Occupy movement. But i know that we will teach it on television and there are some russians who went there. And i guess the answer to this is that there is no reason why the u. S. Officials and european officials should not go and address the demonstration that they want. But i do think that it is true that it is not completely clear whether the majority of ukrainians want to go in one direction or the other. So i think that i mean, in 2000 faller during the arms revolution, the russians going to key have and doing similar things as well. They negotiated this as well. And so are the people in the United States who questioned why this was something that was democratically elected. Whether the u. S. Should be going there and trying to push the ukraine in one direction or another. So i think that there is quite a lot of criticisms and there were many people that enforce it. And i think that it shows also that russia played it very well. Host it is very important and informative with the regulations. Thank you. [inaudible] coming up next, airs every we cannot booktv at 10 00 p. M. On saturday and 12 00 p. M. And 9 00 p. M. On sunday and 12 00 a. M. On monday. You can also watch after words online. Go to booktv. Org and click on after words on the booktv series and topics list on the upper right side of the page. James bamford discusses the history of National Security agency spying and the nsa surveillance of american citizens since 9 11. He also talked about Edward Snowden and the current losses being brought against the agency by the elect tronic frontier foundation. This is about one hour and 15 minutes. [applause] thank you very much. We really appreciate everyone coming here. This is a really great event. This is one of the best events ive had here. Right through the doors right here i was married here. So this has to take second place tonight, i think. Among the people at my wedding, which i discovered later, was a major russian spy, bob hanson. Who i had known for years and one of my sources and i didnt realize what his avocation wise. But it is really good to have you all here. I was very happy that the president decided to hold off on his announcement until tomorrow so they can hear could hear what i had to say tonight. [laughter] that was very nice of him. I dont think that he will probably agree with what i have to say that it will be interesting to see what he has to say tomorrow. One thing that is really fascinating is how many people actually know about the nsa today. When i first wrote my book, the puzzle palace, back in 1982, one of the individuals when i was doing the book tour, with senator bill bradley from new jersey. And he said, what is your book about. And i said about the nsa, National Security agency. And he asked what is that . [laughter] so we get on and talk about the economy. And i just couldnt resist when he asked me about the secret of the nsa. So he took a separate car back to hotel. And then the next day his aide called up and said that was below them to say that and i said no, below the belt confused with the nba. [laughter] [applause] so i heard that he ran on the Intelligence Committee after a gettogether. So theres a lot more that we heard about after that. Another thing that was really funny is the focus picked by bookofthemonth club. And so i got the New York Times book review and they have all of these little pictures of the little books that make the book of the month club and so i saw online in the picture was different. There is a picture of a rocket taking off or something and we said, what was the idea of doing this. And they said that we thought you were talking about nasa trades are they actually changed the cover of my book on the book of the month club because they thought i had made a mistake. [laughter] [laughter] that john wanted me to keep this short because we have a lot of people with a lot of question. The questions are far more interesting than the talks. So i thought we could run through a few interesting things here. First of all, i am really happy to be in the press club. Ive been a member here for over 30 years now. I was actually a member on at the time but later on. This was actually an all mens place until 1971, i think it was. But the person of their that has a deck of cards and a hand of cards in front of them was an oldtime press club member and he would hang out here during the 1950s and he became a very fascinating card shark who wrote a book called education of a poker player. And that is still part of the original building where he was playing cards here. But before he became a card shark coming he had another job and that was i was being the founding father of the National Security agency. And the nsa actually got its start in a little Apartment Building their. In july of 1920. And herbert irbe was the chief of the black chamber and he lived on the top floor with his family and the firstborn was a phony company that made commercial code, but it was just a front. In the code breaking was done on the two middle floors. So as you can imagine the nsa has grown a fair amount since those days. And what some of those have been saying right now im actually happened after 1929. And that was the secretary of state who came along, secretary of state simpson. And they didnt want to tell him that there was a thing called the black chamber even though the state department was paying for it. Because he didnt know what the reaction would be with a secret Little Office up in new york who is eavesdropping. And then he did finally tell them and he was outraged and said gentlemen do not read each others mail and he immediately close down the chamber. Well, that put him out of work. So then he went from being the head of the organization as the first predecessor of the nsa, to basically become the Edward Snowden of his day. He has today become the object of is he a hero or is he a traitor. And hes a very heroic whistleblower. There is no connection between Edward Snowden as far as im concerned. [applause] and also spies. I know spies and i had one of my wedding come as i mentioned. And