WEBVTT 00:00:13.350 --> 00:00:16.400 From New York, this is Democracy Now! 00:00:17.240 --> 00:00:19.490 Whenever the government faces a whistleblower 00:00:20.200 --> 00:00:21.710 that is revealing some kind of wrongdoing 00:00:21.710 --> 00:00:22.950 that makes them uncomfortable, 00:00:22.950 --> 00:00:24.550 that implicates them in some kind of activity 00:00:24.550 --> 00:00:26.490 they should not be doing, 00:00:26.490 --> 00:00:29.130 they are going to try and change the conversation 00:00:29.130 --> 00:00:34.840 from the concrete harms of their actions, 00:00:34.840 --> 00:00:36.540 of their policies in government. 00:00:37.490 --> 00:00:40.480 As a whistleblower complaint against President Trump 00:00:40.480 --> 00:00:42.090 rocks Washington, 00:00:42.090 --> 00:00:44.810 Democrats begin an impeachment inquiry, 00:00:44.810 --> 00:00:47.290 and Trump threatens "big consequences" 00:00:47.290 --> 00:00:49.090 for the person who came forward. 00:00:49.600 --> 00:00:52.550 We bring you Part 2 of our conversation 00:00:52.550 --> 00:00:55.340 with one of the world’s most famous whistleblowers, 00:00:55.340 --> 00:00:57.930 Edward Snowden, now in exile in Russia. 00:00:58.470 --> 00:01:01.470 Six years ago, he shocked the world 00:01:01.470 --> 00:01:04.370 when he leaked a trove of secret documents 00:01:04.370 --> 00:01:07.990 about how the United States had built a massive surveillance 00:01:07.990 --> 00:01:11.300 apparatus to collect every single phone call, 00:01:11.300 --> 00:01:13.440 text message and email 00:01:13.440 --> 00:01:16.960 and pry into the private lives of every person on Earth. 00:01:17.710 --> 00:01:20.150 Snowden has just published a memoir. 00:01:20.150 --> 00:01:22.200 It’s called Permanent Record. 00:01:23.510 --> 00:01:25.940 Every level of government had been in 00:01:25.940 --> 00:01:28.300 on the violation of our constitutional rights, 00:01:28.300 --> 00:01:31.030 and so they created an entirely different 00:01:31.030 --> 00:01:33.100 document that basically said, "Oh, don’t worry about it. 00:01:33.100 --> 00:01:34.700 Nothing to see here." 00:01:34.700 --> 00:01:39.030 We spend the hour with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden 00:01:39.030 --> 00:01:40.770 All that and more, coming up. 00:01:45.040 --> 00:01:48.260 Welcome to Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, 00:01:48.260 --> 00:01:50.910 The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. 00:01:50.910 --> 00:01:53.800 The Democratic-led House is quickly moving ahead 00:01:53.800 --> 00:01:56.410 with its impeachment inquiry of President Trump 00:01:56.410 --> 00:01:59.070 for abusing his power for personal gain 00:01:59.070 --> 00:02:01.630 after an intelligence whistleblower revealed 00:02:01.630 --> 00:02:04.020 Trump had pressed the president of Ukraine 00:02:04.020 --> 00:02:06.710 to investigate his political rival Joe Biden 00:02:06.710 --> 00:02:08.520 and his son Hunter. 00:02:08.520 --> 00:02:11.540 On Sunday, House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff 00:02:11.540 --> 00:02:13.760 revealed the anonymous whistleblower 00:02:13.760 --> 00:02:15.630 would soon testify before the committee. 00:02:15.630 --> 00:02:16.860 Rep. Adam Schiff: 00:02:16.860 --> 00:02:19.140 "We are taking all the precautions 00:02:19.140 --> 00:02:21.330 we can to make sure that we do so, 00:02:21.330 --> 00:02:23.020 we allow that testimony to go forward, 00:02:23.020 --> 00:02:26.040 in a way that protects the whistleblower’s identity, 00:02:26.040 --> 00:02:27.800 because, as you can imagine, 00:02:27.800 --> 00:02:29.450 with the president issuing threats like 00:02:29.450 --> 00:02:33.170 'We ought to treat these people who expose my wrongdoing 00:02:33.170 --> 00:02:34.960 as we used to treat traitors and spies,' 00:02:34.960 --> 00:02:37.230 and we used to execute traitors and spies, 00:02:37.230 --> 00:02:40.200 you can imagine the security concerns here." 00:02:40.760 --> 00:02:43.320 On Saturday, lawyers for the whistleblower 00:02:43.320 --> 00:02:45.480 wrote a letter to the chairs of the House 00:02:45.480 --> 00:02:47.620 and Senate Intelligence Committees 00:02:47.620 --> 00:02:50.380 expressing fears for their client’s safety 00:02:50.380 --> 00:02:52.930 after Trump compared the whistleblower 00:02:52.930 --> 00:02:58.060 to a treasonous spy and demanded to "meet my accuser." 00:02:58.060 --> 00:03:01.350 The lawyers wrote, "The events of the past week 00:03:01.350 --> 00:03:04.530 have heightened our concerns that our client’s identity 00:03:04.530 --> 00:03:07.390 will be disclosed publicly and that, as a result, 00:03:07.390 --> 00:03:09.970 our client will be put in harm’s way." 00:03:10.880 --> 00:03:12.090 Over the weekend, 00:03:12.090 --> 00:03:14.480 President Trump repeatedly took to Twitter 00:03:14.480 --> 00:03:15.960 to attack the whistleblower, 00:03:15.960 --> 00:03:19.120 as well as a range of officials and journalists. 00:03:19.120 --> 00:03:21.090 He accused House Intelligence Chair Schiff 00:03:21.090 --> 00:03:22.640 of committing treason; 00:03:22.640 --> 00:03:25.050 he described Schiff and a group of other 00:03:25.050 --> 00:03:27.820 Democratic lawmakers as "savages"; 00:03:27.820 --> 00:03:30.700 he claimed impeachment is "unlawful"; 00:03:30.700 --> 00:03:34.490 and he reposted a message from a supporter warning impeachment 00:03:34.490 --> 00:03:39.160 could lead to a "Civil War like fracture in this Nation." 00:03:39.160 --> 00:03:42.750 Republican Congressmember Adam Kinzinger of Illinois 00:03:42.750 --> 00:03:47.410 tweeted that Trump’s civil war retweet was "beyond repugnant." 00:03:48.690 --> 00:03:50.360 Kinzinger wrote, 00:03:50.360 --> 00:03:53.820 "I have visited nations ravaged by civil war. 00:03:53.820 --> 00:03:57.110 @realDonaldTrump I have never imagined such a quote 00:03:57.110 --> 00:03:58.810 to be repeated by a President." 00:03:59.890 --> 00:04:02.770 In other developments related to the impeachment inquiry, 00:04:02.770 --> 00:04:04.920 three House committees have subpoenaed 00:04:04.920 --> 00:04:08.430 Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to turn over documents 00:04:08.430 --> 00:04:11.590 related to the administration’s dealings with Ukraine. 00:04:11.590 --> 00:04:13.870 This comes as Trump and former New York Mayor 00:04:13.870 --> 00:04:16.130 Rudolph Giuliani are facing accusations 00:04:16.130 --> 00:04:18.520 they ran a shadow foreign policy in Ukraine 00:04:18.520 --> 00:04:20.460 outside of normal channels, 00:04:20.460 --> 00:04:22.920 but on Sunday Giuliani insisted Pompeo 00:04:22.920 --> 00:04:25.220 was aware of what was happening. 00:04:25.220 --> 00:04:28.690 Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s special envoy 00:04:28.690 --> 00:04:31.540 for Ukraine, Kurt Volker, has resigned. 00:04:32.350 --> 00:04:35.540 More than 2 million people took to the streets 00:04:35.540 --> 00:04:38.530 in a massive Global Climate Strike Friday. 00:04:38.530 --> 00:04:40.930 From Bangladesh to Uganda to Chile, 00:04:40.930 --> 00:04:43.840 demonstrators walked out of work or school 00:04:43.840 --> 00:04:47.820 to demand world leaders act to solve the climate crisis. 00:04:47.820 --> 00:04:51.670 One million people protested throughout Italy alone. 00:04:51.670 --> 00:04:55.800 In Montreal, 600,000 people joined the strike, 00:04:55.800 --> 00:05:00.100 including Greta Thunberg, the Swedish climate activist 00:05:00.100 --> 00:05:02.200 who sparked the Fridays for Future movement. 00:05:02.200 --> 00:05:03.440 Greta Thunberg: 00:05:03.440 --> 00:05:08.860 "This week, world leaders from all around the world 00:05:08.860 --> 00:05:12.430 gathered in New York for the U.N. Climate 00:05:12.430 --> 00:05:17.860 Action Summit. They disappointed us once again 00:05:17.860 --> 00:05:21.090 with their empty words and insufficient plans. 00:05:29.160 --> 00:05:34.220 We told them to unite behind the science, but they didn’t listen. 00:05:41.060 --> 00:05:44.750 So, today, we are millions around the world, 00:05:45.370 --> 00:05:47.290 striking and marching again, 00:05:48.540 --> 00:05:51.690 and we will keep on doing it until they listen." 00:05:52.440 --> 00:05:54.520 The protest followed the September 00:05:54.520 --> 00:05:56.830 20 global demonstration 00:05:56.830 --> 00:06:00.250 that brought more than 4 million people into the streets. 00:06:00.250 --> 00:06:05.030 350.org founder Bill McKibben called the week of protests 00:06:05.030 --> 00:06:07.950 "almost certainly the largest demonstration our planet 00:06:07.950 --> 00:06:10.360 has yet seen about climate change." 00:06:12.010 --> 00:06:14.030 Nearly 70 climate activists 00:06:14.030 --> 00:06:16.200 were arrested Saturday in New Hampshire 00:06:16.200 --> 00:06:18.740 after marching onto a coal power plant 00:06:18.740 --> 00:06:21.480 to demand an end to fossil fuel use. 00:06:21.480 --> 00:06:23.090 They were part of a group of hundreds 00:06:23.090 --> 00:06:25.800 attempting to shut down Merrimack Station, 00:06:25.800 --> 00:06:28.100 one of the largest coal-fired power plants 00:06:28.100 --> 00:06:29.820 in all of New England. 00:06:29.820 --> 00:06:31.750 In immigration news, a federal judge 00:06:31.750 --> 00:06:35.270 has blocked a Trump administration rule 00:06:35.270 --> 00:06:37.080 that would have allowed the government 00:06:37.080 --> 00:06:41.380 to indefinitely detain migrant children and their families. 00:06:41.900 --> 00:06:45.670 California Judge Dolly Gee ruled Friday 00:06:45.670 --> 00:06:47.290 that the proposed policy 00:06:47.290 --> 00:06:50.570 violated the 1997 Flores agreement, 00:06:50.570 --> 00:06:53.160 which caps the jailing of migrant children 00:06:53.160 --> 00:06:55.260 and families to 20 days. 00:06:55.260 --> 00:06:58.770 She called Trump’s proposed rule change "Kafkaesque." 00:06:58.770 --> 00:07:00.020 A federal judge blocked 00:07:00.020 --> 00:07:02.860 another Trump-era immigration policy in Washington, 00:07:02.860 --> 00:07:06.500 D.C., Friday, ruling against new regulations 00:07:06.500 --> 00:07:08.630 seeking to fast-track deportations 00:07:08.630 --> 00:07:10.370 without a fair legal process. 00:07:10.960 --> 00:07:13.460 Voters in Afghanistan went to the polls on Saturday, 00:07:13.460 --> 00:07:15.960 but voter turnout may have hit a record low. 00:07:15.960 --> 00:07:19.260 Preliminary data shows around 25% of the country’s 00:07:19.260 --> 00:07:21.290 registered voters took part in the election, 00:07:21.290 --> 00:07:24.340 which pitted Afghanistan’s Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah 00:07:24.340 --> 00:07:26.760 against Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. 00:07:26.760 --> 00:07:28.910 Abdullah Abdullah is already claiming victory, 00:07:28.910 --> 00:07:30.270 even though official results 00:07:30.270 --> 00:07:31.980 won’t be announced for another three weeks. 