In a stunning development, Deputy Director of the NSA, John Inglis, along with Assistant Attorney General, James Cole, have fled the United States after their participation in a contentious congressional meeting on Capitol Hill.

In that meeting, both Inglis and Cole revealed that the depth of NSA spying far surpassed anything that whistleblower Edward Snowden has made public to date. The unauthorized leaks to Congress by Inglis and Cole, which exposed more about NSA spying than anything Snowden has revealed, shook congressional leaders to their core.



The National Security Agency revealed to an angry congressional panel on Wednesday that its analysis of phone records and online behavior goes exponentially beyond what it had previously disclosed. [...] John C Inglis, the deputy director of the surveillance agency, told a member of the House judiciary committee that NSA analysts can perform "a second or third hop query" through its collections of telephone data and internet records in order to find connections to terrorist organizations. "Hops" refers to a technical term indicating connections between people. A three-hop query means that the NSA can look at data not only from a suspected terrorist, but from everyone that suspect communicated with, and then from everyone those people communicated with, and then from everyone all of those people communicated with.

Eric Holder, in a hastily convened press conference, admitted that the two had fled the United States on private jets immediately after the hearing, and that their whereabouts where unknown. He was, however, confident that the U.S. would bring them to justice.



“The national security of the United States has been damaged by those leaks. The safety of the American people and safety of people in allied nations is at risk." [...] “I am confident that the people who are responsible will be held accountable.”

While President Obama, in a short session before reporters, said, "We won't be scrambling any jets to catch these middle-aged leakers," diplomatic channels were already furiously at work, trying to close off all international airspace.

Updates on this story as details emerge will appear below the break.

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