Edward Snowden is not selling secrets to the russians, he went there because the u. S. Canceled his passport halfway between hong kong and ecuador. In way before there was Edward Snowden, there was herbert. And after they closed the black chamber, they decided to write a book about it, which was the very first expose of american cryptologic communities. And they werent very happy when his book came out. And they tried to put him in jail. So they actually created a new part of the espionage law to prosecute him with. And a lot of that was what they try to tried to prosecute him about right now. That ironically the first head of the nsa became also the first whistleblower. Now, this is something that i think Edward Snowden would be very interested in. Because there is a history of this. Theres a history which i will show you a little bit. At one point being a big ability the nsa. The next minute being a hero to the nsa. So it took a wild and almost seven years. But they finally put him in the hall of honor of the nsa. And like i said, or at least look was one of the very first books written on the organization and the predecessor to the nsa. And the next one to write was david conn. Who wrote a book in 1967 which told a lot about the nsa which was the most big expose that had ever happened since uruguay. And they went to a lot of trouble to try to get rid of the book. They even considered as this came out in the senate Intelligence Committee are horrid to try to steal the manuscript with when Distance Service applications and whatever that is. And worst of all they were going to plant some disparaging press review is. Which as an author you take every other option before that one. So like him he was rehabilitated and then in 1995 they made him the First Official scholar resident of the nsa and then they took his book between one that they were trying to ban and they put it in the library. So again, more hope for Edward Snowden here. And mine was the next one, the puzzle palace, and there they accuse me of putting this to give up documents which i know i did the research with. And they threaten some of my sources, including a one or nsa director with prosecution and jail time and everything. And they had a guy follow me. That is why i wore a costume wherever i went. And actually that was john henrys house. [laughter] but they did. They actually had somebody in every audience who gave a talk. And they put a whole file cabinet of papers together on these. And they said that we dont have anything on you. I said that its impossible. Ive been writing about you for three years and you dont have a single visa paper . And then i saw on one paper i thought, oh, thats my codename. So i sent a request for everything on this file and i got a whole drawer. So after about 20 years the agency i just made that picture up there, but they actually had a book signing for me and they did have a line going out the door and a lot of people were forbidden to carry this before. And so i became a bad guy again and wrote a really nasty book. So im no longer on their official book to her list anymore. And there is a possibility here that this could be a reality. General Alexander Holding a sign up saying that Edward Snowden is a hero or wearing a tshirt. And its all possible. But before that there were other whistleblowers and those are the people that i really admired. The people that helped me in writing some of the book cited books i did in some of the articles that i did. They were all people who defied nsa and these were people who were working at the nsa. And i have been here for almost 40 years. Before that he was in the military. And this includes tom drakes first day on the job in 2001. But these are the people that i really admired because there are people who have a conscience. When 9 11 came along in the nsa began to ease dropping domestically, these are the people spoke up. And they left the agency because they didnt want to see a system that they worked on turned into a vehicle for eavesdropping on american citizens in the u. S. I have a lot of admiration for them. And they did an awful lot of work to help get the message out. And a few of them are here tonight, actually. The nsa has gone a long way since the townhouse. Now it is an entire city and i have been through there a few times. And it is a mammoth location and no one has the idea of how much it has grown in the last 10 years. And it is part of the headquarters complex itself and the whole purpose is eavesdropping. So it is an agency that we need to have a close eye on. And that is why we are here and that is why the controversy has come up. Because there has not been a close eye on it. For years, and this is one of the top documents, for years it was the largest Intelligence Community budget and that changed more recently because of the advent of drones with the cia and so forth. And you can see how much it is budgeted. And its very widespread. This is one of the more revealing scenes from the snowden group. They plan all of their mount where were all of the computers are part of this and where were they tap into the fiber optic cables and so forth. And for someone who has been writing about the nsa for a long time, this is extremely informative. Its a form of metadata and no one had ever heard of this before last year, i think. And it has become one of the key issues that we are talking about now. Because i dont know about you, but the u. S. Government, particularly the nsa had the authority every time i picked up the telephone, to keep a record of that and keep it for five years. And so that is one of the big issues that is going to be talked about tomorrow. Is whether the president will actually go along with the committees recommendation and the panels recommendation, which is basically taking it out of the business of storing all these records. And putting the data where it is supposed to be and then using Legal Authority from a judge to search through the data and not just going through it without any oversight. [inaudible] and more has come out recently with these two