video blogs and extras. that's it for "the lead." i leave you now in the very capable hands of one mr. wolf blitzer next door in the situation room. jake, thanks very much. shy and always on his computer is how one person describes the man behind one of the biggest leaks in the history of u.s. and hero or traitor? it's the debating raging around the world. our own jeffrey toobin has some very strong views on this. he's standing by live. and details on a million dollar scam targeting justin bieber's tour. i'm wolf blitzer. you're in "the situation room." the whereabouts of the man

behind one of the biggest leaks in history of u.s. intelligence now unknown. many are divided right now over whether edward snowden is a traitor, who seriously endangered u.s. national security or a hero defending privacy. our brian todd is in front of snowden's mother home in maryland and has been talking to people in the neighborhood where he once lived. brian, what are you discovering? >> reporter: wolf, we've got new information tonight about this man at the center of the nsa leaks. we've learned more about his motivation, about his background and from here about the people he left behind. described as shy and self-effacing, the man who said he was the source of leaks detailing massive u.s. surveillance perhaps tells the guardian newspaper why he did it. he says, quote, i'm not different than anyone else.

>> i'm just another guy who sits there day to day in the office watching what's happening and goes this is something that's not our place toi itdecide. the public needs to decide whether these policies are right or wrong. >> reporter: snowden said that from a hotel in hong kong, after leaving his girl friend in hawaii. edward snowden told "the guardian" the only thing he fears is the harmful effects of this on his family, some of whom he said work for the u.s. government. we've confirmed his mother works here at the u.s. district court courthouse in baltimore, maryland with the title of chief deputy clerk of information technology and innovative services. elizabeth snowden did not return our calls and e-mail. outside her home in baltimore, she was no more eager to speak to reporters. cnn has learned snowden went to

elementary and middle school in krofton, maryland. according to the guardian, he never got a high school degree. he enlisted in the army in 2004, was discharged the same year. he told "the guardian," it was because he broke his legs in a training accident. he told the newspaper he was able to land tech jobs with the cia and later the nsa and he moved up quickly. that surprises a neighbor of snowden's mother who saw snowden's mother on occasion at the mother's condo. >> when you say hi to him, he'll say hi but he's always looking down, he's not looking at you. it's like he doesn't make e eye contact. i could see him out my window and see him on the computer. >> he told "the guardian" he had high hopes when president said he would have a more transparent

administration. snowden tells "the guardian" he hopes for asylum in iceland. >> and now his mother and sister are going to have repercussions because of this. >> now, people who appear to be law enforcement officers did make an appearance here at the mother's house earlier today. cnn has also learned that investigators visited the girl friend before she left hawaii. we at cnn have tried at various places to make contact with the girl friend but so far we have been unable to. wolf? >> there are some interesting details, brian, he's given about how he departed from his girl friend, made his exit from hawaii to hong kong. update our viewers. >> reporter: he told "the guardian" newspaper he started planning about this about three weeks ago and told his employers he needed to be away for a couple of weeks to receive

treatment for epilepsy and that he told his girl friend in most recent days before he left for hong kong he just needed to be away for a few weeks. it was assumed because of the nature of his job that he could be vague and maybe she'd think nothing of it and that's how he left. >> let's talk about the political impact of all of this. joining us, our chief political analyst gloria borger and reporter john king. how should he be dealing with this latest disclosure? >> this is a president who is dealing with issues he never thought he would have to deal with with drones, surveillance, leaks. but when you continue some of the policies of george w. bush, you'll have some of the same questions raised about them. i would argue this is a moment now that the president has said and he said this last friday that he welcomed the discussion on these kinds of surveillance issues, i think he ought to

actually lead the discussion. i think he ought to get out there, speak with the american public, say not on why this kind of surveillance is defensible but why he thinks it is essential in a post 9/11 world and lay it out there for the american people within the strictures of what he can say given the classified nature of the program. >> presumably he'd have to declassify more sensitive information. >> over the weekend they did declassify a little information so the intelligence agency could disclaim was right and who has access to the data and what are they grabbing? but the president has to do this. they're going to push to charge and ext, extradite mr. snowden. congress is about to go home for the summer, wolf. we're moving from june toward july. if the president wants to get things, done, a, he should start picking this evenings the republicans share the interest, even though they don't agree with him, things like

immigration reform. but if you go back jus to may, his speech at the national defense university, that was to talk about drones. he laid more of it out and tried to explain it. candidate obama said he was going to have his attorney general scrub everything was bush was doing and throw out anything that was invading civil liberties. but it's his own base. you have rob paul, rand paul, you'dal and widen and a libertarian saying let's have a public debate about this. if the president doesn't try to get ahead of it, he'll be dragged along with. >> and we believe that president obama beliefs in the power of a well timed speech. the american public is on his side on this. >> we just got these pew research center poll numbers and nsa tracking millions of americans acceptable or not

acceptable? 56 say acceptable, 41 say not acceptable. that's an impressive majority. >> it's an impressive majority but it doesn't mean people don't want their government to be held accountable and are doing things in the appropriate way. when you add it to the questions about the irs and who do you trust? the president certainly among democrats is the most liked democrat. among independents it's -- >> right. >> but if he doesn't get out and say here's why i'm doing this, you need to trust me, then it does open it to questions. >> the president said last week nobody is eavesdropping on your phone calls. he has to explain that because -- he said he had the wherewithal and even perhaps the authority to go into your e-mails and to listen to your phone calls, that he could potentially do that. and i was talking to some intelligence sources today who