00:07:31.980 --> 00:07:35.020 The BBC reports at least five people were killed in attacks 00:07:35.020 --> 00:07:37.460 on voting stations; another 80 were wounded. 00:07:38.320 --> 00:07:40.400 The prominent Egyptian dissident 00:07:40.400 --> 00:07:43.560 Alaa Abd El-Fattah has been arrested again 00:07:43.560 --> 00:07:46.860 amid a growing crackdown on anti-government protesters. 00:07:46.860 --> 00:07:49.320 Abd El-Fattah was arrested on Sunday 00:07:49.320 --> 00:07:52.720 as he was preparing to leave an Egyptian police station 00:07:52.720 --> 00:07:54.910 where he has been forced to sleep at night 00:07:54.910 --> 00:07:56.570 since being freed in March 00:07:56.570 --> 00:07:59.120 after serving a five-year prison sentence. 00:07:59.120 --> 00:08:02.660 A lawyer representing Abd El-Fattah was also arrested. 00:08:02.660 --> 00:08:06.930 Egyptian authorities have arrested more than 2,000 people 00:08:06.930 --> 00:08:09.540 amid an outbreak of anti-government protests. 00:08:09.540 --> 00:08:13.380 Alaa Abd El-Fattah was a leader of the 2011 uprising 00:08:13.380 --> 00:08:14.890 against Hosni Mubarak. 00:08:14.890 --> 00:08:18.150 He spoke to Democracy Now! in 2014. 00:08:18.150 --> 00:08:19.380 Alaa Abd El-Fattah: 00:08:19.380 --> 00:08:21.400 "So, they are on a sentencing frenzy. 00:08:21.400 --> 00:08:23.360 I mean, this is not just about me. 00:08:23.360 --> 00:08:27.900 And it’s almost as if it’s a war on a whole generation." 00:08:27.900 --> 00:08:30.220 Click here to see our recent coverage 00:08:30.220 --> 00:08:31.920 of the crackdown in Egypt. 00:08:32.620 --> 00:08:35.370 Houthi rebels in Yemen 00:08:35.370 --> 00:08:38.050 are claiming to have killed 500 Saudi soldiers 00:08:38.050 --> 00:08:40.580 and captured thousands more during a major attack 00:08:40.580 --> 00:08:42.590 into Saudi Arabia in August. 00:08:42.590 --> 00:08:44.140 While the Houthis released video 00:08:44.140 --> 00:08:46.050 of the reported incident on Sunday, 00:08:46.050 --> 00:08:48.950 news outlets have yet to verify the claims. 00:08:49.580 --> 00:08:53.670 The Spanish newspaper El País has revealed the CIA worked 00:08:53.670 --> 00:08:56.910 with a Spanish private security company to spy on 00:08:56.910 --> 00:08:58.870 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange 00:08:58.870 --> 00:09:01.070 inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London 00:09:01.070 --> 00:09:03.450 where he had sought political asylum. 00:09:03.450 --> 00:09:07.430 Assange lived in the embassy from 2012 until April, 00:09:07.430 --> 00:09:09.640 when he was arrested by British authorities. 00:09:09.640 --> 00:09:11.450 Ecuador had hired the firm — 00:09:11.450 --> 00:09:15.760 Undercover Global SL — to protect the embassy, 00:09:15.760 --> 00:09:19.980 but the firm reportedly also secretly handed over audio 00:09:19.980 --> 00:09:22.520 and video to the CIA of meetings 00:09:22.520 --> 00:09:25.380 Assange had with his lawyers and others. 00:09:25.380 --> 00:09:27.800 The firm installed secret video cameras 00:09:27.800 --> 00:09:30.440 inside the embassy and placed microphones 00:09:30.440 --> 00:09:32.670 in the embassy’s fire extinguishers 00:09:32.670 --> 00:09:34.620 and in the women’s bathroom. 00:09:34.620 --> 00:09:36.820 The head of the firm is now being investigated 00:09:36.820 --> 00:09:38.630 by Spain’s National Court. 00:09:47.650 --> 00:09:48.970 Workers at General Motors 00:09:48.970 --> 00:09:51.110 have entered their third week on strike. 00:09:51.110 --> 00:09:54.050 It is the longest national strike the United Auto Workers 00:09:54.050 --> 00:09:56.920 has had in nearly 50 years at GM, 00:09:56.920 --> 00:10:01.120 which earned nearly $35 billion over the past three years. 00:10:01.120 --> 00:10:02.640 Workers are seeking higher pay, 00:10:02.640 --> 00:10:04.260 protection of their healthcare benefits, 00:10:04.260 --> 00:10:06.840 greater job security and a commitment from GM 00:10:06.840 --> 00:10:09.840 to build more products in the United States. 00:10:10.600 --> 00:10:12.680 Former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson 00:10:12.680 --> 00:10:14.590 has died at the age of 69. 00:10:16.340 --> 00:10:20.570 In 2003, he openly challenged President George W. Bush’s claim 00:10:20.570 --> 00:10:23.610 that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger — 00:10:23.610 --> 00:10:27.450 a claim the administration used to justify the invasion of Iraq. 00:10:27.450 --> 00:10:29.090 Wilson had been sent to Niger 00:10:29.090 --> 00:10:32.290 by the administration to investigate the claim in 2002 00:10:32.290 --> 00:10:35.510 but found no such evidence. Despite Wilson’s findings, 00:10:35.510 --> 00:10:37.300 the uranium allegation was included 00:10:37.300 --> 00:10:39.680 in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union 00:10:39.680 --> 00:10:41.820 address claim that Saddam Hussein 00:10:41.820 --> 00:10:44.410 was obtaining weapons of mass destruction. 00:10:44.410 --> 00:10:47.920 Shortly after Wilson wrote a Washington Post op-ed, 00:10:47.920 --> 00:10:50.120 the Bush administration helped to out 00:10:50.120 --> 00:10:52.820 Wilson’s then-wife, Valerie Plame, 00:10:53.420 --> 00:10:55.810 as a covert CIA operative. 00:10:57.570 --> 00:11:01.190 In 2004, Joseph Wilson appeared on Democracy Now! 00:11:01.190 --> 00:11:03.360 Joseph Wilson: "The title of my piece is 00:11:03.360 --> 00:11:04.860 'What I Did Not Find in Africa.' 00:11:04.860 --> 00:11:07.020 And what it catalogued was a trip out to Niger 00:11:07.020 --> 00:11:09.520 at the request of the CIA, 00:11:09.520 --> 00:11:12.220 acting in response to a question by the vice president 00:11:12.740 --> 00:11:14.890 to check out allegations that Iraq had attempted 00:11:14.890 --> 00:11:17.100 to purchase significant quantities of uranium 00:11:17.100 --> 00:11:18.560 from that country. 00:11:18.560 --> 00:11:20.100 Now, it was a very important question, 00:11:20.100 --> 00:11:23.150 because, after all, Iraq would have only one use for uranium. 00:11:23.150 --> 00:11:24.650 That would be nuclear weapons programs. 00:11:24.650 --> 00:11:28.190 And that would be the one piece of incontrovertible evidence 00:11:28.190 --> 00:11:30.120 that he was attempting to reconstitute 00:11:30.120 --> 00:11:32.460 nuclear weapons programs, 00:11:32.460 --> 00:11:35.300 which would have lent some credence to the notion 00:11:35.300 --> 00:11:38.090 that the smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud. 00:11:38.090 --> 00:11:39.860 I came back. I said there was nothing to this." 00:11:39.860 --> 00:11:41.630 Click here to see our full interview 00:11:41.630 --> 00:11:43.330 with the late Joseph Wilson. 00:11:45.450 --> 00:11:47.230 His ex-wife Valerie Plame 00:11:47.230 --> 00:11:50.120 is now running for Congress in New Mexico. 00:11:50.120 --> 00:11:52.430 And those are some of the headlines this is Democracy 00:11:52.430 --> 00:11:55.870 Now, Democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. 00:11:55.870 --> 00:11:57.210 I’m Amy Goodman. 00:11:57.210 --> 00:11:59.000 AMY GOODMAN: As the Democratic-led House 00:11:59.000 --> 00:12:01.150 moves swiftly towards impeachment, 00:12:01.150 --> 00:12:03.910 President Trump took to Twitter Sunday night 00:12:03.910 --> 00:12:05.370 to attack the whistleblower 00:12:05.370 --> 00:12:08.860 whose complaint first exposed his dealings with Ukraine. 00:12:09.370 --> 00:12:13.260 In a series of tweets, including one threatening civil war 00:12:13.260 --> 00:12:15.890 if impeachment proceedings move forward, 00:12:15.890 --> 00:12:18.850 President Trump accused the unnamed whistleblower 00:12:18.850 --> 00:12:21.540 of spying on the president, promising, quote, 00:12:21.540 --> 00:12:23.240 "big consequences." 00:12:23.240 --> 00:12:25.990 Well, today, we bring you Part 2 of our conversation 00:12:25.990 --> 00:12:28.610 with one of the world’s most famous whistleblowers: 00:12:28.610 --> 00:12:30.130 Edward Snowden. 00:12:30.130 --> 00:12:32.880 Six years ago, the 29-year-old 00:12:32.880 --> 00:12:36.240 Ed Snowden leaked a trove of secret documents 00:12:36.240 --> 00:12:39.870 about how the United States had built a massive surveillance 00:12:39.870 --> 00:12:43.600 apparatus to collect every single phone call, 00:12:43.600 --> 00:12:45.410 text message and email, 00:12:45.410 --> 00:12:49.290 and pry into the private lives of every person on Earth. 00:12:49.850 --> 00:12:53.470 In May 2013, Ed Snowden quit his job 00:12:53.470 --> 00:12:55.480 as an National Security Administration 00:12:55.480 --> 00:12:59.130 contractor in Hawaii and flew to Hong Kong, 00:12:59.130 --> 00:13:00.790 where he met three reporters — 00:13:00.790 --> 00:13:03.690 Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewen MacAskill — 00:13:03.690 --> 00:13:05.890 who began publishing a series of articles 00:13:05.890 --> 00:13:08.960 exposing the NSA and the surveillance state. 00:13:09.660 --> 00:13:12.010 Snowden was then charged in the United States 00:13:12.010 --> 00:13:14.900 with violating the Espionage Act and other laws. 00:13:14.900 --> 00:13:18.350 In order to avoid being extradited to the United States, 00:13:18.350 --> 00:13:21.790 he attempted to fly from Hong Kong to Latin America, 00:13:21.790 --> 00:13:23.850 transiting through Moscow. 00:13:23.850 --> 00:13:26.620 But Snowden became stranded in Russia 00:13:26.620 --> 00:13:29.290 after the U.S. revoked his passport. 00:13:29.290 --> 00:13:31.860 Russia then granted him political exile, 00:13:31.860 --> 00:13:34.160 and he’s lived in Moscow ever since. 00:13:34.160 --> 00:13:36.800 Ed Snowden has just published a memoir. 00:13:36.800 --> 00:13:38.960 It’s called Permanent Record. 00:13:38.960 --> 00:13:41.980 It tells the story of what led him to risk his life 00:13:41.980 --> 00:13:45.670 to expose the U.S. government’s system of mass surveillance. 00:13:45.670 --> 00:13:47.780 Democracy Now!’s Juan González and I 00:13:47.780 --> 00:13:50.970 spoke to him from his home in Moscow last week. 00:13:50.970 --> 00:13:52.560 We talked about his book, 00:13:52.560 --> 00:13:55.240 his work as an intelligence contractor, 00:13:55.240 --> 00:13:58.260 the ongoing debate about privacy rights online, 00:13:58.260 --> 00:14:00.750 and the latest news from Washington. 00:14:00.750 --> 00:14:03.720 Juan asked Ed Snowden about the role contractors 00:14:03.720 --> 00:14:06.130 play in the intelligence community. 00:14:06.730 --> 00:14:08.000 JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Throughout the book, 00:14:08.000 --> 00:14:11.100 one of the themes that you hit on repeatedly 00:14:11.100 --> 00:14:14.160 is how the government initially attempted to say 00:14:14.160 --> 00:14:16.760 that you were just an outside contractor, 00:14:16.760 --> 00:14:19.110 that you really weren’t a key figure. 