DNI McConnell allows local reporter to blow the lid off of warrantless wiretapping?

Okay, we knew that Dick Cheney had declared the right to unilaterally declassify, but did DNI Mike McConnell just pass the declassification torch to a local reporter at the El Paso Times?

After an interview in which McConnell revealed several previously classified details regarding the warrantless wiretapping program, MSNBC reports,

At the end of the interview, McConnell cautioned reporter Chris Roberts that he should consider whether enemies of the U.S. could gain from the information he just shared in the interview, Roberts said. McConnell left it to the paper to decide what to publish.

This is in the same interview that McConnell said, "Part of this is a classified world. The fact that we're doing it this way (publicly discussing it) means that some Americans are going to die."

So he left it to the El Paso Times reporter to decide which of these previously classified details to publish? Did they serve drinks at the conference?

(PS. In this interview McConnell more or less confirmed the claims in the lawsuits against the carriers, one of which is the existence of the "NSA closets" in AT&T switching offices which were allegedly used to conduct vast datamining on citizens email and phone content.)