Is Edward Snowden a Hero? A Debate With Journalist Chris Hedges & Law Scholar Geoffrey Stone

this is democracy Now democracynow.org The War and Peace report I'm Amy Goodman with n sh we turn now to a debate on Edward snowden's decision to leak a trove of secret documents outlining the nsa's surveillance program in an interview with the Guardian newspaper Snowden described why he risked his career to leak the documents I think that the public has owed an explanation of the motivations behind the people who make these disclosures that are outside of the democratic model when you are subverting the power of government that that's a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy and if you do that in secret consistently you know as the government does uh when it wants to benefit from a secret action that it took uh it'll kind of give it its officials a mandate to go hey you know tell the Press about this thing and that thing so the public is on our side but they rarely if ever do that when an abuse occurs that falls to uh individual citizens but they're typically malign you know it becomes a thing of these people are against the country they're against the government but I'm not I'm I'm no different from anybody else I don't have special skills uh I'm just another guy who sits there dayto day in the office watches what happening what's happening and goes this is something that's not our place to decide the public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong and I'm willing to go on the record to defend the authenticity of them and say I didn't change these I didn't modify the story this is the truth this is what's happening you should decide whether we need to be doing this Edward snowden's actions have elicited a range of reactions Jeffrey tubin of CNN and The New Yorker writes that Snowden is quote a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison Democratic senator Diane Feinstein chair of the Senate intelligence committee said that Snowden should not be considered a whistleblower because quote what he did was an act of treason and Republican senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina tweeted I hope we follow Mr Snowden to the ends of the Earth to bring him to Justice language echoing what Senator Graham once said in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden meanwhile Douglas rashkoff wrote on CNN quote snowden's a hero because he realized our very Humanity was being compromised by the blind implementation of machines in the name of making us safe unquote the editor of the American conservative Scott McConnell wrote quote if Obama wanted to do something smart he should thank Snowden and offer him a job at as a White House technology adviser and Pentagon paper whistleblower Daniel ellberg sang snowden's Praises writing quote in my estimation there has not been an American history a more important leak than Edward snowden's release of NSA material and that definitely includes the Pentagon papers 40 years ago from more we host a debate on Edward Snowden is he a hero or a criminal whistleblower or traitor here in New York we're joined by Chris Hedges senior fellow at the nation Institute was a foreign correspondent for the New York Times for 15 years was part of a team of reporters that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the papers coverage of global terrorism author along with the cartoonist Joe sacko of the New York Times bestseller days of Destruction days of Revolt his most recent article is called the judicial lynching of Bradley Manning at truth.org and in Chicago Illinois we're joined by Jeffrey Stone a professor at the University of Chicago Law School his recent piece for the Huffington Post is called Edward Snowden hero or traitor Stone served as an informal advisor to President Obama in 2008 in 1992 20 years ago Professor Stone hired Obama to teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago Jeffree stone is also author of many books including top secret when our government keeps us in the dark and perilous times free speech and War time from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the war on terrorism Chris Hedges Jeffree Stone we welcome you both to democracy Now um Professor Stone I want to begin with you um in your piece you say that Edward stodden's actions were criminal can you explain why you feel he should be in jail well there is a federal statute that makes it a crime for public employees who have uh been granted access to classified information uh to reveal that information to persons who are unauthorized to receive it so from a simple straightforward techical legal standpoint um there's absolutely no question that Snowden violated the law um and from that standpoint if he's tried he will be convicted and um he is in fact from that perspective a criminal whether one admires what he did is another question but it doesn't have anything to do with whether or not what he did was unlawful um the question of why I think he he deserves punishment is he said it actually himself in the clip that you played earlier um he said I'm just an ordinary guy well the fact is it's just an ordinary guy with absolutely no expertise in public policy in the law in National Security he's a techie um he made the decision on his own without any authorization without any approval by the American people to uh reveal classified information um about which he had absolutely no expertise in terms of the the danger to the nation the value of the information to National Security um that was a completely irresponsible and dangerous thing to do whether we think it was a positive