00:14:19.640 --> 00:14:20.880 But the reality is, 00:14:20.880 --> 00:14:24.030 as you explain and document over and over again, 00:14:24.030 --> 00:14:28.170 the enormous reliance of our intelligence community 00:14:28.170 --> 00:14:32.400 and the federal government on outside contractors, 00:14:32.400 --> 00:14:35.260 to effectively bring them into government 00:14:35.260 --> 00:14:40.770 and give them enormous power and rely on them so dramatically. 00:14:40.770 --> 00:14:42.920 I’m wondering if you could expound on that. 00:14:44.170 --> 00:14:46.280 EDWARD SNOWDEN: Congress has mandated 00:14:46.280 --> 00:14:48.860 the government have hard hiring caps, 00:14:48.860 --> 00:14:51.550 a specific headcount they can’t exceed 00:14:51.550 --> 00:14:53.250 for certain executive agencies, 00:14:53.250 --> 00:14:55.120 like the CIA, like the NSA, 00:14:55.830 --> 00:14:58.220 no matter their particularized budget, right? 00:14:58.220 --> 00:14:59.770 If they have more dollars than people, 00:14:59.770 --> 00:15:02.390 they still can’t get more people on the books 00:15:02.390 --> 00:15:04.270 without getting an act of Congress 00:15:04.270 --> 00:15:05.970 to sort of change that headcount. 00:15:06.640 --> 00:15:09.080 And so, over the years, over the decades, 00:15:10.300 --> 00:15:14.590 that have really arisen out of the post-World War II era, 00:15:16.470 --> 00:15:22.070 we have, in the government, created a kind of new system, 00:15:22.670 --> 00:15:23.960 a runaround for this, where they go, 00:15:23.960 --> 00:15:26.100 "Well, all this extra money that we want to put in people 00:15:26.100 --> 00:15:29.210 but we can’t bring on as formal government employees, 00:15:29.840 --> 00:15:32.210 what if we give that money to private companies, 00:15:32.210 --> 00:15:35.250 and the private companies lease us people, 00:15:35.880 --> 00:15:39.870 that, in all meaningful ways, are government employees?" 00:15:39.870 --> 00:15:41.450 They work in government facilities, 00:15:41.450 --> 00:15:43.310 as I did as a contractor. 00:15:43.310 --> 00:15:45.880 You’re at an NSA desk, working on an NSA system. 00:15:45.880 --> 00:15:49.870 You’re taking direction from an NSA government supervisor, 00:15:49.870 --> 00:15:53.630 working on government processes. 00:15:54.550 --> 00:15:59.970 But formally, legally, you work for Dell or Lockheed Martin 00:15:59.970 --> 00:16:04.070 or Booz Allen Hamilton or any one of these, really, 00:16:04.070 --> 00:16:06.670 thousands and thousands of private companies 00:16:07.490 --> 00:16:11.040 that have become, really, extensions of government. 00:16:11.040 --> 00:16:13.870 And this is one of the things that the book goes into detail 00:16:13.870 --> 00:16:16.370 and that people really aren’t quite familiar with. 00:16:17.200 --> 00:16:19.350 A significant amount, 00:16:19.350 --> 00:16:21.310 and potentially even a small majority, 00:16:21.940 --> 00:16:25.680 of the most important work in government, in intelligence, 00:16:25.680 --> 00:16:28.110 is today performed by contractors, 00:16:28.110 --> 00:16:29.810 not government employees. 00:16:30.380 --> 00:16:33.680 And this is because, in the actual contracting language, 00:16:34.660 --> 00:16:38.050 there are very, very few tasks that contractors 00:16:38.050 --> 00:16:40.320 are legally forbidden from doing. 00:16:40.320 --> 00:16:43.340 And it’s basically, the only things contractors can’t do 00:16:43.340 --> 00:16:46.050 is press the red button that fires a missile, right? 00:16:46.050 --> 00:16:50.160 The contractor is not supposed to actually commit a crime — 00:16:50.160 --> 00:16:51.790 something that the government could do, 00:16:51.790 --> 00:16:53.710 and it wouldn’t be a crime, but if a private company does, 00:16:53.710 --> 00:16:56.100 they could be sued by another state or whatever. 00:16:56.100 --> 00:17:00.000 But everything else — building the system of mass surveillance, 00:17:00.000 --> 00:17:03.890 installing it, applying it, using it to gather or search 00:17:03.890 --> 00:17:06.780 through all this information that’s already been collected 00:17:06.780 --> 00:17:09.060 to build perfect histories of private lives — 00:17:09.580 --> 00:17:11.130 all of these things are fair game 00:17:11.130 --> 00:17:13.640 and are done routinely, every day, right now, 00:17:14.160 --> 00:17:16.970 by people who are not formally government employees. 00:17:16.970 --> 00:17:20.170 That’s how the system works, and that’s what a contractor is. 00:17:20.170 --> 00:17:22.240 JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Ed, I want to get to that point 00:17:22.240 --> 00:17:26.320 when the realization of what you were participating 00:17:26.320 --> 00:17:28.170 in came to you. 00:17:29.120 --> 00:17:36.500 This was sometime after a report had come out on the — 00:17:36.500 --> 00:17:40.560 the unclassified report on the president’s surveillance program 00:17:40.560 --> 00:17:42.440 in July of 2009. 00:17:43.250 --> 00:17:47.470 And it had been released by several inspector generals 00:17:47.470 --> 00:17:49.940 of the major defense agencies. 00:17:50.470 --> 00:17:55.490 And you were, by then, already what’s known 00:17:55.490 --> 00:17:58.200 as a systems administrator, systems engineer. 00:17:58.850 --> 00:18:00.140 Most people don’t realize 00:18:00.140 --> 00:18:05.540 that the most important person in any organization or business 00:18:05.540 --> 00:18:07.570 are the people who run the computer systems, 00:18:07.570 --> 00:18:12.040 because they have enormous access to communications, 00:18:12.040 --> 00:18:15.530 the email communications and all kinds of other documents. 00:18:15.530 --> 00:18:20.560 So, you were operating, and a report comes across your desk 00:18:21.660 --> 00:18:24.680 that is actually the unclassified version 00:18:24.680 --> 00:18:26.250 of that same report. 00:18:26.250 --> 00:18:30.320 And you discover that it is completely different 00:18:30.320 --> 00:18:34.290 from what the unclassified version was. 00:18:34.290 --> 00:18:35.990 And you say in the book — 00:18:36.780 --> 00:18:38.860 and this was about the Stellar Wind, 00:18:38.860 --> 00:18:41.280 the Stellar Wind project. 00:18:41.280 --> 00:18:44.340 And you say that the program’s very existence 00:18:44.340 --> 00:18:46.270 was an indication that the agency’s mission 00:18:46.270 --> 00:18:51.160 had been transformed from using technology to defend America 00:18:51.160 --> 00:18:53.440 to using technology to control it, 00:18:53.970 --> 00:18:57.550 by redefining citizens’ private internet communications 00:18:57.550 --> 00:18:59.110 as signals intelligence. 00:18:59.110 --> 00:19:01.310 Could you talk about that some more? 00:19:01.310 --> 00:19:02.580 EDWARD SNOWDEN: Yeah, that’s correct. 00:19:02.580 --> 00:19:06.280 So, for people who are interested 00:19:06.280 --> 00:19:08.210 in getting the bare facts on this, 00:19:09.240 --> 00:19:11.550 this is, I think, an especially useful example 00:19:11.550 --> 00:19:13.250 and a big part of the book. 00:19:14.380 --> 00:19:17.650 Because it’s been published, the classified report, 00:19:17.650 --> 00:19:21.630 the very classified report, the inspector general’s report, 00:19:22.280 --> 00:19:24.290 into what is effectively the Bush-era 00:19:24.290 --> 00:19:26.340 warrantless wiretapping program 00:19:26.340 --> 00:19:28.260 and internet surveillance program, 00:19:28.260 --> 00:19:30.559 which was not known to the public at the time, 00:19:31.350 --> 00:19:33.760 even in the wake of the initial reporting — 00:19:34.590 --> 00:19:36.310 has been published in The Washington Post. 00:19:36.310 --> 00:19:38.380 If you search for "Stellarwind" — 00:19:38.380 --> 00:19:40.640 "stellar" like stars, and "wind" like we all know — 00:19:40.640 --> 00:19:42.330 as one word and "Washington Post," 00:19:42.330 --> 00:19:44.800 you can find the classified inspector general’s report 00:19:44.800 --> 00:19:46.700 and read it yourself. 00:19:46.700 --> 00:19:49.330 And this showed an incredibly detailed, 00:19:49.330 --> 00:19:52.910 tick-tock history of how it was that, 00:19:52.910 --> 00:19:55.670 at the direction of the president of the United States, 00:19:56.370 --> 00:19:58.670 and with the knowledge and awareness 00:19:58.670 --> 00:20:01.550 of only a few key members in Congress, 00:20:04.270 --> 00:20:05.660 the work of the United States government 00:20:05.660 --> 00:20:08.040 and the intelligence agencies was intentionally 00:20:08.040 --> 00:20:10.990 and knowingly violating the Constitution 00:20:10.990 --> 00:20:12.870 of the United States on a daily basis. 00:20:12.870 --> 00:20:15.370 This was a systemic effort that was not a one-off. 00:20:16.880 --> 00:20:20.240 What I saw was, this inspector general — 00:20:22.130 --> 00:20:23.800 or, actually, all of the inspector generals 00:20:23.800 --> 00:20:25.420 of the intelligence community had produced 00:20:25.420 --> 00:20:26.770 a report on the Bush-era 00:20:26.770 --> 00:20:31.250 warrantless wiretapping program in the wake of the scandal, 00:20:31.250 --> 00:20:34.250 when the story first broke in December of 2005, 00:20:34.250 --> 00:20:35.810 and it led to reforms of law, 00:20:35.810 --> 00:20:38.630 it led to a ton of panicked congressmen 00:20:38.630 --> 00:20:40.000 and, of course, the president, 00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:42.550 who were all implicated in this wrongdoing. 00:20:42.550 --> 00:20:44.810 And what they were actually doing was trying to paper 00:20:44.810 --> 00:20:47.200 over all of the laws they had broken, 00:20:47.200 --> 00:20:49.720 by passing new laws that retroactively made 00:20:49.720 --> 00:20:51.680 what they did OK. 00:20:51.680 --> 00:20:53.270 And so, at the very end of this process, 00:20:53.270 --> 00:20:55.069 they put out an unclassified report. 00:20:55.790 --> 00:20:58.570 Now, as almost everyone knows now, 00:20:58.570 --> 00:21:01.119 thanks to things like the Mueller report and so on, 00:21:01.890 --> 00:21:06.910 the government will routinely provide classified documents 00:21:06.910 --> 00:21:10.790 to the public by redacting them. It’s the same document, 00:21:10.790 --> 00:21:12.770 but it’s got these blacked-out sections 00:21:12.770 --> 00:21:14.750 where you can’t see this name or this detail 00:21:14.750 --> 00:21:16.580 or this program, whatever. 00:21:17.950 --> 00:21:20.600 What struck me so much about the division 00:21:20.600 --> 00:21:23.170 between the unclassified report and the classified report 00:21:23.170 --> 00:21:27.250 was they were entirely different documents. 00:21:27.250 --> 00:21:30.420 And I encourage the audience to query these for yourselves. 00:21:31.390 --> 00:21:33.340 And what this meant was the actual truth 00:21:33.340 --> 00:21:37.040 of what the government was doing was so problematic, 00:21:38.050 --> 00:21:41.460 that they could not declassify, they could not summarize, 00:21:41.460 --> 00:21:44.370 they could not redact, without indicating 00:21:44.370 --> 00:21:46.830 that basically every level of government 00:21:46.830 --> 00:21:49.890 had been in on the violation of our constitutional rights, 00:21:49.890 --> 00:21:52.330 and so they created an entirely different 00:21:52.330 --> 00:21:53.690 document that basically said, 00:21:53.690 --> 00:21:55.970 "Oh, don’t worry about it. Nothing to see here." 00:21:55.970 --> 00:21:57.240 And this is the challenge, 00:21:57.240 --> 00:21:58.790 when we talk about proper channels, 00:21:58.790 --> 00:22:00.510 when we talk about inspectors generals, 00:22:00.510 --> 00:22:02.660 when we talk about congressional oversight. 