decisions on the issue of metadata. Along with judge richard leon from a federal judge in washington. And the other was judge William Pauley in new york. I dont know if it made any difference, but i grew up with judge william and went to law school with him. But we never agreed on anything in 30 years. Hes a very conservative judge and the plaintiff is very conservative. So judge leon came with a conservative conclusion, after the same conclusion that i came to. And that is what the government should not be able to do this kind of activity with metadata. The judge polly came to this conclusion that he had a split decision. In my opinion he just has to get rid of that whole idea of the government collecting metadata. The Edward Snowden case is a perfect example of why. There was Edward Snowden who worked 6000 miles from the nsa. He was a contractor and in his 20s. But he was able to spend almost a year, it seems like, actual trading 1. 7 million of the most secret documents from the nsa. And the nsa did not even know about it until he showed up in hong kong. And so do you want to trust the agency with all of your data . I dont particularly want to do that. And you see what has happened with other places like target. Some really want a lot of money for it. And instead of doing the honorable thing, they want to be a criminal celestin keep in the hands of the government, the better it is. But one of the key issues is an issue that i will talk about here. And it is a somewhat complex issue and a key issue with the data discussion. It is the issue that the judge sort of hung his hat on his decision. It all centers on the house. I will guarantee that im the only person in this room that has actually been to that. This was bin ladens operations schedule. And i went there for a documentary for pbs and then 9 11. And that is where the first hints of 9 11 came from. And so these are all issues that feed into these decisions and it is a key excuse for having the metadata present. And what happened was in december of 1999, the nsa had been listening to this for years because it was the house where bin laden was called to set up terrorist operations and the house where they attacked the u. S. Embassy and so forth. And so in december of 1999, they picked up a communication. It was from afghanistan. And this is going to be a very big meeting. So the nsa passes that is the i and the other Intelligence Agency. And they get the cooperation of the government and they are watching these guys. And then all of a sudden they go to the airport and they get on a plane with the cia being intelligent people, a figure that they are flying to bangkok because that is where the plane was going. And the problem was they called at the station in bangkok to alert them. And it happened to be a saturday when no one was working. But they didnt know that they were going to the United States because they had a copy of their past work. So what happened was the two of them flew from yemen and then flew to california. And since no one had been tipped off by the cia that they were coming, nobody was there to watch them arrive and they went down to san diego. And they managed to get this house in san diego and there was a muslim in san diego and i saw two people and the guy happened to be an fbi informant, which was very interesting. And they had two turns that were on their way here but the cia knew about and didnt tell anyone. And they are living in a house that is owned by an fbi informant. And then his wife was pregnant and yemen. So he called her fairly often in the nsa was eavesdropping on everything in that in yemen, going in and having come out in yemen. And so what happened was the cia wanted information from that to say that we would like to be given the transcripts and the people are day. And the nsa would not give them any information that they were picking up from the house and asked senior officials three times for that information and they wouldnt give it to them. So they end up building their own communications in the house and the problem was they were only getting the downlink. So they do not have the uplink of its medications. So they go back to the nsa and they say that we have this. Because we dont have a satellite and we cant afford one to put this up right now. And they said no, you cannot have that information. And so that is that is one of the key issues right now and this is another case that is coming up and let me just back up to this one. The house is the key issue. Because what the judges decision is, he accepted the nsas argument that even though for two years they were going in and out of this house, they were not able to find out that the calls were not were going to the house in yemen. Now i have followed him since 1982 and theres a lot of technology and i have talked to a lot of whistleblowers and they just cant believe that the nsa is saying that they didnt have the capabilities to find out where those phone calls were coming from. And the policy right now is that they didnt know where those calls were coming from and they were listening to the cause in yemen, but they couldnt tell that they were coming from san diego. And that is the key point. So the judge accepted that argument and that is the argument for metadata. Because the nsa could not tell where those phone calls were coming from. Then you have two question everyones metadata in the United States. So you have this in one place. And so then you can go through it. So you dont have another 9 11 argument. And so this is these are things that are somewhat complicated. They are not usable in a soundbite on intelligent. But they are critical to the issue of metadata and writing about it in the journalist community. Because a lot of this, a lot of them are saying are you kidding . We have all this technology out there and you cant tell us where this is coming from. And everyone has caller id. So its not over yet. So we had a split decision with the judge in new york and one in washington and theres another case coming up and i asked about her playing a role in this case. And this brought