thing in the long run or not question but it was clearly criminal Chris hedg is your response well what we're really having a debate about is whether or not we're going to have a free press left or not if there are no snowdens if there are no Mannings if there are no asanas there will be no free press and if the press and let's uh not forget that Snowden gave this to the guardian this was filtered through a press organization in a classic sort of way whistleblowers provide uh public information about uh unconstitutional criminal activity by their government to the public uh so the notion that he's just some individual standing up and releasing stuff over the Internet is false um but more importantly uh what he has exposed uh essentially shows that anybody who reaches out to the press to expose fraud crimes uh uh unconstitutional activity which this clearly appears to be can be traced and shut down and that's what's so frightening so uh we are at a situation now and I speak as a former investigative reporter for the New York Times by which any investigation into the inner workings of government has become impossible that's the real debate well Chris how do you respond to the point uh that Jeffree Stone made and and how uh Snowden identified himself as an ordinary guy should any regular government employee or contractor be allowed to disclose whatever information he feels the public ought to be privy to whether it's classified by the government and his employer or her employer or not well if uh that that is what an act of conscience is and uh reporters live our our our sort of daily fair is built investigative reporters off of people who within systems of power have a conscience to expose uh activities by the power elite uh which are uh criminal in order or unconstitutional and that's precisely what he did and and he did it in the traditional way which was going to a journalist Glen Greenwald and the guardian uh and having it vetted by uh that publication before it was put out to the public was it a criminal well yes but it was a it was I suppose in a technical sense it was criminal but set against the larger crime that is being committed by the state uh when you have a system by which criminals are in power criminals on Wall Street uh who are able to carry out massive fraud uh with no kinds of repercussions or serious regulation or investigation criminals who torture in our black sites criminal who carry out targeted assassinations criminals who lie to the American public to uh prosecute preemptive War which under international law is illegal uh if you are a strict legalist as apparently Professor stone is what you're in essence doing is protecting criminal activity I would argue that in large sections of our government it's the criminals who are in power Professor Stone your response well first of all there there is so far as I can tell from everything that's been revealed absolutely nothing illegal or criminal about these programs they may be terrible public policy and I'm not sure I approve of them at all but the fact is the claim that they are unconstitutional and illegal is wildly premature certainly from the standpoint of what's been released so far whether whether Mr Hedges likes it or not or whether Mr Snowden likes it or not these are not unconstitutional or illegal programs let me go to a letter that you co-signed Professor Stone in 2006 with other prominent attorneys about NSA surveillance under President Bush you were criticizing it you wrote quote although the program's secrecy prevents us from being privy to all of its details the Justice Department's defense of what it concedes with secret and warrantless electronic surveillance of persons within the United States fails to identify any plausible legal Authority for such surveillance accordingly the program appears on its face to violate existing law how do you compare that to what we're seeing today they're two completely different programs the bush NSA surveillance program was enacted in direct Defiance of the foreign intelligence surveillance act the Obama program if we want to call it that was approved by Congress that's number one number two is the bush program involved um wiretapping of the contents of phone conversations the Supreme Court has long held that that is a violation of the Fourth Amendment if there's not an individualized determination of probable cause the Obama program if we want to call it that um does not involve wire tapping it involves phone numbers and the Supreme Court has long held that the government is allowed to obtain phone records bank records Library records purchase records once you disclose that information to a third party and there is no Fourth Amendment violation so they're two completely different programs but and if you just heard our conversation with the mathematician Susan Lando she argued that often metadata is more revealing um than the transcript of an actual conversation do you think the law should change Jeffree Stone to include this metadata well I'm not persuaded by uh her argument that it's more revealing um I do believe that it's problematic and I think I think in fact there should could be statutes that prohibit the Gathering of this type of data by private entities as well as by the government in the absence of at least a compelling justification um and I thought the Supreme Court's decisions initially on this question were wrong so I would certainly want to see them differently but in terms of what the law is it's not unconstitutional it's not illegal and it's completely different what the Bush Administration was doing Chris Hedges do you