said he absolutely did the no have the authority. could be like saying if you have a gun saying you have the authority to shoot somebody. you don't, just because you have that tool. >> the other question in the few research center poll, investigating terrorism even if it intrudes on your privacy? the public at least on this one pole, it's impressive. >> that's held relatively steady since 9/11. >> thanks very much. just ahead at the top the hour, we'll have a special edition of "the situation room," traitor or hero, inside the nas leak. our own jeffrey toobin says snowden is no hero and needs to

be in jail. and how a justin bieber tour cost one man $1 million. ♪ norfolk southern what's your function? ♪

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my ambulance talks with smoke alarms and pilots and stadiums. but, of course, it's a good listener too. [ female announcer ] today cisco is connecting the internet of everything. so everything works like never before. across the internet people are taking sides over edward snowden. dozens of sites have popped up criticizing him. here's the question, is he a hero or is he a traitor? we're joined by jeffrey toobin and kathleen, i'll start with you. do you think he broke the law? >> whether or not he broke the law is a less important question than whether or not the government broke the law when it spied on millions of americans that suspected no wrong doing.

>> do you regard him as a hero? >> i think it's very courageous in this climate of an unprecedented crackdown and a war on information, a crackdown on disclosures of information for anybody to consider making a whistle blowing disclosure, which is what he made, because it reasonably evidences government waste, fraud, abuse, mismanagement, illegality or threat to public safety. >> i'll take that as a yes. jeffrey, you disagree. >> every 29-year-old who doesn't great with what the government is doing doesn't get permission to break the law, damage national security and run off to china when he's done. it's not the way you protest in the united states. there are ways to do it. i'm not sure this government program is a good program. but stealing documents from the nsa and turning them over to

glenn greenwald is not the american way and i think it's a disgrace what he's done. >> go ahead, kathleen. >> that's obviously one opinion but unfortunately those legal channels that mr. toobin referenced are not effective. you can ask some other nsa whistleblowers, that clients of ours who raised concerns years ago about this same exact kind of surveillance. not only were their concerns ignored, they were prosecuted under the espionage act. until we know what happened there, the prosecution collapsed under the weight of the truth. to say there are internal channels that are effective and that are safe is completely false. that's just not the case. >> just because you don't like a government policy doesn't mean you get to win when you fight the policy. there are lots of responsible people in this government, senator udall, senator merkley,

people who are upset can join with them. but you don't get to just disclose it on your own and then run off to china. this is a guy who is concerned about free speech and he goes to china? a country that represses more free speech in an hour than at united states does in a year? >> i think he explained why he went to hong kong. i think focusing on him is a transparent distraction from where the focus should be, which is on the message, on his disclosures. i think there's some clear confusion here about what a whistleblowing disclosure is. what mr. snowden disclosed is not a policy debate, it's evidence of government illegality. >> he exposed a court order which said they had authority to do it. i don't see how -- >> section 215 of -- >> that may be a bad program

but -- i'm sorry, go ahead. >> sense 215 of the patriot act requires every investigation that has information that's collected under that act be related to international terrorism or stopping counterintelligence. that said, he doesn't even have to be right about the illegality to be a legitimate whistleblower. all he needs to have is a reasonable belief and reasonable people do believe there is debate here. reasonable people do believe there is a chance that this is illegal because those reasonable people include senators ron widen of oregon and mark udahl who raise serious concerns about them. >> they certainly do. and they may even be right. we are here, the reason we're here is we're talking about what he did and what he did --e

wasn't a whistleblower. whistleblowing has a specific legal definition and there are legal ways to be a whist whistleblower. giving documents to glenn greenwald and running off to chinese are not legitimate ways. >> they have to -- this was not authorized by the government for him to release that kind of information. so clearly he broke that confidentiality, that agreement that he signed when he went to work for the government. kathleen? >> i'm having a little trouble with the ear piece. i want to say secrecy agreements are contracts. if we're talking about a breach of contract here, we should be

talking about the contract that was breached with the american people when the government started spying on millions of them when no suspicion of wrong doing. >> but there are criminal penalties that you pay if you violate that confidentiality agreement. >> i think she's having trouble hearing me. >> wolf, if i can just talk about these agreements, you know, they are not allowed -- there's no provision in these agreements that if you don't like what the government's doing you get to decide unilaterally as a 29-year-old expert in precisely nothing, that you get to go disclose all this information because you happen not to like the government policy. i mean, you can't have a government that functions that way. >> that's always the argument that's thrown up against every whist whistleblower in the history of the united states. >> it's a good argument. >> it's not a good argument because it distracting from the actual message, which is why is

the government spying on all of these people? we're not here because of something that mr. snowden did. we're here because of something the government did, which is monitor innocent americans' communications and do so in a way that was so alarming that even two senators who knew everything about the program said that americans would be shocked and angry when they found out and one american was shocked and angry and that was mr. snowden and he decided to do something about that. i think that's courageous, especially considering the obama administration's unprecedented crackdown on free speech and on whistleblowers. >> i have to leave it there, guys. just to be precise, senator wyden and udahl, neither has justified releasing classified information to the press, right >> i think they don't need to justify releasing classified

