William Dugan Acting Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Oversight Department of Defense explained yesterday in the hearing:
"The purpose of the Intelligence Oversight program is to enable DoD intelligence components to effectively carry out their authorized functions, while at the same time ensuring their activities that affect United States persons are carried out in a manner that protects their Constitutional rights and privacy.
I’ve used the term “United States persons.” It is an important one because it refers to more than just United States citizens. The term also includes lawful permanent residents, corporations incorporated in the United States (unless directed or controlled by a foreign government), and unincorporated associations substantially composed of lawful permanent residents and/or U.S. citizens."
Just so you know the (tortured) reasoning of the Pentagon on why they had to destroy Able Danger documentation.
But I believe I heard Specter specifically ask the Pentagon lawyer whether foreigners here on student or tourist visas would meet their definition of a U.S. citizen (or, U.S. person, as you put it). They answer was, no.
"I’ve used the term “United States persons.”"
This term is one of the keys to the current and past obsfucation. It gets bent around at some points in the discussion to cover "everyone who is in the US legally"--which would include Atta. This is a false interpretation, but a useful one for some people. it has worked some of the time. This may be one of those historical moments when the famous Lincoln quote to come in to play.
"You can fool all of the people some of the time. And some of the people all of the time. But you can't fool all the people all of the time." (Or something like that.)