by the foundation which focuses on the legality of the metadata and so forth. Theres another little twist as well and they are focusing on another issue which i think is very working. And that is the americans right of assembly and the government shouldnt have a right to know that every time the committee for the republic is meeting here. Finding that we have a meeting of the end of lake ep and any political gathering or antiwar gathering. So that is one of the other aspects of this case. And it should be decided hopefully in the relatively near future. So you have these three cases and then they will go to the Supreme Court with a sort of entry position here. And by the time i see judge leon, i see that he was right. And im glad that he was right on this issue here read so i wrote this. And made the transparent publicized it, through their hearing and through their reports that there was change made. That was a creation of the foreign Intelligence Surveillance court. The first court to ever put any kind of a leash or regulation on nsa. And it worked really good for 30 years. I mean, it wasnt perfect. It never turned the government down, at least it was there. It did make some i think it was i used to make jokes about it, but i think it did a fair amount of good work and certainly better than nothing there. What happened after 9 11 they just the Bush Administration went around the fisa court. Violated the law and just bypassed the fisa court. Two and a half years later or so after New York Times revealed the program, then they created the thing called the Foreign Surveillance Amendment Act which legalized what they were doing in the first place. Now were at the point where we were at prior to the Church Committee why where the nsa has run amuck, and we need another Church Committee to look at this. I mean, i admire the president s panel because they came up with good suggestions. It was just a panel that looked at some of the issues for a month or a couple of months or whatever it was. Thats it. Then theyre gone. I think what needed is a Church Committee to do this. Its been 1975 look at the technology the nsa picked up. Look at the amount of weaknesses they have created in the foreign Intelligence Surveillance court. Then i was down rei yo in november. I saw green while i was there. He showed me one of the documents he had. And i thought it was fascinating. This one here was a this is just an excerpt from it. I have another slide you can read. It tells a little bit about what it was. When i read that, i thought, wow, we arrived at point we were in 1975 when the government was doing a lot of bad things. Back then twhairp doing was they were looking for ways to get Martin Luther king who was considered a radical at the time, and they wanted to discredit them from his followers. One way of doing that was by finding out what kind of Sexual Activity he might have then using that to either blackmail, extort, or basically just discredit him in front of his followers. Thats what this document was. It basically says the same thing. It was dated just back in october of 2012, and what it argued was that and the director of the nsa general alexanders title is at the top of it. It said they are looking for personal vulnerabilities viewing sexually explicit material online and so forth. A lot can with learned by people visiting besides probably more fun to listen to the north koreans. Then the idea is to exploit i was amazed at the language you know. Nobody would ever see the document unless you use vivid language as possible. Then they would exploit the vulnerability of character. They said were not talking about terrorists here. Were not talking about criminals. These are people who are radical. And identify the people. I saw the original document when i was there. I actually saw the names, but it was, you know, i agreed they shouldnt publish that. When i saw the name, there wasnt any division between at least one of the names i saw was a u. S. Citizens or u. S. Person is what they called it. Others were foreigners. There wasnt any division. Were only going after the foreigners. Its americans or u. S. Persons and foreigners. And, you know, it was interesting to me. Among the distribution list was the Justice Department and commerce. Because of trying to regulate the porn industry or i didnt get what the Commerce Department would be getting a stop secret document from nsa about eavesdropping on peoples visits to porn sites. Theres a lot i dont understand about nsa. Going back, this is what happened in the old days of the 60s. The fbi used wiretapping to discover vulnerability of sexual toft neutralize or target such as radicalize or radicalize such as Martin Luther king. Back then the idea come up with hoover, the longer serving fbi director now comes up now comes from general alexander the longest serving nsa director. It says something about not letting people stay in a job too long. And nsa played a role in those days too. It played a role as eavesdropping on antiwar protesters and so forth. They would pick up the information and pass it on to the fbi. In terms reforms now, you know, those are i couldnt see anything that really disagreed with on those 46 recommendations that came out from the white house panel. You know, hearing all of these rumors that the president is not going hes going to do cosmetic changes tomorrow not anything substantiative, which would be disappointing. But actually goes along with his track record, i mean, hes a guy that triple the number of people in forces in iraq instead of ending up in the first six months. Im sorry in afghanistan. Tripling the number of forces in afghanistan when he got in to office instead of ending if in the six months. George bush had one attack in yemen in eight years. Obama has declared war on yemen. The first attack on yemen wasnt even a drone attack. It was december 17th, 2009. That was when he launched the first attack on yemen. Which was very telling. There werent enough drones in the area. They were all in afghanistan and pakistan. But there was a navy ship. It was either a