00:22:03.470 --> 00:22:09.410 These processes only work when the harm that you are reporting, 00:22:12.030 --> 00:22:15.680 the people who are responsible for it are willing to correct. 00:22:16.520 --> 00:22:19.120 So, if it’s a little bad, maybe it will work. 00:22:19.120 --> 00:22:21.290 If it involves one person, 00:22:21.290 --> 00:22:24.890 who the rest of the elite section are willing to sacrifice 00:22:25.880 --> 00:22:29.140 or, in fact, very much want to get rid of, 00:22:29.140 --> 00:22:32.070 then, yes, these kind of oversight processes can work. 00:22:32.070 --> 00:22:34.850 But if what you are reporting 00:22:35.710 --> 00:22:38.590 is that all of the different branches of government 00:22:38.590 --> 00:22:39.930 are working in concert 00:22:39.930 --> 00:22:42.350 to violate the rights of the American people, 00:22:42.350 --> 00:22:43.840 what do you think they’re going to do 00:22:43.840 --> 00:22:45.889 when that report comes across their desk? 00:22:47.220 --> 00:22:49.340 They’re going to get rid of you. 00:22:49.340 --> 00:22:51.930 They’re going to bury what you have reported. 00:22:51.930 --> 00:22:54.740 And very possibly, they’re going to put you in prison. 00:22:54.740 --> 00:22:58.310 JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Ed, you mentioned earlier the cloud 00:22:58.310 --> 00:23:00.260 and that you were helping to get some — 00:23:00.880 --> 00:23:02.260 many of the documents of, 00:23:02.260 --> 00:23:05.380 I think it was, the CIA into a cloud, 00:23:05.380 --> 00:23:09.640 where any CIA agent anywhere could access those records. 00:23:09.640 --> 00:23:13.730 But cloud computing is not really in the clouds. 00:23:13.730 --> 00:23:18.320 It’s usually a farm, a data farm, a huge data farm, 00:23:18.320 --> 00:23:20.910 somewhere in an obscure part of the country. 00:23:20.910 --> 00:23:23.830 And you mentioned a point in which, I think it was, 00:23:23.830 --> 00:23:26.970 Amazon got a huge contract from the NSA 00:23:26.970 --> 00:23:30.320 to build one of these cloud farms. 00:23:31.140 --> 00:23:34.250 And you note that this is not only a question 00:23:34.250 --> 00:23:36.010 of creating a permanent record 00:23:36.540 --> 00:23:40.070 that these government spy agencies are doing, 00:23:40.070 --> 00:23:41.360 but they’re also trying to create 00:23:41.360 --> 00:23:43.940 a permanent record of everything— 00:23:43.940 --> 00:23:45.150 EDWARD SNOWDEN: Right. 00:23:45.150 --> 00:23:46.660 JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — and not just in the U.S., 00:23:46.660 --> 00:23:49.000 but around the world. Talk about that. 00:23:49.000 --> 00:23:50.220 EDWARD SNOWDEN: Right. 00:23:50.220 --> 00:23:53.080 So, when people hear the word "cloud" today, 00:23:53.080 --> 00:23:56.320 if they’re not technical, we sort of generally have 00:23:56.320 --> 00:23:57.970 an understanding maybe of what it means, 00:23:57.970 --> 00:23:59.920 but, as you say, it’s sort of abstract. 00:24:01.180 --> 00:24:03.950 "Cloud" simply means other people’s computers. 00:24:04.590 --> 00:24:07.389 And the Amazon cloud contract that you’re talking about, 00:24:08.090 --> 00:24:09.410 I actually describe in the book. 00:24:09.410 --> 00:24:13.490 I was directly competing at Dell against Amazon’s bid 00:24:13.490 --> 00:24:16.770 to build a private cloud for the CIA 00:24:17.420 --> 00:24:19.219 and the U.S. intelligence community. 00:24:20.510 --> 00:24:30.030 And this is this new method of handling data, 00:24:30.030 --> 00:24:32.950 where all of our records, of our lives — 00:24:33.710 --> 00:24:35.930 your pictures, your emails — 00:24:35.930 --> 00:24:38.180 are typically no longer actually held by you. 00:24:39.170 --> 00:24:42.090 They’re held by Google. And you log into your account, 00:24:42.720 --> 00:24:45.110 to your Gmail or whatever, and Google says, 00:24:45.110 --> 00:24:47.340 "Oh, here’s your emails. You want to look at these?" 00:24:47.340 --> 00:24:49.800 And then, when you log off, they keep them. 00:24:49.800 --> 00:24:52.040 The benefit of this is you can log in from another device 00:24:52.040 --> 00:24:53.880 and see the same emails. 00:24:53.880 --> 00:24:55.710 But it also means they can give these emails 00:24:55.710 --> 00:24:59.060 to anyone that they want. And they have and did 00:24:59.060 --> 00:25:02.130 and continue to give these to governments, 00:25:02.130 --> 00:25:04.479 not just our government, but other governments, 00:25:05.660 --> 00:25:07.500 and, of course, to corporations and advertisers, 00:25:07.500 --> 00:25:08.720 through different ways. 00:25:08.720 --> 00:25:11.630 They’ll say they don’t, and legally, in some ways, 00:25:11.630 --> 00:25:14.090 they’re correct in the strictest sense. 00:25:14.840 --> 00:25:20.480 But the reality is, the memories that we love the most, 00:25:21.420 --> 00:25:24.340 the connections that make us who we are, 00:25:24.340 --> 00:25:30.130 that comprise our families, that form our communities, 00:25:31.500 --> 00:25:36.020 are controlled by people who do not even see us as customers, 00:25:36.710 --> 00:25:38.410 because we are not paying them. 00:25:39.260 --> 00:25:42.660 Governments, advertisers, other groups, 00:25:42.660 --> 00:25:47.130 those are their customers. We are the product. 00:25:48.160 --> 00:25:51.750 And so, yeah, what we saw in this context 00:25:53.230 --> 00:25:55.220 is the whole internet was moving 00:25:55.220 --> 00:25:59.040 from this 1990s model of the internet, 00:25:59.040 --> 00:26:01.080 where everybody had their own computer, 00:26:01.080 --> 00:26:03.120 we had our own data, we connected things, 00:26:03.120 --> 00:26:05.120 and we shared things, one to one. 00:26:05.120 --> 00:26:07.860 We sent a link to this person. We pushed a file to this person. 00:26:07.860 --> 00:26:09.980 We put something on a floppy disk — 00:26:09.980 --> 00:26:13.370 remember floppy disks? — and we gave it to a friend. 00:26:14.160 --> 00:26:19.930 Instead, now, all of our terminals became phones, right? 00:26:19.930 --> 00:26:23.750 They became client devices that were dependent 00:26:23.750 --> 00:26:28.400 on these larger central servers — right? — data centers. 00:26:29.630 --> 00:26:31.910 And the only people who ran these data centers, 00:26:31.910 --> 00:26:34.630 who could control and understand these data centers, 00:26:34.630 --> 00:26:36.900 were almost a sort of new priesthood, right? 00:26:36.900 --> 00:26:38.120 These are the only ones 00:26:38.120 --> 00:26:39.790 who could speak the language of technology, 00:26:39.790 --> 00:26:43.080 who can control these systems. They became more complex. 00:26:43.080 --> 00:26:48.100 And we, average people, increasingly became disempowered 00:26:48.100 --> 00:26:49.440 and dependent on these companies, 00:26:49.440 --> 00:26:52.260 to the point where we didn’t really have an alternative. 00:26:52.260 --> 00:26:57.730 This shift in the way our systems work is 00:26:57.730 --> 00:26:59.779 what is creating, I think, fundamentally, 00:27:02.680 --> 00:27:05.460 the creeping authoritarianism that we see today. 00:27:06.390 --> 00:27:08.180 People have all of these arguments about the left 00:27:08.180 --> 00:27:09.720 and the right. 00:27:09.720 --> 00:27:12.850 But what we see, sadly, in many parts of government, 00:27:12.850 --> 00:27:14.160 and not just in the United States, 00:27:14.160 --> 00:27:16.830 but around the world, in places like the U.K., 00:27:16.830 --> 00:27:21.460 Poland, Hungary, we see a growing authoritarianism, 00:27:22.600 --> 00:27:26.430 where the left and the right have sharp disagreements 00:27:26.430 --> 00:27:29.810 on a few particular points, typically about social policy, 00:27:30.320 --> 00:27:32.830 but, broadly, they’re actually gravitating 00:27:32.830 --> 00:27:35.900 on the north-south part of the political axis, 00:27:35.900 --> 00:27:38.740 not left or right, but towards authoritarianism 00:27:38.740 --> 00:27:40.460 rather than the libertarianism 00:27:40.460 --> 00:27:42.430 from which this country was born. 00:27:42.430 --> 00:27:44.750 Rather than a government of enumerated powers, 00:27:44.750 --> 00:27:47.840 that has very strict limits on what it can and can’t do, 00:27:49.300 --> 00:27:52.510 instead we have governments where they go, 00:27:52.510 --> 00:27:56.570 "We need to do this for X justification," 00:27:56.570 --> 00:27:59.270 and so long as the justification is persuasive enough, 00:27:59.840 --> 00:28:05.040 the public will permit it or, in many cases, support it. 00:28:05.680 --> 00:28:07.979 But you have to remember that in this country, 00:28:08.790 --> 00:28:11.630 there have always been limits on what the government can do, 00:28:11.630 --> 00:28:13.990 even if they want to, even if there is public support. 00:28:13.990 --> 00:28:15.740 The reason we have the Constitution 00:28:16.270 --> 00:28:18.290 is not to protect the majority; 00:28:18.890 --> 00:28:21.870 it’s to protect the minority from the majority. 00:28:23.180 --> 00:28:24.730 And that is beginning to change. 00:28:24.730 --> 00:28:29.410 And corporations are very much beginning to act 00:28:29.410 --> 00:28:32.260 as deputies of government, as they influence — 00:28:32.260 --> 00:28:34.630 or, they hold more influence in society 00:28:34.630 --> 00:28:37.900 and begin to occupy quasigovernmental roles, 00:28:37.900 --> 00:28:40.160 such as regulating the things that can 00:28:40.160 --> 00:28:42.270 and cannot be said on the internet. 00:28:42.270 --> 00:28:44.560 AMY GOODMAN: We’re spending the hour with National Security 00:28:44.560 --> 00:28:46.950 Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. 00:28:46.950 --> 00:28:49.130 His new memoir, Permanent Record. 00:28:49.130 --> 00:28:50.830 Back with him in a minute. 00:29:32.860 --> 00:29:34.260 AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! 00:29:34.260 --> 00:29:37.820 I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue Part 2 of our conversation 00:29:37.820 --> 00:29:39.920 with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, 00:29:39.920 --> 00:29:41.670 who has just published his memoir. 00:29:41.670 --> 00:29:43.660 It’s called Permanent Record. 00:29:43.660 --> 00:29:45.410 Democracy Now!'s Juan González and I 00:29:45.410 --> 00:29:48.140 spoke to him from his home in Moscow last week, 00:29:48.140 --> 00:29:51.380 where he's lived in exile since 2013. 