UNCLASS I FIED

Dissoros or 
WASHINGTON. DC 20511

SEP 0 1 2317
The Honorable Ron Wyden
Select Committee on intelligence
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Wyden:

in response to your letter of July 31, 2017, 1 would note that I responded to your question
publicly both at the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence?s open hearing on June 7, as well as
in an unclassified letter to you on June 8. However, in further conversations with you and your
staff, including at a closed budget hearing on June 15, it became clear that you already had the
speci?c information that you were seeking, but this information was classified. In an effort to be
responsive to you, I committed to assessing whether the sources and methods information you
were asking for could be publicly released.

After consulting with the relevant intelligence agencies, I concluded that releasing the
information you are asking to be made public would cause serious damage to national security.
To that end, I provided you a comprehensive classified response to your question on July 24.
This response also discussed, at length, why the information is properly classified and cannot be
publicly released.

I want to stress that the Intelligence Community takes seriously its obligation to faithfully
execute collection under Section 702 consistent with the Constitution and statutory requirements.
We also take seriously our obligation to ensure Congress has all the information - both publicly
available and classified it needs to conduct oversight of this program. While I recognize your
goal of an unclassified response, given the need to include classi?ed information to fully address
your question, the classified response provided on July 24 stands as our response on this matter.

Sincerely,

 

Daniel R. Coats

cc: Chairman, Senate Select Committee on intelligence
Vice Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

UNCLASSIFIED