information to the press. >> information classified to cover up governor wrong doing is not legitimate classified information. >> i wrote about this on new yorker.com today and believe me, most of the people on twitter are attacking the heck out of me. most people agree with kathleen at least, if you believe my twitter feed. >> it's an excellent column. you had a good debate. the debate, i suspect, only just beginning. guys, thanks very much for coming in. just ahead, at the top of the hour here a special hour of "the situation room" right at 6:00 p.m. eastern. much more, traitor or hero, inside the nsa leak, we're going in depth at the top of the hour. >> coming up, a surprise more at hillary clinton. even president obama is commenting. plus new software and a surprise from the people at apple. lots of news happening today right here in "the situation room." a friend under water is something completely different.

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he were's a look at some of the other stories we're monitoring right now in the situation. the philadelphia district attorney says a grand jury will investigate wednesday's deadly building collapse to determine whether anyone besides a crane operator will face criminal charges. the operator has been arrested and charged with six counts of involuntary manslaughter and 13 counts of recklessly endangering a person. officials say he was under theith thenthe influence of a controlled substance.

>> george zimmerman faces second degree murder charges for the killing of trayvon martin. 200 potential jurors were called to court today. another 100 will be called in tomorrow, wednesday and thursday. >> apple rolled out its new products today. they include completely redesigned operating systems for the iphone and ipad, and a streaming music service called iradio. the biggest surprise may be it's a new line of mac book pro computers that will be assembled here in the united states. apple stocks closed about 1% lower. >> hillary clinton just joined twitter. her first tweet thanked a couple of peeples who set up the page. clinton describes herself, among other things, a pants suit o

afficionado. >> justin bieber's overseas concert ended up costing one man $1 million. and also, this looks like this week could be decisive for president obama and u.s. policy. my mother made the best toffee in the world.

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washington. major decisions on the table. >> plus, the disturbing past of the man blamed for the latest deadly rampage at a u.s. school. i'm wolf blitzer in washington. you're in "the situation room." just the mention of the name justin bieber and people start opening up their wallets, stooms without even asking questions. as gary tuchman reports, a california investor has a million reasons to regret hooking up with the concert promoter who turned out to be a con man. >> reporter: to todd weinberg, a wealthy investors and entrepreneur from northern california, 22-year-old walid ahmad was the picture of success, so he felt very comfortable trusting the young man with his money, a lot of his money. after all, ahmad was the toast of norway, where the press hailed him as an innovative

genius for supposedly inventing a solar energy cover that could charge iphones. the norwegian government put up this video of ahmad and his business partner to show off his invention. >> walid is supposedly a celebrity in norway. they call him the mark zuckerberg of norway. >> reporter: and then there are the pictures with famous people, from royalty to business leaders. >> we have kofi annan here, ted turner, crown prince and princess of norway. >> and this letter of thanks from barack obama, from whom he claimed to be the norwegian election chairman. not on did ahmad brag he posed for pictures with the queen of

jordan, it wasn't a stretch that he could be managing the concert tore for none other than justin bieber. it all started with a call weinberg received from a good friend in the music industry. >> he said he had come across an opportunity through his group and he runs in circles down in los angeles that are legit. >> reporter: weinberg was told about this young whiz kid named walid ahmad. >> walid was said to have paid $4.5 million to the rights to his management. >> it all started to sound real to weinberg. weinberg was asked to invest a million dollars, with $850,000 going directly to ahmad so he could secure concert venues. the rest of the money went to two california management money

at that ahmad had brought in to manage the concerts. >> i was told that i would get a percentage of the ticket sales and the ticket sales were significant. i mean, it could be a 10x return on my money. >> you thought could you have gotten $10 million for your $1 million investment. >> that was conceivable. >> in his e-mails ahmad was reassuring writing "the most important thing for me is that everything is clean and based on a relationship." were you suspicious at all in the beginning? >> i was suspicious in the beginning and as a result i had a lot of stipulations -- i needed a lot of answers to my questions. >> reporter: and ahmad apparently had no problem providing them. the team had no problem meeting at this restaurant and answering them. >> he was prada and gucci head to toe. he was a nice guy but had an edge and bit of arrogance to

him. >> reporter: weinberg now the the meeting was impressive. one of the people he met that day was the 2011 miss finland, who was going to promote the bieber concerts. to further convince weinberg, ahmad arranged a conference call with a person weinberg was told was a top member of bieber's management group. but it wasn't long before things started to unravel. >> we start getting word from norway from one of our contacts there, i think the justin bieber tickets have actually gone on sale and it's sold out. >> reporter: and these were the tickets you were preparing to sell? >> absolutely. we're thinking that's impossible. >> reporter: there were never going to be any tickets. it was all a con job orchestrated by walid ahmad. weinberg was frantic. he calls the fbi. ahmad had flown back to norway