agree that uh well there are plenty of lawyers who disagree with Professor Stone not many well the ACLU is just issued a suit uh over this claiming that it's a violation of the Fourth Amendment so uh I haven't done a poll uh frankly the legal profession under this steady assault of civil liberties uh can hold its head very high um there are a few out there at the Michel few others but um you know uh Stone aren't you on the board of theou or were you I'm on the national advisory Council yes so what do you think of them uh suing the government over this I think it's great I think that that they they are perfectly right to bring the question that's their job their job is to challenge uh whether or not things are constitutional to raise those questions that's exactly what they should be doing doesn't mean they're always right but they should be presenting these questions to the courts that's their job that's their responsibility uh Chris Hedges one of the problems that people have pointed to is that there aren't procedures or mechanisms in place for people within the government to point out wrongdoing when it does occur do you think that's one of the problems that's occurred in this case with Edward Snowden or for that matter your most recent article was on Army whistleblower private Bradley Manning well we used to have a mechanism it was called The Press uh and we used to be able to uh tell our sources that they would be protected uh and uh that they would not be investigated uh for providing information that exposed the inner workings of power unfortunately the Press like most institutions in this country and I would add the legal profession has largely collapsed under this corporate coupet that's taking taken place uh and is no longer functioning and I I want to get back that that what this is fundamentally a debate about is whether we are going to have through the Press an independent institution within this country that can examine the inner workings of power or not and um it is now I mean many of us had suspected this widespread surveillance but now that it's confirmed uh we're seeing you know why did Snowden come out publicly well because I think he knew that they would find out anyway because they have all of Glenn greenwald's uh email phone records and everything else uh and they can uh very quickly find out who he was speaking to uh and uh and and whether Snowden had contact with him uh and that you know I speak as a reporter it's terrifying uh because it essentially shuts down any ability to counter the official propaganda and the official narrative and expose the crimes and and we have seen in the last few years tremendous crimes being committed by those in power uh we have no ability now to investigate them Professor Stone let me ask you about whether the reporters from the guardian The Washington Post should be prosecuted uh CNN's Anderson Cooper uh put this question to Republican Congress member Peter King of New York last night as far as reporters who help reveal these programs do you believe something should happen to them do you believe they should be punished as well actually if they if they willingly knew that this was uh classified information I think action should be taken especially on something of this magnitude I know that the whole issue of leaks has been uh gone into over the last month but I think something on this magnitude there is an obligation uh both moral but also legal I I believe uh against the reporter disclosing something which would uh so severely compromise National Security Professor Stone your response to what Peter King is saying he's just wrong um the Supreme Court in the Pentagon papers case for example made very clear that Dani ellberg could be prosecuted um for um as a public official stealing information that the New York Times and the and the Washington Post could not be restrained from publishing that information uh the court is essentially held that although the government can control classified information at its source by prohibiting employees from revealing it once the information goes out it cannot then punish the press for publishing it it's a little bit odd as as a system but the idea is that on the one hand we have freedom of the press which has to be preserved on the other hand the government has a legitimate interest in maintaining confidentiality at the source within the government itself so no clearly Grunwald and the and and and and Reuters and and so on none of those can be uh the guardian none of those can be punished consistent with the First Amendment that's clear uh Professor Stone so do you believe that uh Edward snowden's position uh is comparable to Daniel ellsberg's position with the Pentagon papers and that the guardian played a comparable role to the New York Times so I think snowden's position based upon what I know now is much worse um ellsburg revealed uh historical information that had really no appreciable uh threat to the National Security it was all old information about what the government had done in the past um and uh what Snowden has revealed there information about ongoing programs which we're told uh are extremely important to the National Security and we're told that the revelation of those programs um makes them far less efficient that's a very serious potentially very serious harm to the nation that was not the case in ellsburg situation so I think from that standpoint Henry Kissinger said Dan ellberg was the most dangerous man in America so they certainly at that time they were telling us that what he was doing was threatening National Security he said that at the time