navy missile cruiser or submarine. One of the two. He used that. They thought there was some terrorist down in the rural part of southern yemen. They fired all the cruise missiles at the group and the tiny little village. The cruise missiles happened to be filled with cluster bombs outlawed in 109 countries in is person i vote forked president. I really shooting cluster bombs cruise missiles at the country were not at war with, and then missing the target and killing 50 women and children. That wasnt the end of it. The next day he made a public phone call to the president of yemen thanking him for a great terrorist operation he performed when the president of yemen had nothing do with it. It was entirely the Obama Administration, but he agreed to go along with it. Which gets me to the point i want to make. We find out a lot of these things. Not from the u. S. Government but whistle blowers. A lot of this came from the material leaked by manning. Chelsea manning. What happened was among the documents he released was a meeting between petraeus and the president of yemen. At that meeting which took place a couple of months after the attack. There was more. There was one on Christmas Eve and other attacks in yemen. In that meeting of the transcript that was leaked by the manning documents and it says the they were laughing about it in the meeting. The president said ill keep lying about it. As a matter of fact, im lying to my own parliament about it. Petraeus and he had a good laugh about it. These are the reasons why i admire whistle blowers. They tell us things we have to know rather than the thing they want us to know. One of the things i thought was fascinating since i knew a number of people on the Church Committee was they were able to get nsa to come up and name a lot of people that were target of the eve dropping. There was 1600 of them. They came out with names, you know, real fearsome people like dr. Benjamin spock. Jane phone data, people you have to worry about. Well, there was one name. There were a couple of names. One name in particular they refused to release to the Church Committee. Despite it they had never released the one name to the Church Committee. But that name was finallies released. I think it was last september it was released. Here is who it was which is why we need another Church Committee. Thank you very much. [laughter] fabulous presentation. I think the audience learned much from the narrative recounting the National Security administration in the beginning. I guess one of the things james omitted it was create bade top secret memo by harry truman in 1952. It there wasnt any congressional debate or public debate. It emerged. Im sure that harry truman thought would be embarrassed bay discussion. Thats true, yeah. Its the only agency in the u. S. Government that wasnt created by a law in congress. It went created bay hearing or bill through congress. It was created by a top secret memo signed by harry truman in 1952. That was even the congress wasnt allowed to know about it. Its the only agency in the government that is born secret. Which is the opposite that government must be transparent in order to have consent of the government. It seemed very apparent and conspicuous to me that other than a few cam moe appearance nothing in your narrative, jim, involves congress. We have the whistle blowers. But where is congress . Article i not since 1975. Yeah. That was just sort of an opened ed soic instance in any event. Were talking about the constitution of the United States. Article i section vi specifically endows all member with what is called speech or debate immunity. It was exercised by mike in the pentagon papers. He was investigated for espionage act by the nixon administration. I think i know where youre getting go ahead. Any event. The reason for the observations are we cant depend upon our liberties that some brave whistle blowers from time to time will expose the wrongdoing of the executive branch. It needs to be constitutionalized which is the reason why you have congressional oversight and the speech or debate. Until that is changed, we may get as snowden from time to time. It isnt going to change the dynamic unless theres a systemic insistence by the American People and congress be made public. I dont see any that have generation. You ask for another Church Committee. Diane feinstein or mike rogers. Yes. It is a joke, if anything they help the coverup. Exactly that was one of the points i usually make. I made it here. It was not asking for a Church Committee in congress. Im asking for a external committee. A committee that will be like a 9 11 commission. And also one that just didnt have former government officials on it. One that has a civil libertarian, a journalist and so forth. Anyway, i have to get other questions too. That was my question which was who was the frank church of 2014 . Yeah. Unless we could find somebody with the medical ability to bring him back to life, and put him back to the senate, i wouldnt put the senate i wouldnt allow the senate or the congress to do this committee. Look, were the ive been following this ever since the Church Committee, and with the comurnlg committee, they took it upon it themselves their mission, at least the way they looked at it, they were the buffer between the American Public and the nsa or the Intelligence Community. Its reinvolved now so the Intelligence Committee in congress feel theyre the protecter of the agencies. Not the protecter of the public. They argue for a bigger budget for the Intelligence Agency whenever theres a cut in the budget or more freedom for the agencies. Where were they doing the two and a half years until the fulltimes thymeses released the about the eavesdropping which came from whistleblower. Not from the overseers in congress. Yes . Any other questions. Yes, sorry. Deborah was a good friend of mine. She was the lead attorney on the tom drake case. I worked on that case with a tremendously scuffle case. Tom drake was a whistleblower from nsa who was charged with five counts of ease espionage for leaking mundane