where he posed for these photos and then made what would be a fateful choice. he flew back to san francisco for one more meeting with weinberg. weinberg now wired by the fbi convinced ahmad to talk to him about the bieber deal. this is where the end game began. had is the exact spot with todd weinberg sat with his hidden microphone looking directly in the eyes of the man who stole his million dollars. ahmad gave weinberg a sob story that his wife was ruined and then he alarmed weinberg by adding he was going to start over, not in norway but in pakistan. >> i'm thinking there's no way i'll see this kid again. he'll be gone, my money's gone, it's over. >> reporter: the fbi made the decision the time had come to pounce, one day after the meeting and then for a flight to

afghanistan and then to pakistan. but just before he was about to board the plane, the fbi arrested him. the former miss finland said she had no idea what ahmad was up to either. martin luther king iii said he vaguely remembers getting his picture taken with him but does not know him. >> he used my contacts for things that i didn't know about. nor did he ever discuss with me. the first i heard from this was when he'd been aprrrested and h lawyer called me and told me what he'd been charged with. my first reaction was there must be some misunderstanding. >> reporter: but there is no misunderstanding. today ahmad has traded louis vuitton for prison garb in los

angeles. ahmad refused to talk to cnn. todd weinberg, at least for now, hasn't gotten any of his money back. >> it's all that i've got not to get on an airplane and go to the prison and sit across from him and ask him why, why would you do this? >> ahmad is to be sentenced tomorrow. the government is asking for a term of eight years saying ahmad show no remorse and has an history of defrauding people. >> opponents of the united states gaining the upper hand in syria. they could force president obama to make a decision later this week. and disturbing new details about the latest gunman in a school massacre. i want to make things more secure.

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this could be a very decisive week for president obama and syria. a high level source tells me strident anti-american proxies are coming in and taking over important parts of the country, fighters supported by hezbollah, iran and anti-militias coming in from iraq. they seem to be gaining the upper hand on the rebels and it seems to be getting to the point that assad's regime may be nothing more than a facade.

cnn reporter jill doherty has this. >> reporter: the obama administration is facing the unnerving possibility that president bashar al assad's forces are turning the tide against the opposition. it's really bad one source tells cnn. is it fatal? we don't know. >> they've been pouring in from syria, shiite fighters from hezbollah, which the u.s. considers a terrorist organization, from iran, u.n. training experts, from iraq, shiite militia. >> hezbollah and help from iran had a dramatic impact on helping the regime. >> there's no question

opposition fighters need a lot more weapons and ammunition. a sign of the seriousness of the situation, secretary of state john kerry cancelled a trip to the middle east to have meetings at the white house. also on the table, a possible no-fly zone but that scenario officials tell cnn is less likely. the question now, one official says, at what point is the situation so bad that we have to do something different from what we have been doing? until now the focus was on forcing president assad to step down. now there's a new calculation. >> what is much more serious is what happens if assad stays. because assad is now tied to support from iran. far more it and ever before. assad is now tied to support

from hezbollah in lebanon. there is a serious question as to what iraq's role has been. >> reporter: and there's no debate in the administration, wolf, about how bad the situation is but the question officials are telling us is what is president obama going to do about it. >> that's why this week could be decisive if he makes those decisions and we anticipate these meetings will be critically important. jill, thanks very much for that report. when we come back, we're learning more about the suspect in that deadly santa monica shooting rampage and the troubled past that might have motivated him to kill. plus, a special edition of "the situation room" coming up at the top of the hour. traitor or hero? inside the nsa leak. ♪ build! we're investing big to keep our country in the lead. ♪ load! we keep moving to deliver what you need. and that means growth, lots of cargo going all around the globe. cars and parts, fuel and steel, peas and rice, hey that's nice!

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we're getting answers today about the man blamed for the latest shooting rampage in a u.s. school. investigatorsay john zawahri killed his father, brother and three others before police killed him friday in the library at santa monica college. casey is keeping up with the latest revelations. what is going on now, casey? >> reporter: life at santa monica college is slowly returning to normal but there's lots of questions that remain about the shooter who terrorized this campus friday. it's often said that pictures don't lie. well, john zawahri's driver's license photo certainly doesn't square with this image of a hulking gunman in combat gear,

carrying enough weapons and ammunition to kill hundreds of people. >> i'll never forget >> i'll never forget his eyes. >> reporter: this is his yearbook. he attended santa monica college, where his shooting rampage ended after police shot him dead a day before his 24th birthday. a neighbor of the zawahris described the family as friendly but troubled. >> there was a bitter divorce. when the kids were minors, they split custody between the two parents. when they got to be an adult, one child went to live with mother and the other boys stayed living here. >> reporter: here was the house where zawahri's father and brother were shot. zawahri had suffered mental health issues and was hospitalized a few years ago after allegedly talking about harming someone. a law enforcement source told cnn. >> the police department did have contact with this individual in 2006. however, because the individual was a juvenile at the time, i'm

not at libber toy d eerty to di circumstances of that. >> reporter: an autopsy is planned for monday. that's not likely to provide any clear answers as to why he killed his father, his brother, three strangers and tried to kill many others. police continue to investigate the motive behind yet another young man's deadly shooting spree, wolf. >> he had a lot of ammunition, as you point out as well. thanks very much, casey wian reporting. amid all the new fallout from the nsa leaks, other scandals are brewing, including the growing battle between lawmakers inside the irs targeting investigation. our chief congressional correspondent dana bash is here in the situation room working this story. seems to be intensifying. >> it does, but remember, last weekend, right in this very studio on cnn's "state of the union", the republican chair of the house oversight committee made waves by seeming to make a

