Massie and John Conyers on NSA spying, part 2

Aug 2, 2013 · 15:31 surveillance fourth-amendment

The rest of the Democracy Now interview: what Congress can do to stop bulk collection, and why a bipartisan group is forming to do it.

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by the famous Russian poet novelist singer songwriter bulat uh Oka this is democracy Now democracynow.org The War and Peace report I'm Amy Goodman we're
going to turn now to uh Tom to Edward Snowden in his own words uh in his first interview with the Guardian newspaper
Edward Snowden described why he risked his career to leak the documents I think that the public has owed an explanation of the motivations behind the people who
make these disclosures that are outside of the democratic model when you are subverting the power of government that that's a fundamentally dangerous thing
to democracy and if you do that in secret consistently you know as the government does uh when it wants to benefit from a secret action that it
took uh it'll kind of give it its officials a mandate to go hey you know tell the Press about this thing and that thing so the public is on our side but
they rarely if ever do that when an abuse occurs that falls to uh individual citizens but they're typically maligned
you know it becomes a thing of these people are against the country they're against the government but I'm not I'm I'm no different from anybody else I
don't have special skills uh I'm just another guy who sits there dayto day in the office watches what happening what's happening and goes this is something
that's not our place to decide the public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong and I'm willing to go on the record to
defend the off authenticity of them and say I didn't change these I didn't modify the story this is the truth this is what's happening you should decide
whether we need to be doing this that's Edward Snowden in his own words again he has left the Russian airport um he has been granted temporary Asylum by Russia
for a year um the reports are though um it is not known where he is right now that uh he met Americans online who
offered uh that he could stay with them and it's beli that's where he is right now though we don't know all the details we're joined by Republican Congress member Thomas Massie of Kentucky and
Democratic Congress member John Conor ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee you know in a lot of the media a tremendous amount is made of how Republicans and Democrats are not
cooperating at all right now complete breakdown on Capitol Hill but here you both are Congress members Massie and Kanor standing together and it's not
just the two of you you're not outliers uh this legislation the growing uh uh democ ratic Republican criticism of the
intelligence State now is increasing and I was wondering uh uh Congress member Massie if you could explain what the next step is um you have the amendment
that was defeated by just a few votes to stop the funding of the NSA spying on American phone calls what is HR 2399
what's the next step well U I'm not sure what the number is but there's a bill called The Liberty Act that's a very good bill that I believe uh Congressman Conor is on in
Justin amamos that U would raise the threshold and re require that there's some Reasonable Suspicion articulable
Reasonable Suspicion and also would give us more transparency Congress more transparency into the uh goings on of the FIS court that that bill we're
hoping because of the public uh outcry we'll get a hearing at least in the Jud Judiciary Committee and it should uh possibly get a hearing in the
intelligence committee and that's what we need we need more hearings on this hopefully a markup and and bring that bill you know this measure barely failed
the amendment barely failed by seven votes I think if the vote were today and the members who voted no could do it over I think this this amendment would
pass because they misjudge the public outcry on this issue and you you played a tape of Mr Snowden and he the one thing he said that I do agree with is
that the public deserves to know about this program and the public does know about it the public knows how their members voted last week and um that will
give us the momentum to get these Standalone bills like the Liberty Act passed uh congressmember con 2399 can you explain the new Standalone Bill
you're co-sponsoring well what what we're really trying to do is make sure that uh
there's relevancy observed and and and that it's made clear that we cannot massively
collect metadata on everybody in the country this is what's alarming people and this is why uh we have the wind at
our backs now because people are concerned about it during the August recess uh there will be Town Hall
meetings all over the place on this uh and uh people will be learning what we couldn't have learned otherwise now uh
the person that leaked it maybe a an overzealous uh leaker uh I don't I don't
think he had criminal motives but he sure violated the law uh and the Judiciary Committee uh uh which I think
our chairman goodl will be willing to hold these hearings in the fall when we come back to tighten up the law and make
it clear uh that that if a person is is uh not involved in any uh suspicious
activity they shouldn't be their names or their phone numbers shouldn't be collected I want to turn to NSA director Keith Alexander speaking last year at the
Aspen security Forum he was questioned by NBC's Pete Williams about the nsa's collection of data on Americans I want to ask you one other question about
privacy and this read to you a statement from a former NSA employee named William Benny who recently told a hackers conference that the NSA is putting
together dossier on every US citizen listing who we have relations with what our activities are is there any truth to that and why do stories like this
persist that you're spying on all of us yeah first of all it's not true we aren't we aren't putting dosier up on
every system every US citizen in fact we don't have a dossier and you I've never seen one of your emails um from an from
an intelligence perspective or otherwise actually uh so from my perspective these are grossly out of the truth they really are
to think that we would be collecting on every us person one that would be against the law two we get great oversight by all branches of the
