The administration has been amping up stats about foiled plots to bolster support for mass surveillance In so many words, NSA director Keith Alexander admitted Wednesday that the Obama administration had issued misleading information about terror plots and their foiling to bolster support for the government’s vast surveillance apparatus. During Wednesday’s hearing, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy pushed Alexander to admit that plot numbers had been fudged in a revealing interchange: “There is no evidence that [bulk] phone records collection helped to thwart dozens or even several terrorist plots,” said Leahy.