information. I was able to show, with the help of debby, that the information they were charging him with was not only unclassified, they wanted to put him in jail for 35 years. Not only unclassified but it was in the Public Domain and put there by the nsa and the pentagon. When it came time for the trial, the prosecution threw the case out and asked them to please sign a thing agreeing to the misdemeanor with no jail time and no fine. And the judge spent 20 minutes yelling at the prosecutor and the nsa. So it was really good case. I appreciated debbys work on that. [applause] so i had, tim. Its good to see you. For embarrassing you. Im actually going to take a different role and play devil advocate. Its driven in the part by the uncomfortable feeling i have with Edward Snowden actually and distributed in large part by my experience in toms case. Which is, you know, i read articles in the post and the times that there are millions of documents well, i guess 1. 7 million documents he took only a small snippet of which we have seen and the vast majority of the documents that are in possession and i presume you saw have really nothing to do with meta data or spying on americans. In fact, one of the slides you showed was a map of the world showing where our malware is. And i dont want to comment on whether we need to know about that, but at what point is Edward Snowden going to be not this glamorous hero but a thief. No. Thats a good question. Thats one of the major questions people have. The question is, 1. 7 million documents only a little bit. And snowden didnt show me all the documents. I was down there after he showed me a couple. But yeah this is a good question. Balance to him. The major questions is could the chinese have gotten access. The russians gotten access to it. According to snowden they didnt get access to. It speaking in snowdens defense to some degree, you know, if youre a whistleblower and youre trying to get the dpowments out documents out and you dont have time edit documents while youre sitting there. The idea was he would pull the documents out, and not just sort of put them up on the internet but give them to response to the journalists and the journalists would go through them. Thats what happened with dan who is actually good friend of mine. He did that. He came to the New York Times and the Washington Post and we ended up helping to shorten a war we should never have got anyone to. Yeah, theres no perfect i dont think he whisk the blower school. He probably didnt read how to be a whistle blowers for dummies or whatever. So, you know, i give him a lot of credit for the courage for what he did. I think theres a lot the government is always saying, you know, the world is going to come to an end. The world was going to an end when they wrote the black chamber. They said the world was going to come to an end when david wrote the code breakers. When i wrote puzzle palace. They say the world is going to come to an end every time i write something. So far the world still in pretty good shape. The main problems is getting in wars were not supposed to be in. [applause] if we dont have whistle blowers occasionally who may not be Perfect People may make mistakes, then, you know, were going to have these more wars and more government that we dont want and dont know about. So anyway. I always happy to debate you, debby. Youre a great lawyer. I feel like im up against the greatest challenge. I appreciate. Thank you for your question. Yes . Hi. Thanks. I want to pick up and follow a bit further on the business. You probably know that this part of this is the subject of the 28page section of the original joint congressional investigation in to 9 11. That was suppressed by president bush and remained suppressed by president obama. This section from what we can derive from other writings and speeches by senator bob graham who chaired that committee indicated a line of investigation on saudi intelligence connections with the two hijackers in san diego funding heck nymphs and apparently also the fact that the fbi refused to allow the Congressional Committee access to the informant who owned the house where the two guys were staying. Yeah. I know, [inaudible conversations] i wrote a book on 9 11. But give me the preed candidate of predicate of your question. Two members of Congress Introduced the bill walter jones and steve lynch calling for every member read the 28 pages and have it declassified. I wonder what your thoughts are . Well, i completely agree. I actually have a lot of admiration for walter jones. Walter jones, a republican from north carolina, and he was the person who put a bill in when we went to war in iraq to change the name of french fries to Freedom Fries because the french werent supporting our war. And then one day he read the book i wrote on iraq called pretext for war. He changed and became one of the most vocal antiwar opponents within congress. So ive had a great deal of admiration for him for admitting a mistake and trying to get out of this to change also. Its amazing what is classified in the report. I have no idea what it says. I havent seen it leak to me. I dont know what the saudi part is. Theres a lot of people that are speculated with the saudi part is. So i dont know. But theres at committee if a very poor job on the nsa aspect. Which i wrote a lot about because i never they never focus order what the nsa knew and didnt know and so forth. And i agree with you it should be released as soon as possible. Sorry. Judge schilling. A comment and question. Several years ago i was told there was no such agency. And yeah. It now it stands for not secret anymore. [laughter] and you might want to ask those visiting here who might want to give their comments later on froms nsa. In light where the situation where the nsa and the cia werent cooperating before 9 11 and if they had it might have prevented it. Going forward, what grow think would be the proper balance between the Data Collection and analysis for National Security and protecting individual privacy . So what should whatever nsa turns in to or