[01:08.86]The American he met, the former ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford told the BBC Mr. Jamil had requested the meeting in a personal capacity.
[01:17.34]“To be very frank, for although I was willing to meet with Qadri Jamil,
[01:23.57]he made clear that he was meeting me in a personal capacity not as a deputy prime minister of the Syrian government.
[01:29.90]And we had a long and very thorough discussion but I cannot say
[01:33.41]that we agreed on many issues except for the one agreement we had that Syria does need to resolve its conflict through political means.”
[01:43.51]America’s top intelligence chiefs have defended the activities of the national security agency in the wake of allegations
[01:50.49] that it’s been spying on European allies and unlawfully monitoring American citizens.
[01:55.04]Johnny Diamond reports.
[01:56.65]If anyone was expecting apologies or embarrassment from the leaders of America’s intelligence community, they were in for disappointment.
[02:04.25]Mistakes had been made said James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, but they were human or technical.
[02:10.95]There is, he said, no other country on this planet that has the magnitude of oversight that the US does.
[02:16.40]He said that what he described as the torrent of disclosures about American surveillance had been extremely damaging and he anticipated even more.