00:29:51.380 --> 00:29:54.470 Ed Snowden talked about how he worked at the NSA’s 00:29:54.470 --> 00:29:59.150 Office of Information Sharing — an office of one: him. 00:30:00.060 --> 00:30:01.560 EDWARD SNOWDEN: What does the Office of Information 00:30:01.560 --> 00:30:03.000 Sharing do? 00:30:03.000 --> 00:30:07.050 Well, besides me being way better at that job 00:30:07.050 --> 00:30:10.330 than the NSA ever thought that I would be, 00:30:10.330 --> 00:30:12.030 much to their dismay, 00:30:14.330 --> 00:30:16.930 think about the director of an agency, right? 00:30:16.930 --> 00:30:18.370 Think about the head of a unit. 00:30:18.370 --> 00:30:20.060 Think about someone who’s supposed to know 00:30:20.060 --> 00:30:23.230 all the secrets to everything. They’re not technologists, 00:30:23.230 --> 00:30:25.150 and these are very technical systems. 00:30:25.150 --> 00:30:27.120 When they say, "I need to know what’s going on with this," 00:30:27.120 --> 00:30:30.760 or, "Show me this program," somebody has to get that, right? 00:30:30.760 --> 00:30:32.440 They don’t know how to get it themselves. 00:30:32.440 --> 00:30:34.990 And that means somebody has all the access 00:30:34.990 --> 00:30:36.910 as these directors have all of these other things. 00:30:36.910 --> 00:30:39.259 These people are called systems administrators. 00:30:41.010 --> 00:30:45.310 And so, I was sitting, for the first time in my career, 00:30:45.310 --> 00:30:49.260 really, with absolute awareness, not of the little picture, 00:30:49.260 --> 00:30:51.740 but the big picture, how all the pieces fit together. 00:30:51.740 --> 00:30:54.640 And I created a system called the HEARTBEAT. 00:30:54.640 --> 00:30:56.220 This is a new technological platform, 00:30:56.220 --> 00:30:58.600 that you can think of it like a news aggregator, 00:30:58.600 --> 00:31:00.310 the landing page, you know, on Google News, 00:31:00.310 --> 00:31:03.260 that pulls from all of these different newspapers and says, 00:31:04.020 --> 00:31:05.840 "Here’s what’s interesting for you, 00:31:05.840 --> 00:31:07.540 based on who you are," whatever. 00:31:08.160 --> 00:31:10.060 And it would go, "This person works in this office; 00:31:10.060 --> 00:31:12.220 they should see these kind of programs." 00:31:12.220 --> 00:31:14.980 And I created a kind of crude proof 00:31:14.980 --> 00:31:16.680 of concept system to do this. 00:31:19.700 --> 00:31:22.420 But a byproduct of this meant that I now 00:31:22.420 --> 00:31:26.830 was sitting on top of a mountain of secrets. 00:31:28.700 --> 00:31:31.770 And it turned out that a lot of those secrets were criminal. 00:31:31.770 --> 00:31:33.470 So now I had to find a way 00:31:34.090 --> 00:31:37.060 to collect the evidence of wrongdoing, 00:31:37.060 --> 00:31:39.970 get it out of one of the most highly secured buildings 00:31:39.970 --> 00:31:41.500 on the planet — 00:31:41.500 --> 00:31:44.790 it was a World War II-era airplane factory 00:31:46.500 --> 00:31:48.500 that was buried under a pineapple field, 00:31:50.170 --> 00:31:52.769 that was later converted into a spy base in Hawaii — 00:31:54.940 --> 00:31:56.350 and somehow get it to journalists 00:31:56.350 --> 00:31:57.640 without getting caught. 00:31:57.640 --> 00:31:58.920 JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ed? 00:31:58.920 --> 00:32:00.160 EDWARD SNOWDEN: And this is really 00:32:00.160 --> 00:32:02.140 where we get into the climax of the book. 00:32:02.140 --> 00:32:03.400 JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Ed, at this point, 00:32:03.400 --> 00:32:04.870 you also discuss 00:32:04.870 --> 00:32:08.680 that you had first considered going to WikiLeaks 00:32:08.680 --> 00:32:13.010 but then changed your mind because of some changes in 00:32:13.010 --> 00:32:16.270 WikiLeaks policy that also you felt 00:32:16.270 --> 00:32:21.040 you could not in good conscience participate in. 00:32:21.040 --> 00:32:23.160 If you could talk about that, as well? 00:32:23.160 --> 00:32:25.880 EDWARD SNOWDEN: Right. So, a lot of people misread this 00:32:25.880 --> 00:32:28.660 and think of it as me sort of denouncing WikiLeaks. 00:32:28.660 --> 00:32:30.500 And it’s not. I think some of the reporting that 00:32:30.500 --> 00:32:33.100 WikiLeaks has done is tremendously important, 00:32:33.100 --> 00:32:37.040 both for the historic record and also for contemporary politics — 00:32:37.970 --> 00:32:41.180 basically every story they’ve run in the last many years. 00:32:42.280 --> 00:32:46.040 And, of course, this — when we’re talking about is in 2013, 00:32:46.040 --> 00:32:47.970 it’s long before the 2016 election — 00:32:48.730 --> 00:32:51.580 has been covered by newspapers around the world. 00:32:51.580 --> 00:32:54.490 But what had happened in the wake of the 2009 00:32:54.490 --> 00:32:57.050 Manning disclosures — this is where 00:32:57.050 --> 00:33:00.250 WikiLeaks published the "Collateral Murder" 00:33:00.250 --> 00:33:04.830 video of U.S. helicopter pilots killing not just a journalist, 00:33:06.060 --> 00:33:09.120 but also the first responders that came to their aid, 00:33:10.480 --> 00:33:13.740 and the classified histories of the wars 00:33:13.740 --> 00:33:15.500 in Iraq and Afghanistan 00:33:15.500 --> 00:33:18.250 and the State Department’s diplomatic cables, 00:33:18.250 --> 00:33:21.470 that in some ways are argued to have sort of helped spark 00:33:21.470 --> 00:33:24.920 or at least catalyze the Arab Spring movement. 00:33:26.390 --> 00:33:30.110 What had happened is, in the early parts of 00:33:30.110 --> 00:33:31.660 WikiLeaks’ reporting, 00:33:31.660 --> 00:33:34.290 they worked in concert with newspapers, 00:33:34.290 --> 00:33:37.390 with sort of The New York Times, The Washington Post, 00:33:37.390 --> 00:33:40.420 The Guardian, Der Spiegel — major newspapers. 00:33:42.300 --> 00:33:44.090 But at some point, one of the journalists 00:33:44.090 --> 00:33:46.480 that they had worked with wrote a memoir, 00:33:46.480 --> 00:33:47.810 or some kind of book, 00:33:47.810 --> 00:33:51.650 where they published the password that Julian Assange 00:33:51.650 --> 00:33:55.190 had given them to the entire archive of data, 00:33:55.190 --> 00:33:56.940 that only journalists were supposed to have, 00:33:56.940 --> 00:33:59.110 not the public, 00:33:59.110 --> 00:34:00.610 because the journalists were supposed to go 00:34:00.610 --> 00:34:03.800 through this process of deciding what in this archive of material 00:34:03.800 --> 00:34:06.470 does the public need to know and what is a legitimate secret, 00:34:06.470 --> 00:34:09.490 that maybe there’s no benefit for publishing. 00:34:11.180 --> 00:34:13.300 Once this journalist published this, 00:34:13.300 --> 00:34:16.580 WikiLeaks went — well, all of the bad guys in the world, 00:34:16.580 --> 00:34:19.690 basically, have access to this material, 00:34:19.690 --> 00:34:22.450 because the archive, encrypted archive, 00:34:22.450 --> 00:34:23.990 was available to anyone. 00:34:23.990 --> 00:34:25.570 It’s just you needed the password to unlock it. 00:34:25.570 --> 00:34:27.780 Now this bonehead journalist had published it 00:34:27.780 --> 00:34:30.330 and basically unlocked Pandora’s box. 00:34:31.380 --> 00:34:33.230 WikiLeaks was in a tough place there. 00:34:34.110 --> 00:34:37.850 And they basically revised their editorial policy to go, 00:34:37.850 --> 00:34:39.390 "You know what? We’re going to publish 00:34:39.390 --> 00:34:41.870 everything pristine and unredacted, 00:34:42.530 --> 00:34:45.120 so that everyone is on a common footing, 00:34:46.030 --> 00:34:47.350 whether you’re a good guy or bad guy. 00:34:47.350 --> 00:34:50.500 At least we all have access to the same information." 00:34:50.500 --> 00:34:52.450 It’s not my place to agree or disagree with that, 00:34:52.450 --> 00:34:53.670 say it’s right or wrong. 00:34:53.670 --> 00:34:58.410 But what I did want to do was try a different model, go, 00:34:58.410 --> 00:35:00.130 "What happens? Is there a difference?" 00:35:00.130 --> 00:35:01.440 Because Chelsea Manning, of course, 00:35:01.440 --> 00:35:03.789 was accused of all the same things that I was — 00:35:05.070 --> 00:35:06.730 said, you know, "This person’s a traitor," said, 00:35:06.730 --> 00:35:08.680 "This person endangered the troops" — 00:35:08.680 --> 00:35:10.810 which has never borne out, by the way. 00:35:10.810 --> 00:35:14.230 We’re now more than 10 years on from those activities, 00:35:14.230 --> 00:35:16.760 and the government, even at Chelsea Manning’s trial, 00:35:16.760 --> 00:35:19.760 after they’ve convicted her, the government was invited 00:35:19.760 --> 00:35:21.700 by the judge to show evidence of harm, 00:35:22.270 --> 00:35:23.860 and they couldn’t show anyone was harmed 00:35:23.860 --> 00:35:25.560 as a result of the disclosures. 00:35:28.110 --> 00:35:33.010 But could these accusations of government be mitigated 00:35:33.010 --> 00:35:35.260 by the process of whistleblowing? 00:35:35.260 --> 00:35:38.310 Could we simply be more discriminating? 00:35:38.310 --> 00:35:41.440 Could we be overly cautious? 00:35:41.440 --> 00:35:44.260 Could we accommodate, to the maximum extent, 00:35:44.830 --> 00:35:47.780 what the government thought would be an appropriate process, 00:35:47.780 --> 00:35:49.220 while still empowering journalists? 00:35:49.220 --> 00:35:51.970 And this was the model that I set out to try and prove. 00:35:53.360 --> 00:35:57.230 Can we have myself, any whistleblower — right? 00:35:57.230 --> 00:35:59.080 — gather evidence of wrongdoing 00:35:59.080 --> 00:36:01.620 and trust that to the press under the condition 00:36:01.620 --> 00:36:03.290 that the journalists agree they will publish no story 00:36:03.290 --> 00:36:06.130 simply because it’s newsworthy, simply because it’s interesting, 00:36:06.130 --> 00:36:08.560 but only publish stories they are willing 00:36:08.560 --> 00:36:09.810 to make an institutional judgment 00:36:09.810 --> 00:36:11.700 are in the public interest to know, 00:36:11.700 --> 00:36:14.760 and then, as an extraordinary check beyond that, 00:36:14.760 --> 00:36:17.070 go to the government in advance of publication, 00:36:17.070 --> 00:36:20.450 warn the government, "We are about to publish this story," 00:36:21.080 --> 00:36:23.480 and give the government and adversarial opportunity 00:36:23.480 --> 00:36:25.280 to argue against this, say, 00:36:25.280 --> 00:36:27.080 "This will cause harm. Someone will get hurt. 00:36:27.080 --> 00:36:28.460 Redact this detail"? 00:36:28.460 --> 00:36:31.440 And in all cases I’m aware of, that process was followed. 00:36:31.440 --> 00:36:33.920 And this is why, in 2019, 00:36:33.920 --> 00:36:37.820 I think it’s so obvious that no harm to national security 00:36:37.820 --> 00:36:40.540 has resulted from this process of disclosure. 00:36:41.060 --> 00:36:43.860 And yet, the same criticisms, 00:36:43.860 --> 00:36:45.950 the same allegations are made to me 00:36:45.950 --> 00:36:48.250 as have been every other whistleblower. 