conclusion in this investigation before finishing it. just yesterday, his democratic counterpart kind of did the same thing. but after a month of investigating, we've been digging and talking to the investigators, and it actually appears they agree on more than meets the eye. two sundays in a row, two different political parties, two very different takes on the status of their bipartisan irs investigation. >> based upon everything i've seen, the case is solved, and if it were me, i would wrap this case up and move on. >> this is a problem that was coordinated, in all likelihood, right out of washington headquarters, and we're getting to proving it. >> the republican takeaway from interviews with irs employees in cincinnati is that tax attorneys at irs headquarters in washington were heavy handed, and may have contributed to inappropriate questions to tea party groups and unacceptable delays in their tax exempt applications. democrats involved in the same irs interviews getting the same

answers say there's no evidence washington was involved when problematic questionnaires were sent to tea party groups. despite that divide, believe it or not, there is bipartisan agreement on a major issue. sources in both parties tell cnn that so far, they have found no evidence tea party targeting was politically motivated, and it's not just that. republicans tell us they agree with something democrat elijah cummings revealed to cnn's candy crowley. >> he was a 21-year veteran of the irs, and he was -- he described himself in the interviews in response to a republican attorney's questions as a conservative republican. >> reporter: the reason that irs screening manager in cincinnati gave for flagging that first tea party group was to get guidance from higher ups on how much political activity is too much to still be granted tax exempt

status. >> in his interview, he said over and over again, i want it to be consistent. and so that's how all of this got started. >> reporter: despite agreement in several key areas, politics persists. republicans clearly think the irs issue resonates with voters, launching this new video. >> the first amendment rights are being violated. >> talking to congressional investigators, in both parties, one thing is abundantly clear, this whole tea party mess reveals a bureaucratic mess that is worse than people fear about the government and the big agencies. it kind of makes you want to put your money under the mattress and go live in the woods. >> we're not going to do that. >> we're not going to do it, but it's tempting. >> thanks very much. stay with us for a special edition of "the situation room" coming up at the top of the hour. we're on the trail of edward snowden, from his boyhood home in maryland to hawaii, now to

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sand. we have the story of a deer that got its head stuck in -- well, take a look. >> reporter: a deer stuck in a bag. a deer stuck in a jar. a kitty stuck in a hole. this is the story of critters in over their heads in. this case, in a doritos bag. a sheriff's deputy on patrol spotted this deer at the side of the rid, after midnight down in the florida keys. >> i suspect that the deer was just trying to get to that last dorito in the bag. >> reporter: and this deer didn't just go for a bag of regular doritos. judging from the color of the packaging, the green is a giveaway that the deer was hankering for chili lemon chips. the animal was passive as the deputy pulled off the bag, and then it scampered away. >> save all the lives in the world, nobody pays attention. and then you remove a bag from a deer's heads and it's all over the country. >> reporter: at least this deer in minnesota could see, but it couldn't eat or drink.

it kept showing up in janet murphy's yard with its head stuck in a plastic jar. janet turned to help from wild woods. they showed her how to use a pole. janet managed to get the loop around the jar. >> the apparatus tightened up. the deer stood up, started jumping around. it was a little bit of a rodeo. >> reporter: the struggle lasted a few minutes. >> eventually she just gave it one hard tug and the jar came off the deer's head. >> the deer seemed dazed after days without a drink and it headed for water. is this what they mean by curiosity killed the cat? don't worry, in this case, it wasn't fatal. this kitty in oregon was found with her head stuck in a hole under an air-conditioning unit. >> she was tranquilized and relaxed, we were able to push her back through the hole. we had to jimmy a rope around her to pull her down to a bigger hole. >> they finally popped her out. she was uninjured.

she'll be put up for adoption. one lesson from these jarring images is that when people litter, animals are left holding the bag, even a bag of doritos. welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. i'm wolf blitzer in washington. this is "the situation room" special report. traitor or hero? inside the nsa leak. we're on the trail of the man who admits he exposed some of america's top secret spying programs. this hour, we have new details about edward snowden, his life, his motives, and his great escape. we're in hong kong, where snowden has been in hiding planning his next move, while u.s. officials seek justice and privacy advocates cheer him on. plus, the curious debate over one of the worst intelligence leaks in u.s. history. did snowden put americans in danger, or defend their rights?

right now, former intelligence contract worker edward snowden is a wanted man, even though he hasn't been charged with any crime yet. it's been less than 24 hours since he was publicly identified. he talked openly to the newspaper "the guardian" about leaking details of the u.s. government's classified surveillance programs, calling them a threat to americans' freedom. >> the nsa specifically targets the communications of everyone. it ingests them by default. it collects them in its system and it filters them and analyzes them and measures them and it stores them for periods of time, simply because that's the easiest, most efficient, and most valuable way to achieve it. while they may be intending to target someone associated with a foreign government or someone that they suspect of terrific, they're collecting your

communications to do so. >> snowden apparently had been planning to drop that bombshell for some time, fleeing from a life he describes as paradise to a hide-out in hong kong. we have in-depth coverage of his journey, the secrets he exposed, and his possible punishment. anna is standing by in hong kong. brian todd is in maryland. let's go to miguel marquez, he's in hawaii right now where snowden was living until a few weeks ago. what are you learning? >> reporter: typically, we are good as reporters at finding out information about people but snowden left a very small digital footprint. bedid find out something about his politics. in 2012, he gave to the ron paul political campaign. this as we're finding out about his last days in hawaii. it was this quiet honolulu suburb where edward snowden lived with his girlfriend for a year. can you believe that he's involved in this?

