he was found through means “including one of the programs that is under scrutiny today.”
“We came upon him in a variety of ways,” Mueller said.
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