00:36:48.800 --> 00:36:50.210 And what we need to understand here 00:36:50.210 --> 00:36:53.380 is not my model of publication is right and 00:36:53.380 --> 00:36:57.300 WikiLeaks’ model is wrong, but rather to see you have 00:36:57.300 --> 00:37:03.470 two very different levels of caution — right? 00:37:03.470 --> 00:37:05.920 — of risk mitigation in these publication models. 00:37:06.600 --> 00:37:09.810 And yet, despite years and years of investigation 00:37:09.810 --> 00:37:11.960 by the most powerful government in history, 00:37:12.560 --> 00:37:16.500 in neither case has the government ever established 00:37:16.500 --> 00:37:20.800 or even offered evidence of harm as a result of this disclosure. 00:37:20.800 --> 00:37:22.330 And so, this is the fundamental point 00:37:22.330 --> 00:37:24.379 that I just want to summarize for people. 00:37:24.920 --> 00:37:27.170 Whenever the government faces a whistleblower 00:37:27.890 --> 00:37:29.400 that is revealing some kind of wrongdoing 00:37:29.400 --> 00:37:30.640 that makes them uncomfortable, 00:37:30.640 --> 00:37:32.250 that implicates them in some kind of activity 00:37:32.250 --> 00:37:34.200 they should not be doing, 00:37:34.200 --> 00:37:36.830 they are going to try and change the conversation 00:37:36.830 --> 00:37:42.490 from the concrete harms of their actions, 00:37:42.490 --> 00:37:44.300 of their policies in government, 00:37:45.370 --> 00:37:47.320 and instead try to have a discussion 00:37:47.320 --> 00:37:49.380 about the theoretical risks of journalism 00:37:49.380 --> 00:37:50.700 in a free and open society. 00:37:50.700 --> 00:37:53.480 And, of course, there are risks to having a free press, 00:37:54.410 --> 00:37:57.130 but we embrace those risks, because those are the things 00:37:57.130 --> 00:37:58.830 that guarantee we are truly free. 00:37:59.650 --> 00:38:03.040 JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Your decisions to eventually provide 00:38:03.040 --> 00:38:07.580 the information to Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, 00:38:07.580 --> 00:38:09.980 and how those meetings initially went? 00:38:10.710 --> 00:38:15.580 EDWARD SNOWDEN: Yeah, so, I have to work with journalists 00:38:16.900 --> 00:38:20.520 to get them interested in meeting 00:38:20.520 --> 00:38:23.080 with someone who they don’t even know their name — right? 00:38:23.080 --> 00:38:25.370 — because if I give the journalists my name 00:38:25.370 --> 00:38:26.620 and they mishandle it, 00:38:26.620 --> 00:38:28.200 because the government is spying on everyone — 00:38:28.200 --> 00:38:30.549 I know how the mass surveillance system works — 00:38:31.700 --> 00:38:33.450 the government will have me in jail 00:38:34.680 --> 00:38:36.380 before anybody knows anything. 00:38:37.510 --> 00:38:39.809 So I have to go through this elaborate process 00:38:40.610 --> 00:38:42.790 of trying to reach out to journalists, 00:38:42.790 --> 00:38:45.130 convince them to use encrypted communications, 00:38:46.420 --> 00:38:48.810 while protecting myself from mass surveillance, 00:38:49.360 --> 00:38:53.210 driving around Hawaii with a specialized system, 00:38:53.210 --> 00:38:55.880 that’s basically a GPS magnet 00:38:55.880 --> 00:38:58.370 that I can attach to the roof of my car, 00:38:58.370 --> 00:39:01.350 run through the window by wire to a laptop, 00:39:01.350 --> 00:39:04.470 which has an enormously powerful antenna connected to it, 00:39:04.470 --> 00:39:08.190 and then basically create a map, using that antenna, 00:39:08.190 --> 00:39:10.750 of everywhere there are different wireless access points 00:39:10.750 --> 00:39:13.220 that are either open and unlocked or vulnerable 00:39:13.220 --> 00:39:15.190 to being unlocked by me, 00:39:15.190 --> 00:39:17.760 that I can use for this covert communications 00:39:17.760 --> 00:39:19.950 in a way that won’t lead back to me. 00:39:21.150 --> 00:39:22.830 And then I have to convince them, 00:39:22.830 --> 00:39:26.470 you know, I know something serious 00:39:26.470 --> 00:39:29.670 that you need to know about, the public needs to know about. 00:39:31.810 --> 00:39:34.840 But I can’t tell you what it is yet until you do this, 00:39:34.840 --> 00:39:37.300 then get them online, then begin showing them evidence, 00:39:37.300 --> 00:39:39.940 and then, ultimately, get them to meet. 00:39:40.930 --> 00:39:44.300 And this was a tremendously stressful period, 00:39:44.300 --> 00:39:46.399 that’s covered in some detail in the book. 00:39:48.430 --> 00:39:54.190 But I think it is extraordinary, 00:39:54.190 --> 00:39:57.180 and I think these journalists should be all applauded 00:39:57.180 --> 00:39:58.880 for the risks that they took, 00:40:00.510 --> 00:40:02.300 because it’s very likely they could have been meeting 00:40:02.300 --> 00:40:03.680 with somebody who was saying, 00:40:03.680 --> 00:40:05.540 "Oh, you know, I’ve got the biggest secret in the world: 00:40:05.540 --> 00:40:08.690 The aliens have landed, and they work in the State Department." 00:40:10.700 --> 00:40:12.950 But they came, and they looked at the documents. 00:40:12.950 --> 00:40:15.360 They took them seriously. They authenticated them. 00:40:15.360 --> 00:40:17.070 And eventually they won the Pulitzer Prize 00:40:17.070 --> 00:40:18.880 for Public Service journalism because of that. 00:40:18.880 --> 00:40:20.480 AMY GOODMAN: And after you met with them 00:40:20.480 --> 00:40:24.000 and you shared your stories, and they were writing them 00:40:24.000 --> 00:40:27.360 as you were meeting together in Hong Kong, 00:40:27.360 --> 00:40:31.290 describe what it meant to go underground there 00:40:31.290 --> 00:40:34.680 and then to — ultimately, how you made your way, 00:40:34.680 --> 00:40:36.910 ended up at the Moscow airport 00:40:36.910 --> 00:40:39.080 and couldn’t leave once you got there. 00:40:39.990 --> 00:40:41.940 EDWARD SNOWDEN: Oh, yeah, this is a great question. 00:40:41.940 --> 00:40:51.070 So, I had been looking at this entire reporting system 00:40:51.990 --> 00:40:55.830 as a crazy system of a series of challenges, 00:40:55.830 --> 00:40:57.929 that were becoming increasingly difficult. 00:40:59.110 --> 00:41:00.860 But the end of it, the finish line, 00:41:00.860 --> 00:41:03.760 was you’ve delivered the secret to journalists, 00:41:03.760 --> 00:41:06.910 that the government has violated the rights of Americans 00:41:06.910 --> 00:41:09.009 and the Constitution of the United States. 00:41:09.590 --> 00:41:11.990 They can then publish that information, 00:41:11.990 --> 00:41:14.450 and that was the end of the process, 00:41:15.660 --> 00:41:18.160 because I was always planning on getting arrested. 00:41:19.410 --> 00:41:22.450 And so, then, when the story comes out — 00:41:22.450 --> 00:41:25.980 and my biggest fear was this was going to be a two-day story 00:41:25.980 --> 00:41:27.930 that everybody stopped talking about, it just blew over, 00:41:27.930 --> 00:41:30.220 the government sort of suppressed it — 00:41:30.220 --> 00:41:32.819 it became the biggest story on the planet that year. 00:41:34.970 --> 00:41:37.140 Suddenly, everybody was interested in me. 00:41:37.140 --> 00:41:38.910 The government made me public enemy number one. 00:41:38.910 --> 00:41:41.120 I was the most wanted man in the world. 00:41:41.120 --> 00:41:45.740 It was a question of: "All right, what now?" 00:41:46.460 --> 00:41:48.530 And I didn’t really have an idea. 00:41:48.530 --> 00:41:53.070 So I talked with journalists — or, sorry, I talked with lawyers 00:41:53.070 --> 00:41:55.430 that were introduced to me by the journalists — 00:41:55.430 --> 00:41:56.720 human rights lawyers 00:41:56.720 --> 00:41:58.740 — and tried to plan my next stage. 00:41:58.740 --> 00:42:01.800 I talked to the United Nations. 00:42:01.800 --> 00:42:05.490 And ultimately, the United Nations came back and went — 00:42:07.480 --> 00:42:12.370 this is sort of — you know, they wouldn’t say this publicly, 00:42:12.370 --> 00:42:17.080 and I wouldn’t encourage them to go on the record about this, 00:42:17.080 --> 00:42:19.040 but they went, "Look, practically, 00:42:19.040 --> 00:42:21.440 the U.S. has enormous sway in our organization. 00:42:21.440 --> 00:42:23.630 They pay an enormous amount of our budget. 00:42:24.230 --> 00:42:26.129 And the U.S. gets what the U.S. wants. 00:42:28.440 --> 00:42:29.970 We probably can’t help you. 00:42:29.970 --> 00:42:36.330 We will try, but it’s likely to work out to your disadvantage." 00:42:38.620 --> 00:42:41.680 And so, if the U.N. can’t protect you, who can? 00:42:41.680 --> 00:42:43.870 And my lawyer, Robert Tibbo, 00:42:43.870 --> 00:42:46.250 had this idea that I would go underground 00:42:46.250 --> 00:42:49.580 with the refugee families that he had been representing, 00:42:49.580 --> 00:42:52.379 that were themselves trying to seek asylum in Hong Kong. 00:42:53.110 --> 00:42:55.570 And so, suddenly, I’ve gone from staying 00:42:55.570 --> 00:42:57.570 in a five-star hotel with journalists 00:42:58.640 --> 00:43:04.650 to staying in an apartment shared by five people, 00:43:06.970 --> 00:43:09.230 where the kitchen is the bathroom, 00:43:10.270 --> 00:43:14.650 and the entire thing is smaller than most suburban bathrooms. 00:43:16.400 --> 00:43:18.140 And I’m trying to communicate with journalists. 00:43:18.140 --> 00:43:21.250 And these people were so brave, I still can’t believe — 00:43:21.250 --> 00:43:24.890 I’m in disbelief that they just welcomed me in, 00:43:24.890 --> 00:43:28.490 when my face was on the front page of every newspaper. 00:43:28.490 --> 00:43:32.770 But they knew what it was like to be hunted 00:43:32.770 --> 00:43:35.270 by a government for having done the right thing. 00:43:35.270 --> 00:43:38.600 They were escaping violence and persecution. 00:43:41.110 --> 00:43:42.610 And they were just trying to make their way 00:43:42.610 --> 00:43:43.830 through the world. 00:43:43.830 --> 00:43:45.530 And this is the thing that always strikes me. 00:43:45.530 --> 00:43:47.280 They had nothing. 00:43:47.280 --> 00:43:49.879 These were the most vulnerable people on the planet. 00:43:50.540 --> 00:43:54.860 But it’s the people who have nothing that care 00:43:54.860 --> 00:43:56.510 about others the most, 00:43:56.510 --> 00:43:58.409 because all they have are connections. 00:43:59.820 --> 00:44:01.180 And so, I’ve been an aggressive advocate 00:44:01.180 --> 00:44:03.730 since then for trying to get them resettled. 00:44:04.390 --> 00:44:08.500 We have resettled two of them, a mother and her daughter, 00:44:09.140 --> 00:44:12.300 in Canada, after years and years of effort. 00:44:13.050 --> 00:44:14.690 But, unfortunately, the Trudeau government 00:44:14.690 --> 00:44:16.220 is still digging in their heels 00:44:16.220 --> 00:44:19.330 and trying to prevent the rest of the families 00:44:20.980 --> 00:44:23.170 from entering into asylum. 