before they had an opportunity to really reflect on what was released years later or even weeks later that was no longer the case um so I I think that those two situations are not remotely comparable in terms of the the the harm that ellsburg did to the country which I think was trivial relative to what Snowden has done which arguably is far more serious let me make another point about civil liberties here by the way it's extremely important to understand that if you want to protect civil liberties in this country you not only have to protect civil liberties you also have to protect against terrorism because what will destroy civil liberties in this country more effectively than anything else is another 911 attack and if the government is not careful about that and if we have more attacks like that you can be sure that the kind of things the government's doing now are going to be regarded as small potatoes compared to what would what what would happen in the future so it's very complicated asking what's the best way to protect civil liberties in the United States I have a very I just don't buy this argument that you know this hurts National Security I covered Al-Qaeda for the New York Times and believe me they know they're being monitored uh the whole idea that somehow it comes as a great surprise to jihadist groups that their emails websites and phone calls are being uh tracked is absurd uh this is we're talking about the wholesale collection of information on virtually most of the American public uh and the consequences of that uh are truly terrifying at that point we are in essence snuffing out the capacity of any kind of Investigation into the inner workings of power and to throw out this notion that uh it har this harmed National Security there's no evidence for that in the same way that there is no evidence that the information that Bradley Manning leaked in any way harmed National Security it didn't uh what the security and surveillance state is doing is playing on fear uh and uh and using that fear to acre to themselves tremendous uh forms of power uh that in a civil society in a democracy they should never have and that's the battle that's underway right now in Frank we're losing I wanted to ask you Professor Stone to reflect on Martin Luther King's letter from Birmingham Jail written April 16th 1963 when he said one who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its Injustice is in reality expressing the highest respect for law could you respond to that obviously King sure obviously King is right the question is whether it's an unjust law um so people who violate a law because they think it is unjust don't necessarily fit within the letter from the Birmingham Jail um King was talking about protesting racial segregation um and that's a little bit different in terms of the moral status of it now maybe it's true I mean maybe Chris Hedges is right and maybe that um that's noden as a hero and maybe this is all a fraud on the part of the government this this this this information serves no useful purpose um and it's fundamentally important to the United States that it's been revealed maybe that's true and if it turns out to be true then I'll be the first to say Snowden it was a hero um but at the moment I have absolutely no reason to believe that and to say that some people act on legitimate conscience and therefore violate unjust laws is not to say that everyone who violates a law is Martin Luther King in the Birmingham Jail I want to put that question to Chris but I want to ask you Jeffree Stone if um you were Edward um snowden's attorney what arguments would you put forward for him right now um legally I don't think he has honestly I don't think he has any legal arguments that would be a defense uh to the charge that he um violated the law about uh government contractors um not disclosing classified information to persons not authorized to receive it I don't think he has a defense um some people commit a crime and they committed the crime and I don't know if there's any defense sometimes interestingly Dan ellsburg faced treason trial but ultimately uh the he ended up being exonerated because of the illegal wiretapping that was done of him well he wasn't exonerated uh in his case the judge dropped the charges against him because the nixit administration um uh searched his psychiatrist office in violation of the Constitution and the judge concluded that that was prosecutorial misconduct and therefore dismissed the prosecution if the government does something similar in snowden's case and and the and the court finds that it's a violation of his constitutional rights in the course of the investigation and dismisses the charges that would be something as his lawyer I'd certainly want to know but on the merits of the charge as they presently as it presently stands um I think it's a sentencing question not a criminality question Chris Hedges if you could respond to the King quote and the significance of what Snowden did well without figures like Snowden without figures like Manning without figures like Julian Assange um essentially the blinds are drawn we have no window into what's being done in our name including the crimes that are being done in our name uh again I you know having worked as an investigative reporter the the the lifeblood of my work were figures like these who had the moral courage to stand up uh and name the crime that they witnessed and these people are always at the moment that they stand up and even king of course was persecuted and reviled and denounced hounded by uh Jay Edgar Hoover who attempted through blackmail to get