government you know I must have been bad when I was a kid we get supervised by the defense department I'm not just the general counsel by the dni their general
counsel so they see everything that we do by uh the justice department by the White House by Congress hipsy and
by the court so all branches of government can see that what we're doing is correct and so my concern is that
false statements like these seem to persist and you see those bounce around and it only hurts because people think well they must have something there and
there must be some element of Truth there and from my perspective when when you walk all the way through this the reality is Congress knows we're not doing
that uh all branches of our government see that we're not doing it and all of them can audit it so from from my perspective it's you know one of I would
add that to Bill mccraven not only should we stop leaks but we should stop reporting that's not is clearly not right Congress member Kanor is your
response to that's the director of the NSA General Keith Alexander well uh Mr Alexander told so
many Whoppers in one statement that it's hard to recount them all uh first of all this information isn't available to
anybody we only got it through a person that took it improperly and and made it public so the
whole idea that they're not doing this uh I I hope that uh well I don't suppose he can uh announce a a way to modify
what he said but it's clearly untruthful from beginning to end Congress member Massie I'd like you also to respond and also just as the the Dem the Obama
Administration brought out the Heavy Hitters to defeat any kind of curtailing of uh of um the nsa's uh spying
mechanism last week um The Establishment Republicans almost came out you're a new Congress member you were elected in 2012
you have for example Senator McCain hitting uh the lot of you very hard who are saying that the NSA has to be um
what they're doing has to be modified and surveilled itself well um let me go back to whether these people should keep their jobs or
not um you could probably parse General Keith Alexander's words and and somebody could argue that um he wasn't lying but
I would say that he was definitely misleading the public on that issue but the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was here in March and
unambiguously lied to Congress and I I believe he was under oath and it really set a bad precedent for the whole organization to let him keep his post I
think he should be relieved of his post for lying to Congress he could have picked other words to say he could have said that I can't comment on that instead he chose to lie to us in a
hearing uh could he be brought up on charges of perjury well look if this were any American citizen or civilian they would
certainly be prosecuted for what he just did at a minimum he should lose his his post do you agree with that Congress
member Conyers yes ma'am I do completely uh and I think we're now at the point of
uh having a more honest disclosure of uh what's going on in our intelligence Community uh which we now
find uh was very deliberately uh ignoring part of the law that they knew perfectly well they were
violating uh just a point of History Roger Clemens was brought up on perjury charges for lying to Congress in 2008 around steroids I mean this seems to be
a key area in fact Clapper himself admitted um that he did not tell the truth look um if we accept the premise
that it's okay for government to lie to us or for one branch of the government to lie to the other branch of the government in order to protect our Public Safety then we've crossed the
threshold we cannot accept that it's okay for government to lie to us to protect us yes we can't turn into a surveillance State uh trying to uh
protect uh these kinds of uh conduct that we all know is improper and probably
illegal um do you sense something very different than we're getting in the media that there is a bipartisan convergence now
that's happening that isn't getting reported that the Obama Administration is deeply concerned about and do you have a sense that they are shifting here
that they're feeling the pressure I I think that they might be because uh I was in the white house
yesterday full disclosure and uh the president of the United States uh said said that he was going to give me a call
and uh I'll be looking forward to that call and it's they they know that things are happening but you know we frequently
work together on issues but they don't get reported or disclosed there there is uh
bipartisanship uh at times uh we're trying to improve it and uh I think I think that we're moving into a a a
better environment in the House of Representatives I I agree and I can also say that yesterday we were briefed uh in
a classified briefing by General Keith Alexander and his tone seemed to be a lot more consiliary and a lot more open because they realize if they're going to
keep these programs around or some form of these programs they've got a public relations problem to deal with and relations problem with Congress both
parties of Congress exactly before we go Congress member Conor I wanted to ask you about Detroit and the Declaration of bankruptcy um do
you feel the federal government do you feel the federal government should bail out Detroit now well I don't I don't know if we're
in a position to do that what we're doing in the Michigan Congressional Delegation Democratic is looking at a
whole list of programs that would assist Detroit and what we're trying to determine is whether we've received
whether we've applied for them first and secondly uh whether uh uh uh there's any
uh possibility of benefiting from them and the thing that we're most concerned about is protecting the pensions of
those people who've worked 30 40 years years for the city and uh fortunately pensions are constitutionally protected
in the Michigan Constitution and again we have bipartisan support the Attorney General of Michigan a republican has come out in
support of protecting the pensions so we're we're we're down but we're not out and we're going to rise
again well I want to thank you both very much for being with us Republican Congress member Thomas Massie of Kentucky elected in 2012 democratic
Congress member John Conor's ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee and we will certainly continue to follow the legislation that you are um
introducing this is democracy Now democracynow.org the Warren peace report we'll be back in a minute [Music]

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