>> i wouldn't believe it. somebody come in here this morning and say your next door neighbor did something about the government leaking information. i said what? >> reporter: he was working here, the honolulu office of government contractor and global consulta consultant. he had been there less than three months. >> over time, that awareness of wrong doing sort of builds up and you feel compelled to talk bette, and the more you talk about it, the more you're ignored, the more you're told it's not a problem, until eventually you realize that these things need to be determined by the public, not by somebody who was simply hired by the government. >> reporter: snowden told the garden he -- the guardian he had copied documents. we know he asked for time off and moved out of his home here in early may. he told his boss he needed a couple of weeks off for medical

treatment as he suffered from epilepsy. he left hawaii for hong kong on may 20th. it appears no one was the wiser about snowden's abrupt departure. last wednesday, police came to his home to check on his welfare, as he had not reported back to work. they found an empty house cleaned and prepped for sale. last wednesday, putting it on the market, police show up. tell me about that? >> well, they just came to the door and they asked if i knew where the former tenant was, and that he was missing from work and he had a medical condition, and that was all. it just seemed like a missing persons type of a thing. >> reporter: the following day thursday, london's "guardian" newspaper leaks the news, but it wasn't until snowden declared himself the source of the documents that anyone knew what he was up to. now, there is one small inconsistency with what snowden

told "the guardian." he left hawaii for good on the 20th of may. he told his girlfriend he was leaving for two weeks and that he'd be back apparently, but it raises the question, why is the house empty? where were all the boxes that neighbors say were inside of his garage? where has all his stuff gone and why did his girlfriend then leave hawaii as well, back to the mainland, expecting him back in two weeks? >> and we haven't been in touch with the girlfriend, is that right? >> reporter: we have not been in touch with the girlfriend. her father has spoken to us. he says she is on the west coast visiting friends and will return home soon. but it still isn't clear how it is that she's left hawaii without any real understanding of when he was coming back. it is a big question, one of many questions still out there about mr. snowden. we understand that law enforcement have talked to her two times already. wolf? >> i'm sure they'll be speaking to her a little bit more down the road. thanks very much for that. let's go to maryland right now,

edward snowden's family lives there. that's where he spent a lot of time. brian todd is outside baltimore where his mother lives. what are you discovering? >> reporter: wolf, to add a little bit to what miguel is reporting about the girlfriend. we have confirmed that the girlfriend's name is lindsay mills, that's about all we can add. what we can tell you from here is that the mother of edward snowden was seen today. her name is elizabeth snowden. she appeared outside of her house today as reporters were staking her out here. here's a little bit of that scene. >> alzheimer's disea >> please do not get in my way. thank you. >> reporter: just a very short exchange with reporters as she was heading to work. what we have learned since that time is she works at the u.s. district court in baltimore. her name is elizabeth snowden. she's also known as wendy to her friends and acquaintances.

her title is chief deputy clerk for information technology and administrative services. she does work there at the u.s. district court in baltimore. edward snowden had said he feared some of the ramification of these actions toward his family and said some of them worked for the government, so that is one person we can confirm works for the u.s. government, his mother working for the u.s. district court in baltimore. also we observed law enforcement officers here at the house. they came looking for her, apparently did not find her, and then left. we're not quite sure what agency they were from. they left without speaking to us. and then i spoke later on to a neighbor. her name is joyce kinsey. she observed edward snowden visiting his mother at times and here's what she had to say about edward snowden. >> when you say hi to him and everything, he'll say hi, but he's always looking down. he's not looking at you. and it's like he doesn't make eye contact.

but he was very personable and very nice. and i always saw him on the computer. i could see out my window and i could see him on the computer. >> reporter: we've learned that edward snowden moved to this area from elizabeth city, north carolina, where he spent his youth. we've been told by officials that he went to elementary and middle school in krofton, maryland. but from the guardian's accounts, he never got a high school diploma. >> pretty shocking stuff all around. thanks very much, brian, for that. let's go to hong kong, where edward snowden fled in search of a safe haven, apparently. anna is on the scene for us in hong kong. what are you learning? >> reporter: wolf, look, information is pretty sketchy, as you can imagine. we do know that he is here in hong kong, and he has been for the past three weeks. he did check out of a hotel yesterday around lunchtime local

time, our producers were able to track down that hotel and staff say that edward snowden had just checked out and that he had been there for the past couple of weeks. but certainly, this is a fascinating tale, wolf, that has everybody intrigued. edward snowden arrived in hong kong from hawaii around may 20th, bringing a catalog of secrets with him. he made the upscale mirror hotel his refuge and began giving "the washington post" and "the guardian" the secrets he had brought with him. he gave himself the code name verax, he took extraordinary precautions lining the door room of his hotel room with pillows to prevent eavesdropping, and he said leaving the hotel a total of three times during my stay. in an e-mail, he wrote, "it is not that i do not value intelligence, but that i oppose omniscient, automatic, mass