him to commit suicide before accepting the Nobel Prize let's not forget that all of these figures like Stodden come under this character assassination which frankly I think Professor stone is engaging in uh and that's not uncommon uh that that's what comes with the territory when you car carry out an act of conscience it's a very lonely uh and frightening uh and and it makes these figures like Snowden deeply courageous uh because the I mean the whole debate traitor or whistleblower uh for me you know hearing this on the Press is watching The Press commit Collective suicide because without those figures there is no press I wanted to end uh with um with Professor Stone you were an early adviser to President Obama you gave him first job at University of Chicago Law School you were the dean of the University of Chicago Law School what would you advise him today uh I think there needs to be a really careful re-evaluation of the classification system I there's no question that we wildly over classify and that creates all sorts of problems uh both for the press and for the ability of the government to keep secrets because if you try to keep everything secret you don't effectively keep very much secret uh so I think that's critical um I think there is a serious question about um how we make the trade off between security and privacy um and I think that that's an issue that needs to be addressed um carefully certainly within the administration within the government uh to the extent there are genuinely uh secret policies that need to be kept secret and I believe that perfectly possible then I think that does not um immunize them from serious debate by responsible people within the four corners of the administration bringing in people who can have National Security clearances uh to take the Devil's Advocate position and challenge these issues so I think there's a lot that can and should be done um and I think that that it's easy to get swept up in the notion of of security being to be all and end all um this is a nation that's committed to individual privacy to freedom of the press to freedom of speech and those values need to be respected and I think government constantly has to be reexamining itself because all the Temptations are in the wrong direction uh Professor Jeffree Stone before we conclude I'd like to ask you about an article you wrote In 2011 for the New York Times called our untransparent president you wrote quote the record of the Obama Administration on this fundamental issue of American democracy has surely fallen short of expectations this is a lesson in trust us those in power are always certain that they themselves will act reasonably and they've resist limits on their own discretion the problem is trust us is no way to run a self-governing system Society end quote what's your assessment of the comments that you made then uh relative to now and his Obama's record on transparency and civil liberties I think the comment was correct then and I think it's it's correct today um I think that that there's a Temptation in the part of public officials to basically say we don't want to be hassled we don't want to be bothered we don't want to be criticized so we'll just do what's in the best interest of the country and we don't have to tell anybody about it and that's a huge danger in a democracy and and but the fact that I accept that and passionately believe it does not mean that everything the government does in confidence and in secret should not be in confidence or in secret the problem was where to draw the line so yes I would criticize the Obama Administration in general for being uh overly concerned with secrecy and not being sufficiently transparent the the point I made earlier about over classification is a good example um but at the same time I do recognize that there are situations in which secrecy is critical and the problem is being able to DET to discern when that's necessary and when it's not and to do that you need to have people within the debate who were internally challenging the necessity for secrecy and confidentiality I don't think the Obama Administration has done a very good job of that Chris I just just 30 seconds and I know that you were attending the Bradley Manning trial but linking the two well we're talking about the the death of a free press the death of a civil society this is far beyond a reasonable debate uh we make this East German stazzy State look like the Boy Scouts uh and if we don't rest back this power for privacy for the capacity to investigate what our power lead is doing uh I think we can essentially say our democracy has been snuffed out Chris Hedges and Jeffree Stone want to thank you for being with us Jeffree Stone former Dean at the University of Chicago Law School now Professor there his recent piece for the huffing post is called Edward Snowden hero or traitor Chris hedge's longtime journalist now senior fellow at the N at the nation Institute foreign correspondent for the New York Times before that for 15 years a part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of global terrorism this is democracy now when we come back we go back 50 years ago today when Medgar Evers was assassinated stay with [Music] us

Channel: Democracy Now!

Views: 272,907

Keywords: Amy Goodman, DN, News, Politics, Video, Democracy Now, Chris Hedges, Edward Snowden, Geoffrey Stone, Jeffrey Toobin, NSA, National Security Agency, constitutional law, whistleblowing, whistleblower, President Obama, Barack Obama (US President)

Id: cKmkxptPLSw

Length: 27min 58sec (1678 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 12 2013