Ex-NSA head asks court to toss out lawsuit

The former head of the National Security Agency asked a federal court to toss out a lawsuit accusing him of personally violating Americans’ constitutional rights. Keith Alexander filed a motion with the US District Court for the District of Columbia on behalf of himself, President Barack Obama and other top administration officials, claiming he had never been properly served as part of a sweeping lawsuit over the NSA’s powers. The lawsuit, from conservative legal activist Larry Klayman, succeeded in a 2013 declaration that the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records was likely unconstitutional. The decision provided a major boost to the agency’s critics more than a year before they passed reform legislation on Capitol Hill that curtailed the program. The lawsuit also personally named Alexander, President Obama, former Attorney General Eric Holder and other officials in both their individual and official roles. But Klayman waited more than two years to serve those officials notice, Justice Department lawyers argued in the motion. Procedural rules require him to serve notice within 120 days. Klayman’s team has “never [emphasis in the original] personally served any of the individual federal defendants with the complaints in which those defendants were first named,” lawyers claimed.