surveillance." snowden checked out at the weekend. his current whereabouts unknown. but just why did he pick hong kong, which has an extradition treaty with the united states? snowden told "the guardian" it was because of the megacity's spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent. some suspect he's playing the china card. >> edward snowden must have thought about his role as a pawn between the united states and chinese government. perhaps he thinks if he comes here, that the chinese government would be interested enough to intervene in any extradition efforts. >> reporter: that certainly is the question that everybody is asking, why did edward snowden choose hong kong? he got on a plane, flew 14 hours from hawaii, which was where he was based halfway around the world to leak this highly sensitive information. there were rumors at one stage that perhaps he had family members here, that his father was here.

however, from the immigration lawyer that we spoke to in that piece, he really does believe that china is the key role here. he has a pressutreasure-trove o information that the chienese would love to possess. perhaps they can offer him asylum in exchange for this highly sensitive information. >> is there any comment from officials either in hong kong or beijing to this whole incident? >> reporter: not at this stage, wolf. this is very much an unfolding story here. i think it took everybody by surprise that edward snowden was here in hong kong. he's been here for the past three weeks under a cover of darkness. he's only been speaking to the "guardian" newspaper and to "the washington post." so his identity revealed he was here in hong kong, it really caught authorities off guard. but you have to remember u.s. authorities have not yet issued an arrest warrant, so without that, hong kong authorities are

under no obligation to find this man. he can move around hong kong. he can potentially leave hong kong if he wants to. he obviously made reference about iceland, seeking asylum in iceland because of the similar ideals, but for him to do that, he can't fly directly there, so he would have to go through another country and there is the potential that interpol could pick him up. >> i know u.s. authorities would like to get their hands on him as soon as possible. we'll see what happens. anna coren in hong kong for us. thank you. up next, edward snowden spilled secrets to only two journalists. one of them is standing by to join us with insight into snowden's motives, whether he's believable. stand by for the interview. later, how did snowden get top secret access to the nsa's most sensitive programs? an insider takes us through the process and what could go wrong. i'm the next american success story. working for a company where over seventy-five percent of store management started as hourly associates. there's opportunity here. i can use

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the man behind one of the worst intelligence leaks spoke to only two journalists. thanks very much for joining us. tell us about your first interactions with snowden, how did that originate? >> well, there's parts of this i can't get into, but in our early interactions, i was first of all concerned to understand whether he was for real.

believe it or not, a reporter in my position gets a certain number of people who plan to be from spooky agencies and have spooky secrets, and he quickly convinced me that he knew exactly what he was talking about. >> what was he like? >> he is thoughtful, reflective, a careful writer, very clear about what he was doing and why he was doing it. frankly, self-evidently self-sacrificing. he's doing this out of idealism, whether people believe it to be misguided or commendable, and i believe that he has brought to the fore some very important issues that need discussion. >> what did he initially pose to you when he contacted you? >> well, it was -- it wasn't in the nature of a proposal. there's an extended back and forth of discussing what the issues are, and what information he might have. and what he regarded as the significance of it.

>> do you know why he contacted you? did he say why barton gellman of "the washington post" was -- he was hoping would be the recipieresi recipient of these leaks? >> i can't get into a lot of it. one thing i can say is that he knew that i had some experience on the subject and he knew that i knew how to communicate with the kind of security that he was looking for. >> can you tell us how he contacted you? >> no. sorry. >> without giving us the specification, why is that so sensitive? >> you know, to explain it i'd have to say too much. you don't want to go there, wolf. what i will say is that he is -- having been an employee of more than one intelligence agency, he is well-apprised of the ways that you can use technology, anonymity inscription -- >> you were speaking with him

through e-mail, right? you never met with him face to face. >> i never met him face to face. >> so when you were trying to get some idea if he was legitimate, how did he pass along these documents to you that you could then verify and check out? >> can't go there either, wolf. but the documents are in my hands and i was able to question him about them and ask a lot of questions. he was very clear about what he knew, what he thought was true but didn't know, and what he simply had no idea on. and it was not difficult to authenticate these documents. >> and you wrote that initially he wanted you to publish all this within 72 hours, but you didn't. you decided to further investigate, right? >> yeah. well, there were a couple of things. i wanted to make sure i understood the thing carefully. i wanted to understand his context. a lot of these slides are highly technical. it's the nsa talking to itself about a secret surveillance

program, it involves understanding both bureaucratic structures and technical details and there are a lot of things i didn't understand and there were things that i saw in there that i did not think ought to be public. and neither did my editors. >> did he contact glen greenwald first? >> i can't tell you when he contacted glen. >> can you tell us when he contacted you? >> no, sorry, i can't. but he told me -- when i refused to promise that "the washington post" would publish the documents in its entirety within 72 hours, at that point, he told me that he was going to -- that the relationship would no longer be what he thought unilateral, by which he meant exclusive, that he was going to break it to someone else. after that, i learned that he had given it to glen greenwald. >> apparently you've written about this. he gave you a lot more documents