other agencies be doing and how should they cooperate with cia and others to protect interest while still protecting privacy . Well, you know, the one problem here is that, first of all, at least start tell the truth about how useful the programs are. The nsa go for years telling congress how useful the email meta data program was. It wasnt until senator wyden and udall put the feet to the fire and show us. When were discussing the telephone meta data program. They said theres 54 cay cases where it helped prevent 54 attacks or Something Like that. Then it was down to 32. Then we found out he wasnt talking about the meta data program. The 215 program. He was talking about the prism program. And knock on the front door of the agency or the company with a warrant or order from the fisa court. When it came downtown actual meta data program, it came down to one success. One success. And actually the Deputy Director actually admitted this on just left nsa admitted on public radio about a week ago with one case. And the case was a guy in san diego who sent 8 ,000 to some group in somalia. It didnt have anything to do with the United States. Its the one success for collecting all of your telephone records since 2001. So thats what i hope is that we can start starting understanding the useful programs from the youthless programs and the apply not just the standard of some guy in the back room of a or woman in the back room of a nsa listening post but people in the Civil Liberties privacy community hear other voices in this debate. I would like [inaudible conversations] my question is just about this. Do you think there is [inaudible] in American Society . Is there a with what . In American Society to really retreat to really end this kind of re to the activity of nsa a speech about the permanent friend of terrorists. Extending, extending, its a good question. Because the question is basically do you think there is any public support for this . The problem is youre going up against the terror machine fear mongering machine. How do you argue . If we dont do this well have another 9 11 tomorrow or whatever. Thats always the problem puttinger make it an argument when you get irrational arguments from the government. The fear the fear is that so thats one of the key things is try to get showing the relative nonsense so much of the sphere. We had 23 people been killed from terrorism in the United States since 2011. Half was major the arpey major and the fbi in san diego had been picking up the conversations with it wasnt a bunch they didnt know about. So, you know, its just ive been amazed at the United States how its against the law to take a bottle of shampoo on to an airplane but you can buy as many assault weapons as you want. [applause] u fortunately i have to answer if i answer a question where there is no mic, they wont hear the question. I have to go with john henry where the mic is. [inaudible] with the institute for public accuracy. I want to highlight to people having an event tomorrow to remedy some of the problem with the [inaudible] well have several of the whistle blowers you mentioned as well as rustle will be there immediately following obamas address. People can check it out online. Obama is speaking at 11 00. They can go to accuracy. Org to get the insight of the whistle blowers immediately following obamas address. It is a question of digital imperialism. I hear that argument allah. Every country spies but it does not have the nine largest Internet Companies companies, a home based in their backyard. When you do have the nine Largest Companies in your backyard you can force them to do things other countries cannot do. You can force a google to give you whatever you want. If the nsa goes beyond that then they go through the back door with a fiberoptic links. I think it is something ive would like to see where is this meeting with world wide surveillance of every betty . Is a rational that we just hit the haystack so high you can never find the needle . From electronic privacy Informations Center with all your work on this issue is brought about the original challenge to the nsa Collection Program to the Supreme Court we were supported in that effort by dozens of legal scholars and the Church Committee. For all the telephone records but what i want to ask about is the historical significance tomorrow morning and it seems if we take a step back telepathy significant Reform Efforts in this area with the freedom of information act and the Church Committee that established the surveillance act dont we have sufficient evidence that points to comprehensive reform . I certainly do with those that originally thought nsa with the nsa would force to turn the keys over to the nsa. And to the public and congress reject did that and then we find out from distorted documents that theyre going around the back door anyway. So we have dianne feinstein. I dont see an awful lot of momentum in congress to actually pass some privacy bills but to see that happen still living post 9 11 period it is self generated so you get Congress People who know they have to go up for reelection every two years if they vote the against a new budget increase the opponent would say he is weak on terrorism. So it will be his fault. That is a disincentive to Congress People this progressive legislation and. Because they try to get those past. There has been a couple of references so they framed the argument as was alluded to in the beginning will be were previously subject under the monarchy to provide oversight for the government with the malfeasance of government officials the department of defense spy nine activists suppress that speech and right to know here you have the agency doing it on a massive scale world wide end the question seems to be why are we willing to relinquish to government officials from the military especially with a narrow focus every right that every american citizenship have because that shows with vietnam the antiwar activists were rights and they managed to keep us from building into the same catastrophic failures. So where is the outrages