he had no respect for ames. he would constantly tell me he was a bumbling fool, his words. he was almost proud at how good of a spy he was. i truly believe that he did more damage. without acknowledging at all that snowden was run by the russians, who caused more damage, snowden or aldridge ames or hanson? at the end of the day, robert hanson, because the secrets that hanson stole were targeted to hurt the united states. the damage that snowden has done, we don t one, we don t know the full extent of it. two, one could say there are some politically beneficial aims to it but at the end of the day, i think that most of what he did was tear apart different goals that we had and different programs and systems we had that now have to be redone. eric, thanks very much for coming in. thank you. appreciate it. coming up, power flight, unlike any other. we have details on who is flying aboard air force one with
0 disaster, there are now growing questions about whether airline pilots are relying too much on cockpit technology. also, spies busted, current and former russian diplomats just brought down by prosecutors for fraud, now suspected of espiona espionage. what brought them to the attention of federal agents? and a vip flight, air force one departing for nelson mandela s memorial service with an impressive passenger list including two presidents and three first ladies. what s going on behind the scene? i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. it was a horrifying and deadly disaster, all caught on camera. tomorrow, the national transportation safety board will begin a two-day hearing on the july crash of this asiana jumbo jet at the san francisco airport. the wall street journal is reporting that investigators say the crash was caused by a combination of pilot confusion about thrust settings and their excessive reliance on cockpit computers. cnn s tom foreman is working th
while something is still unfolding. let s wait and see where we are. reporter: well, if they don t cooperate i m not going to get i m not going to speculate. i m not going to get into hypotheticals. reporter: what kind of consequences is china going to face? we ll see what happens when we find out exactly what happens. if you have knowledge that beijing made a decision, you have knowledge that i don t have. and i m not sure where you have it from. but i don t know what the sequence was yet. and i doubt that you do or a lot of other people do. so let s find out precisely what took place here, and then we ll make our judgments. reporter: mr. secretary, six americans have been charged under the espionage act since the obama administration took over. all of them for leaking information to journalists. this act has been used over the last 90 years very in isolated cases for the most notorious spies like aldridge ames. are you putting him in that category? i mean, can t you s
0 walked around prancer style. everybody in urbino, italy was great. thanks very much, it was a great honor. where in the world is edward snowden? he looks for a country to give him asylum. the george zimmerman murder trial, a bizarre beginning in the case that s gripped the nation. and celebrity chef paula deen takes another big hit after admitting she used racial slurs. i m wolf blitzer and you re in the situation room. the man who stunned the world by leaking secrets about nsa surveillance is now the object of a world wide man hunt. edward snowden has been on the move from moscow, he may have caught a flight to cuba or he may catch the next one. what do we know so far, tom? what we know is there is a lot of uncertainty. we know that somewhere out there edward snowden is on the move or at least has been on the move. over the weekend he was definitely in hong kong where he met with some of his advisers there. they talked about possible plans. and he definitely left hong
it s a sat sight to see the obama administration placing its reputation atop this particular law. woodrow wilson himself went around the country basically saying i think this is kind of a terrible piece of legislation, but you re forcing me to and daniel patrick moynihan wrote a great book called secrecy with a great section on the espionage act. that gives you a sense of the terrible history it has. in terms of the use of the espionage act, the administration has used it six teams to accuse government officials of leaking intel. you know you look back at how the espionage act was used recently. aldridge ames was an c.i.a. operative in 1994 acting as a russian spy for nine years. the kgb paid him for documents. robert hansen, was an fbi counterintelligence agent arrested in 2001 for selling highly classified documents to russia. i mean this is spy versus spy stuff. and the implication that somehow james rosen is on par with these you know, operatives i think is