From NPR’s David Greene interview with counter-terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke:

GREENE: So if you were still inside the government right now as a counterterrorism official, could you have seen yourself being more sympathetic with the FBI in doing everything for you that it can to crack this case?

CLARKE: No, David. If I were in the job now, I would have simply told the FBI to call Fort Meade, the headquarters of the National Security Agency, and NSA would have solved this problem for them. They’re not as interested in solving the problem as they are in getting a legal precedent.

GREENE: Wow, that sounds like quite a charge. You’re suggesting they could have just gone to the NSA to crack this iPhone but they’re presenting this case because they want to set a precedent to be able to do it in the future?

CLARKE: Every expert I know believes that NSA could crack this phone. They want the precedent that the government can compel a computer device manufacturer to allow the government in.

Though Clarke hasn’t worked for the government since 2003, he is widely respected and, I suspect, maintains enough ties within the intelligence community that he knows of what he speaks.

One side point: There’s been a lot of discussion about the possibility of the FBI compelling Apple to turn over their source code. My gut tells me, that move is coming.