my question. [applause] that is always the problem. I write books and articles that are hoping that we would create momentum for things and so to get energized between issues that dont deal with a saving them from the terrorist or iraq. I dont have the answer for that. But you are when a to rights the army was used in the United States to spy on u. S. Citizens. That is why the Church Committee was formed. Motivating the public if i knew if i could sell to space to make millions of dollars i dont know how to motivate the public but just write books. , so of the storage innovation intervention are we sharing this data with Foreign Countries a e you have any idea is which ones . It is interesting. But it is called the u. K usa agreement it should be the 10 years but that is why they call it the the 5 is it was successful from germany from japan and so forth so the countries wanted to Stay Together to continue doing the code breaking. They divided the world with skiers of eavesdropping capability. The u. K. Could be struck by europe, the u. S. Could do so america, australians could do southeast asia. It is one organization that does this buying so it is shared with those five countries but there is a lot that goes on beyond that one of the documents that i thought was shocking was the nsa was turning over to israel all the raw data. Without even going through oversight or overview. That is the problem to have. The government collects all the stuff. To say that you are not allowed to do that but they want the israelis to know who i am calling every day. Where is this data . With this place i wrote about that apparently is not a very big success but every time they turn on a switch one of the servers malts. And then supposedly that is where it is stored as. Mentioning senator church with the distinctive political culture thinking of as the terrible isolationist was a great opponent to centralize power and governmental tyranny. So how come the citizenry is a more active or more outrage over or the aclu protest but this is a kind of steady broadbased rooted protest probably the answer to that lies of the other features of culture with the social institutions in the fact that we signed a contract. If you are signing something away with your powers of these very sizable institutions of these communications companies. I would suggest this induces cognitive paralysis or oppressive do that requires effort to oppose them people about that is not the peoples fourth day fortes. That is why it is so rare. If you are in certain areas of society saying there is no threat to use terrorism looking at you like a screaming radical but if you look at these statistics the person would be right but it is fear mongering. But the fear mar during does not impress either. I really dont know but i tried everything i write to indicate the level of risk is very small from things like terrorism the like guncontrol. There is a metric solution but i do not have it. They tried to come up with evidence you have any idea how much money they spend specifically and how many people are employed to do nothing essentially . I have no idea. It was all topsecret the same as the budget but the nsa is the Largest Agency in the world. And another 15,000 that are contractors. All those money and those people what do you get out of it . That is almost like they are doing it because it is the academic exercise because we can. We canso we well. The center for house Intelligence Committee of those that did that. You would not have these programs. The nsa kept arguing that email message data metadate was the success until they were forced they could not cut put up so they had to shut the program down. Just to mention we were talking about whistleblowers but where is the of penalty . Where is clapper . [applause] he has not been criticized littleknown indicted. How many people from the eavesdropping that was a complete violation of the surveillance act even in a time of four you have five extra days but nobody is punished for lack of accountability head of the nsa, a general alexander was captain of the Aircraft Carrier that just ran into the rock of gibraltar. He is still running the nsa the worst Security Breach in history. There is no accountability before you start getting any reform. With those mistakes they continue to make them. That governmental accountability project you represent Edward Snowden and i just want 2. 0 that congress set up of whistleblower enhancement act any retaliation for whistleblowers there for the day are probable for any action the government takes against them or private corporation. Can you see on the horizon and the enhanced protection from reprise all coming from the congress or the Obama Administration . 2. 0 some important facts whistleblowers dont have protection. What the administration keeps talking about they have the proper channels i have been watching this for years. Coming from whistleblowers and for one quick example of that i quoted from with my last book was an employee employee, what they called the voice intercept operator at the post in the state of georgia where they eavesdrop on all lots of middle east communications. From satellites and so forth. Among the things they were doing was eavesdropping on americans journalist order aid workers or americans in the middle east that cut off the of spouses having conversations in it she did not want to listen to that she said it is like listening to someones diary she protested all the way up from the listening post up to the Intelligence Security command that iran that it was Keith Alexander at the time that got no where so on the congressional side but again with chairman leahy Nothing Happened she finally talk to me by astor to go full face otherwise the government would say you make it up. Associated and was a very brave act on her part to she felt very strongly. So then they can now with my book on abc news senator rockefeller and the chairman of senate Intelligence Committee at the time agreed to hold or at an investigation and immediately asked her if she would testify and she said