00:44:23.870 --> 00:44:25.850 In Hong Kong, the number of people 00:44:25.850 --> 00:44:30.500 who have their asylum claims approved is less than 1%, 00:44:31.960 --> 00:44:33.550 which is actually some of the — 00:44:33.550 --> 00:44:36.450 those are some of the worst figures in the world for that. 00:44:37.360 --> 00:44:39.820 And even if they get their asylum claims granted, 00:44:39.820 --> 00:44:42.080 they are forced to be resettled in third countries 00:44:42.080 --> 00:44:43.980 rather than in Hong Kong itself. 00:44:43.980 --> 00:44:45.720 AMY GOODMAN: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. 00:44:45.720 --> 00:44:48.700 He tells his story in his new book, Permanent Record. 00:44:48.700 --> 00:44:50.420 Back in 30 seconds with Snowden. 00:44:50.970 --> 00:45:29.090 [break] 00:45:29.090 --> 00:45:30.640 AMY GOODMAN: "El Triste" by one of Latin 00:45:30.640 --> 00:45:33.050 America’s most beloved singers, José José. 00:45:33.050 --> 00:45:34.530 Known as "The Prince of Song," 00:45:34.530 --> 00:45:38.790 he passed away in South Florida Saturday at the age of 71. 00:45:38.790 --> 00:45:40.070 AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! 00:45:40.070 --> 00:45:41.990 I’m Amy Goodman, as we conclude our interview 00:45:41.990 --> 00:45:43.700 with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, 00:45:43.700 --> 00:45:46.570 who has just published his memoir, Permanent Record. 00:45:46.570 --> 00:45:48.510 Juan González and I spoke to him last week 00:45:48.510 --> 00:45:51.040 and asked him to describe how he arrived in Moscow, 00:45:51.040 --> 00:45:52.740 where he now lives. 00:45:53.600 --> 00:45:55.650 EDWARD SNOWDEN: Ultimately, it’s a question of: 00:45:56.320 --> 00:45:59.210 As the U.S. government continues to apply pressure, 00:46:00.240 --> 00:46:01.750 where do you go? 00:46:01.750 --> 00:46:05.370 The Chinese government is probably unlikely to intervene. 00:46:05.370 --> 00:46:06.770 They don’t want any part of this. 00:46:06.770 --> 00:46:08.800 The Hong Kong government, as we just described, 00:46:08.800 --> 00:46:11.520 is not exactly a beacon of human rights itself, 00:46:12.480 --> 00:46:14.810 and their courts are unlikely to adjudicate 00:46:14.810 --> 00:46:17.659 the process fairly in the face of historic U.S. pressure. 00:46:18.800 --> 00:46:20.830 So you have to look at what country 00:46:21.360 --> 00:46:24.470 will be able to protect someone who’s standing on principle. 00:46:24.470 --> 00:46:26.290 And in this case, at this moment, 00:46:26.290 --> 00:46:31.150 Ecuador was trying to take a real freedom of speech, 00:46:31.150 --> 00:46:34.770 freedom of the press perspective. 00:46:34.770 --> 00:46:36.290 They had famously, of course, 00:46:36.290 --> 00:46:38.100 welcomed Julian Assange into their embassy. 00:46:38.100 --> 00:46:41.380 And unfortunately, they have since reversed that decision 00:46:41.380 --> 00:46:43.380 and delivered him to the British police. 00:46:45.200 --> 00:46:47.020 But so, I tried to go to Ecuador. 00:46:47.740 --> 00:46:49.460 What this meant, if you look at the flight maps, 00:46:49.460 --> 00:46:52.610 is there’s no direct flight from Hong Kong to Latin America, 00:46:53.750 --> 00:46:55.060 or at least to Ecuador, 00:46:55.060 --> 00:46:57.810 rather, that does not cross U.S. airspace, 00:46:57.810 --> 00:47:00.100 which would be a dangerous thing to do 00:47:00.100 --> 00:47:01.960 for someone in my position. 00:47:03.260 --> 00:47:04.900 So you’ve got to go the long way around, 00:47:04.900 --> 00:47:07.630 and that means going through nonextradition countries. 00:47:07.630 --> 00:47:10.620 So I have to build an air bridge over the flight path, 00:47:10.620 --> 00:47:13.170 which goes from Hong Kong to Russia, 00:47:13.920 --> 00:47:16.360 Russia to Cuba, Cuba to Venezuela, 00:47:16.360 --> 00:47:18.260 and then from Venezuela to Bolivia, 00:47:18.260 --> 00:47:20.460 or Bolivia to Ecuador, Venezuela to Ecuador. 00:47:22.510 --> 00:47:23.940 And that’s what I did. 00:47:23.940 --> 00:47:30.950 Now, as soon as I left the airport in Hong Kong — 00:47:30.950 --> 00:47:35.840 we had gone wheels up — there are press conferences 00:47:35.840 --> 00:47:38.990 being called by the secretary of state, then John Kerry. 00:47:40.130 --> 00:47:41.830 And he canceled my passport, 00:47:42.510 --> 00:47:44.040 which meant that when I landed in Russia, 00:47:44.040 --> 00:47:45.260 I could no longer leave; 00:47:45.260 --> 00:47:46.680 I couldn’t board my onward flight. 00:47:46.680 --> 00:47:51.240 I’m stopped at passport control. I am intercepted by security 00:47:51.240 --> 00:47:54.160 and led into this business lounge, right? 00:47:54.160 --> 00:47:56.330 And I knew this was coming, because I worked for the CIA, 00:47:56.330 --> 00:47:59.210 had worked for the NSA. I had training on what it’s like 00:47:59.210 --> 00:48:01.540 when governments interfere with your travel. 00:48:01.540 --> 00:48:05.250 But I had prepared for this. Prior to leaving Hong Kong, 00:48:05.250 --> 00:48:06.930 because I knew I would have to go through 00:48:06.930 --> 00:48:09.000 all of these different countries, 00:48:09.000 --> 00:48:11.890 I destroyed my access to the archive. 00:48:11.890 --> 00:48:13.340 It had been provided to journalists, 00:48:13.340 --> 00:48:15.420 and now I had no way of recovering it. 00:48:15.420 --> 00:48:18.270 I didn’t know any passwords. I did not have any data. 00:48:18.270 --> 00:48:21.500 There was nothing I could do to assist these governments. 00:48:21.500 --> 00:48:23.510 And this is not — you don’t have to think about this: 00:48:23.510 --> 00:48:26.520 "Oh, you know, we love and trust Ed Snowden." 00:48:26.520 --> 00:48:28.840 Think about it in terms of self-preservation. 00:48:29.960 --> 00:48:33.650 If you know something that’s of such extraordinary value 00:48:33.650 --> 00:48:35.460 to any intelligence service, 00:48:35.460 --> 00:48:38.830 they might consider actually torturing you. 00:48:40.130 --> 00:48:41.990 Obviously, that would be dangerous for them, 00:48:41.990 --> 00:48:44.290 because I’m the most famous person in the world; 00:48:44.290 --> 00:48:46.050 somebody’s going to ask, "What happened to him?" 00:48:46.050 --> 00:48:47.800 But, you know, then they can just push me off a building 00:48:47.800 --> 00:48:50.349 afterwards and go, "Oh, I guess the CIA found him." 00:48:51.550 --> 00:48:54.599 So the only way to be safe was to not have anything of value. 00:48:55.120 --> 00:48:57.400 But I get intercepted nonetheless, 00:48:57.400 --> 00:48:59.930 which I anticipated would likely be the case. 00:49:00.990 --> 00:49:02.340 And I walk into this room, 00:49:02.340 --> 00:49:06.420 and there’s these different guys in basically identical suits. 00:49:08.310 --> 00:49:10.960 And as soon as this older gentleman starts talking, 00:49:10.960 --> 00:49:14.140 I know exactly what he is, because I worked at the CIA 00:49:14.710 --> 00:49:16.390 and had seen these guys over and over again. 00:49:16.390 --> 00:49:18.090 He’s what we call a case officer. 00:49:19.720 --> 00:49:21.820 When people think of intelligence, 00:49:22.700 --> 00:49:26.350 they think of like James Bond. They think that’s what a spy is. 00:49:26.350 --> 00:49:29.340 But the reality is, almost every "spy," 00:49:29.340 --> 00:49:30.680 as we would think about them, 00:49:30.680 --> 00:49:32.690 who works for the U.S. intelligence service 00:49:32.690 --> 00:49:36.000 or any other ones, is actually just a normal guy 00:49:36.000 --> 00:49:39.400 who works out of an embassy under the cover of a diplomat. 00:49:40.160 --> 00:49:42.310 And his job is not to spy himself; 00:49:43.060 --> 00:49:46.190 his job is to talk other people into spying. 00:49:46.190 --> 00:49:48.490 We call this recruiting assets. 00:49:49.030 --> 00:49:51.850 And the assets themselves, those are the actual spies. 00:49:51.850 --> 00:49:53.530 The other guy just meets with them 00:49:53.530 --> 00:49:55.230 and writes down what they say. 00:49:56.680 --> 00:50:00.440 So, these guys say, "I regret to inform you 00:50:00.440 --> 00:50:02.420 your passport has been canceled," 00:50:02.420 --> 00:50:04.280 after they ask me preliminary questions about, like, 00:50:04.280 --> 00:50:05.600 "Where you going? What are you doing? 00:50:05.600 --> 00:50:06.820 You want to stay in Russia?" 00:50:06.820 --> 00:50:09.000 And I go, "No, no, no, I’m planning to go onward." 00:50:09.000 --> 00:50:10.380 And I know they already know this, 00:50:10.380 --> 00:50:12.550 because, of course, I’m flying on a Russian airline, 00:50:12.550 --> 00:50:16.140 so they’re going to have the passenger manifest. 00:50:19.230 --> 00:50:20.950 And when he says, "Your passport’s been canceled," 00:50:20.950 --> 00:50:23.450 the first thing I think is, "This is a trick. 00:50:23.450 --> 00:50:25.320 My government would not be that stupid," 00:50:25.320 --> 00:50:28.340 because, you have to understand, from the U.S. perspective, 00:50:28.930 --> 00:50:31.360 if they think I’m actually a traitor, 00:50:31.360 --> 00:50:33.100 if they think I’m actually likely to help 00:50:33.100 --> 00:50:34.630 a foreign government, 00:50:34.630 --> 00:50:36.440 Russia is the last place on Earth 00:50:36.440 --> 00:50:38.140 they would want me to be, right? 00:50:39.090 --> 00:50:41.380 And I don’t think the government is that stupid. 00:50:41.380 --> 00:50:43.580 So, instead, they know — the U.S. government, 00:50:43.580 --> 00:50:45.850 which is getting passenger manifests from around the world, 00:50:45.850 --> 00:50:48.350 knows that I’m en route to Ecuador. 00:50:48.900 --> 00:50:50.720 Why wouldn’t they just let me continue to Ecuador, 00:50:50.720 --> 00:50:52.510 where it would be much easier for the CIA 00:50:52.510 --> 00:50:54.300 to operate than in Russia? 00:50:57.910 --> 00:50:59.870 But I go and I check the internet, 00:50:59.870 --> 00:51:03.030 with a witness, Sarah Harrison, a journalist, who was with me, 00:51:03.030 --> 00:51:05.010 precisely so I can’t be isolated. 00:51:05.010 --> 00:51:07.420 AMY GOODMAN: And Sarah, of course, was with WikiLeaks. 00:51:07.420 --> 00:51:10.420 And did Julian Assange help you in getting that ticket 00:51:10.420 --> 00:51:13.380 from Hong Kong to Russia — I mean, from Hong Kong beyond — 00:51:13.380 --> 00:51:14.600 EDWARD SNOWDEN: No, no. 00:51:14.600 --> 00:51:16.800 AMY GOODMAN: — so that you could make that journey, that escape? 00:51:16.800 --> 00:51:18.050 EDWARD SNOWDEN: Right. No. 00:51:18.050 --> 00:51:20.910 So, this is actually — there’s a lot of confusion about this. 00:51:20.910 --> 00:51:23.380 People are like, oh, Julian Assange, 00:51:24.050 --> 00:51:26.210 you know, arranged asylum for me in Russia, 00:51:26.210 --> 00:51:28.030 and all of these conspiracy theories. 00:51:28.030 --> 00:51:29.480 It’s completely untrue. 00:51:29.480 --> 00:51:32.790 Assange was helpful. WikiLeaks was helpful. 00:51:32.790 --> 00:51:34.890 And Sarah Harrison especially was helpful. 00:51:35.850 --> 00:51:37.880 But the things WikiLeaks, as an organization, 00:51:37.880 --> 00:51:39.780 did had nothing to do with Russia. 00:51:39.780 --> 00:51:42.030 Again, it was never the plan to be in Russia. 00:51:42.730 --> 00:51:48.880 He talked to the Ecuadorian consul in the embassy, 00:51:48.880 --> 00:51:50.510 where he was trapped, 00:51:50.510 --> 00:51:53.000 and got him to sign an emergency document, 00:51:53.000 --> 00:51:55.060 the kind of safe passage document, 00:51:56.270 --> 00:52:00.710 that you — that were used so prominently in World War II. 00:52:00.710 --> 00:52:03.110 Unfortunately, this was an unofficial document, 00:52:03.110 --> 00:52:04.540 because they broke protocol. 00:52:04.540 --> 00:52:06.540 It didn’t really have any legal meaning. 00:52:08.020 --> 00:52:10.760 But the man who signed this, Fidel Narváez, 00:52:11.560 --> 00:52:13.580 is an extraordinarily brave man. 00:52:13.580 --> 00:52:16.430 And having that document is, in a real way, 00:52:16.430 --> 00:52:18.620 even though it didn’t have legal force — 00:52:18.620 --> 00:52:20.030 was what gave me the confidence, 00:52:20.030 --> 00:52:23.270 the courage to get on that plane to begin the journey. 00:52:25.180 --> 00:52:29.250 So, yes, when I — the whole thing about Julian Assange 00:52:29.250 --> 00:52:30.790 sort of masterminding me being in Russia, 00:52:30.790 --> 00:52:33.430 which I think is actually the question 00:52:33.430 --> 00:52:35.680 that a lot of people have there, is simply untrue. 00:52:35.680 --> 00:52:36.970 AMY GOODMAN: But not Russia, 00:52:36.970 --> 00:52:39.230 but helped you to leave Hong Kong 00:52:39.230 --> 00:52:41.830 so that you could make it to the destination you were hoping for. 00:52:41.830 --> 00:52:44.120 At the time, wasn’t it also true 00:52:44.120 --> 00:52:49.370 that President Morales’s plane was brought down — right? 00:52:49.370 --> 00:52:51.740 — in Austria, because the U.S. government 00:52:51.740 --> 00:52:55.590 thought that you might be on board his flight from Bolivia? 00:52:56.990 --> 00:52:58.510 EDWARD SNOWDEN: Yeah, this is precisely correct. 00:52:58.510 --> 00:53:01.690 The chronology is a little bit different, but it is correct. 00:53:01.690 --> 00:53:05.380 So what happens is I leave Hong Kong. 00:53:05.380 --> 00:53:07.910 I get trapped in Russia. These guys pitch me. 00:53:07.910 --> 00:53:09.610 And this — for those who are interested in the book, 00:53:09.610 --> 00:53:12.159 this is an entire chapter. It’s laid out in detail. 00:53:13.550 --> 00:53:16.410 I refused them, because I’m not going to cooperate 00:53:16.410 --> 00:53:18.440 with any intelligence service anymore. 00:53:18.440 --> 00:53:21.160 And I’m worried that there’s a tape recorder 00:53:21.160 --> 00:53:22.680 under the table recording this, 00:53:22.680 --> 00:53:24.590 and they’re going to use this to try to compromise me, 00:53:24.590 --> 00:53:26.490 to try to manipulate me. 00:53:26.490 --> 00:53:28.270 So, I go, "Look, I don’t have anything. 00:53:28.270 --> 00:53:29.990 I’m not going help you guys. I’ll be fine on my own. 00:53:29.990 --> 00:53:32.180 If you want to search my bag, it’s right here." 00:53:32.180 --> 00:53:33.990 Of course, I’m saying this as politely as possible, 00:53:33.990 --> 00:53:35.889 because I don’t want any more enemies. 00:53:37.100 --> 00:53:39.380 And they go, "Are you sure? 00:53:39.380 --> 00:53:42.380 Are you sure there’s not any little thing that you can do? 00:53:42.380 --> 00:53:43.840 Because life is going to be very difficult 00:53:43.840 --> 00:53:46.139 for someone in your position without friends." 00:53:47.930 --> 00:53:50.970 And actually, Sarah — Sarah stopped them and said, 00:53:50.970 --> 00:53:52.670 "No, thanks. We’ll be fine." 00:53:53.420 --> 00:53:55.560 And I will always admire her courage. 00:53:56.940 --> 00:53:59.450 But so, now, because I wouldn’t cooperate 00:53:59.450 --> 00:54:01.370 with the Russian intelligence services, 00:54:01.370 --> 00:54:03.740 I’m trapped in an airport that I can’t leave. 00:54:03.740 --> 00:54:07.370 And I spend the next 40 days in this airport 00:54:07.370 --> 00:54:09.540 applying for asylum to countries around the world. 00:54:09.540 --> 00:54:11.810 And this is where the Morales incident 00:54:11.810 --> 00:54:13.780 that you mentioned comes into play. 00:54:15.140 --> 00:54:16.790 Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, 00:54:16.790 --> 00:54:19.650 has been asked about my situation. 00:54:19.650 --> 00:54:22.040 And he said, "Of course, Mr. Snowden is defending 00:54:22.040 --> 00:54:23.480 human rights around the world. 00:54:23.480 --> 00:54:26.350 This guy is not a criminal, and he should be protected. 00:54:26.350 --> 00:54:27.580 It’s not Bolivia’s problem, 00:54:27.580 --> 00:54:29.830 but, you know, if he were in Bolivia, maybe." 00:54:30.700 --> 00:54:33.820 And he had been traveling to Moscow 00:54:34.420 --> 00:54:38.330 for an energy conference there. And as his plane left, 00:54:38.330 --> 00:54:41.050 there was a rumor that I was on board the plane. 00:54:41.050 --> 00:54:44.030 And so Europe closed its airspace 00:54:44.030 --> 00:54:45.730 to his presidential aircraft, 00:54:45.730 --> 00:54:48.410 which is an extraordinary violation 00:54:48.410 --> 00:54:49.970 of international law that’s unprecedented. 00:54:49.970 --> 00:54:53.330 Like, can you imagine Air Force One being grounded 00:54:53.330 --> 00:54:56.780 with the U.S. president on it? And they wouldn’t let it leave. 00:54:56.780 --> 00:54:59.900 It was forced to make an emergency landing in Austria, 00:54:59.900 --> 00:55:03.720 until the U.S. ambassador was able to walk through the plane 00:55:04.480 --> 00:55:07.410 with the Bolivian president to prove that I wasn’t on board. 00:55:07.410 --> 00:55:10.730 Of course, this was an extraordinary insult 00:55:10.730 --> 00:55:14.150 to the whole of Latin America. They were furious about this. 00:55:14.150 --> 00:55:16.040 And it’s after this moment, 00:55:16.040 --> 00:55:17.740 it’s after the U.S. went too far, 00:55:18.710 --> 00:55:21.290 where finally Russia let me out of the airport. 00:55:21.290 --> 00:55:23.000 And I think it was because it had just become 00:55:23.000 --> 00:55:25.310 such a distracting spectacle, that it was now 00:55:25.310 --> 00:55:27.900 affecting Russia’s international relations. 00:55:27.900 --> 00:55:30.090 The reality is, we will probably never know 00:55:30.090 --> 00:55:32.090 what the Russian government’s actual thinking is, 00:55:32.090 --> 00:55:35.480 unless they start writing far more forthcoming memoirs 00:55:35.480 --> 00:55:37.180 than I think any of us expect. 00:55:38.830 --> 00:55:41.120 But when you look at that situation, 00:55:41.120 --> 00:55:43.630 my suspicion is that they realized, 00:55:43.630 --> 00:55:45.979 given Russia’s problematic human rights record, 00:55:46.660 --> 00:55:50.000 this is a rare opportunity for them to do basically nothing 00:55:51.220 --> 00:55:53.750 and yet to end up doing the right thing for the world. 00:55:53.750 --> 00:55:55.650 AMY GOODMAN: Your thoughts, Edward Snowden, 00:55:55.650 --> 00:55:57.350 on President Trump? 00:55:59.560 --> 00:56:00.840 EDWARD SNOWDEN: I’ve said before, 00:56:00.840 --> 00:56:02.490 Donald Trump strikes me as nothing so much 00:56:02.490 --> 00:56:04.240 as a man who has never known a love 00:56:05.660 --> 00:56:07.360 that he hasn’t had to pay for. 00:56:08.130 --> 00:56:09.990 And I think that forms all of his decision making. 00:56:09.990 --> 00:56:13.600 I think that explains all of the things that we see. 00:56:15.090 --> 00:56:18.340 This is someone who sees the world through a prism 00:56:18.340 --> 00:56:21.650 of a very, very sad lens, 00:56:22.810 --> 00:56:29.420 which is that what he is, who he is, does not today, 00:56:29.420 --> 00:56:31.840 and never has and never will, have any value. 00:56:32.520 --> 00:56:36.970 The only thing that matters is what he has, what he can trade. 00:56:38.870 --> 00:56:40.150 And I think that really explains 00:56:40.150 --> 00:56:42.250 all of the transactional corruption 00:56:42.790 --> 00:56:45.280 that we have seen throughout this administration, 00:56:46.010 --> 00:56:49.040 is simply someone who thinks that’s what life is. 00:56:49.560 --> 00:56:52.030 AMY GOODMAN: And finally, your thoughts on President Obama? 00:56:52.030 --> 00:56:54.330 Because your trials and tribulations — 00:56:54.330 --> 00:56:55.990 maybe not trial yet — 00:56:55.990 --> 00:56:58.420 actually occurred through the Obama years. 00:56:59.390 --> 00:57:02.770 EDWARD SNOWDEN: Yeah, I mean, this is a — 00:57:04.080 --> 00:57:06.840 it’s tremendously unpopular, I think, even still today, 00:57:06.840 --> 00:57:08.939 for anybody to say a bad word about Obama, 00:57:09.970 --> 00:57:12.510 because, on balance, when you look at a lot of the things 00:57:12.510 --> 00:57:14.680 that came out of the Obama White House, 00:57:14.680 --> 00:57:17.529 this is a man that I think most believe tried to do good. 00:57:18.900 --> 00:57:21.060 The thing is, some of the things that he failed to do 00:57:21.060 --> 00:57:24.340 were the most consequential moments of his presidency. 00:57:25.470 --> 00:57:29.580 And what we saw is that a young senator, 00:57:29.580 --> 00:57:33.100 who campaigned on a platform of ending mass surveillance, 00:57:33.100 --> 00:57:34.450 saying, "There will be 00:57:34.450 --> 00:57:36.970 no more warrantless wiretapping in the United States. 00:57:36.970 --> 00:57:39.820 That’s not what we do. That’s not who we are," 00:57:40.630 --> 00:57:42.780 once he sat in the chair himself, 00:57:42.780 --> 00:57:44.460 did not extinguish the program; 00:57:44.460 --> 00:57:46.930 rather, he extended and embraced it — 00:57:47.570 --> 00:57:50.290 a president who said he was going to hold 00:57:50.290 --> 00:57:52.560 Bush-era officials to the account of the law 00:57:53.100 --> 00:57:57.010 and make sure that there was accountability for those 00:57:57.010 --> 00:58:00.210 who had engaged in war crimes, for those who had tortured, 00:58:00.210 --> 00:58:02.060 and then very quickly abandoned that. 00:58:04.080 --> 00:58:07.170 I’m not going to say why, because I don’t know. 00:58:07.170 --> 00:58:08.400 I think that’s something 00:58:08.400 --> 00:58:11.100 that he’s going to have to answer to history. 00:58:11.100 --> 00:58:17.060 But I think our country has very much, I think, 00:58:17.060 --> 00:58:19.560 experienced the consequences of those decisions. 00:58:20.160 --> 00:58:22.700 AMY GOODMAN: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, 00:58:22.700 --> 00:58:25.240 his new memoir, Permanent Record. 00:58:25.240 --> 00:58:29.010 Watch Part 1 of our discussion with him on our website 00:58:29.010 --> 00:58:30.720 at democracynow.org, 00:58:30.720 --> 00:58:33.550 where Snowden condemns President Trump’s mistreatment 00:58:33.550 --> 00:58:34.990 of the anonymous whistleblower 00:58:34.990 --> 00:58:38.000 who helped spur the Democrats’ impeachment effort. 00:58:38.000 --> 00:58:41.820 The Department of Justice has also sued Edward Snowden 00:58:41.820 --> 00:58:43.660 for the royalties of the 00:59:00.540 --> 00:59:02.240 book.