than you released, than you published in "the washington post." i take it "the guardian" has a lot more than what they've published so far, is that right? >> i haven't said that. >> you haven't said that, but apparently -- well, can you tell us if there's other stuff that he gave you, other documents that he gave you that you decided for whatever reason not to publish? >> i have leads that i continue to pursue and i doubt that i'm done with my work in this area. i don't normally forecast my future work more than that. >> normally, major u.s. news organizations, when they get these kinds of sensitive leaks before they publish, they c consult. they go ahead and deal with the national security apparatus, the federal government to give them a chance to respond, to make the case why releasing this information would be damaging to national security. here's the question -- were you involved in those discussions with the nsa or others in the

federal government? >> yes. and i would put it a little differently. if i have a story about a very important public event, i go to the subject of the story for comment. so we went to the white house and to the director of national intelligence and the nsa asking who would like to discuss this with us. we recognize that it was sensitive and we expected that they would probably make a pitch that we should withhold some of the information. but we didn't invite them to do that. and when they wanted to engage on it, we did so. those engagements were, generally speaking, off the record, so i can't get into them, but i will say that we took their point of view seriously. they acknowledged we had done that. and we did not do everything they asked us to do. >> how much pressure was "the washington post" and you for that matter under from the federal government not to release this information? >> those conversations were off the record, but i don't think that anyone would find it wise

to try to make this into a question of pressure. they expressed their views. they told us what they thought was important about this and the context for the documents, but of course, in the course of those conversations, the presumption is that the document is authentic. and so it does cement our understanding, on which i was already quite confident, that these documents were real. >> bottom line, what do you think his end game is right now? >> i don't know. what he cared about most was not his own personality and the adventure side of this, to the extent that you could describe it as that. but that he wanted to surface big, important issues of the relationship of the government to his people, of the power of the government to surveil us, of a system in which has grown up that secret interpretations of the law by executive are secretly reviewed by congress

and a report which publishes only classified orders and opinions and all this happens completely out of the view of the public. what was happening out of view, he believes, was a big problem. i believe that the issues he surfaced are very much worthy of further examination and debate. >> so can we expect you and "the washington post" to be releasing more of this information in the coming days? >> well, i certainly expect that we, like lots of news organizations, are going to keep on covering the subject. >> barton gellman of "the washington post," thanks very much for joining us. >> thank you. coming up, we're going to get the white house response to edward snowden's leak and his claim that the president and other spy agency's have grabbed way too much power.

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happening now, fears that the nsa leaker might share more secrets. is he telling the truth about what he knows? i'll speak with a former cia and defense department insider. plus, the damage assessment by the president's national security team. did edward snowden give aid to terrorists? and we're taking you inside the national security agency to see how one of the government's most secret operations sprang a leak. i'm wolf blitzer. this is "the situation room" special report, traitor or hero? inside the nsa leak.

i'm just another guy who sits there day-to-day in the office, watches what's happening, and goes this is something that's not our place to decide. the public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong, and i'm willing to go on the record to defend the authenticity of them and say i didn't change these, i didn't modify the story. this is the truth, this is what's happening. you should decide whether we need to be doing this. >> that was the nsa leaker edward snowden revealing his identity and explaining his motives. at age 29, he had access to some of america's most sensitive secrets as the former cia employee and former intelligence contract worker. the world now knows that he spilled those secrets and is raising questions about the background check process for intelligence workers and u.s. contractors. let's go to our pentagon

correspondent chris lawrence. he's digging deep into this part of the story. chris? >> reporter: one former official told me that the background checks amassed an incredible amount of information, but it's part art, part science, and as this case proves, far from foolproof. government investigators thought they knew edward snowden. he went through a background test, took a polygraph test and sat through personal interviews. then the government gave him access to some of its biggest secrets. from your experience at nsa, how deep do they go into your personal background? >> it's very extensive. >> reporter: this retired colonel went through the background check before going to work for the nsa. and the rules for clearances don't change whether you're a government employee or a contract employee. he says edward snowden would have started by filling out this form, revealing his finances and any foreign contacts. the investigators start by talking to friends and family, but then use what they say to

generate more contracts. >> they will interview neighbors, they will interview friends, and then they'll go for people that you don't put on your form. >> reporter: snowden is one of nearly half a million contractors with top secret clearance, but few have access to as much information as snowden, an information security engineer. why does an i.t. guy get access to so much information? >> it's because of where he sits. they have permissions that normal employees don't have. >> reporter: leighton says snowden could likely see outside the need to know boxes that con train some contractors. >> they may not understand the background of all the information that they see, but they can see information. >> reporter: a former official tells cnn the nsa disabled the usb drives on most computers and uses software to detect flash media. >> typically in government, there are ways of auditing those kinds of transactions if they're

electronic. >> reporter: now epeople change their social networks changes people they talk to change, so they have a five-year program where they go back and recertify someone for that clearance, but the former official said these things take time and they're expensive, so doing it any more often than that would be a very expensive proposition, wolf. >> chris lawrence, thanks very much. one key lawmaker says the man who admits being the nsa leaker is a defector and a danger to the united states. now that edward snowden's identity has been revealed, there's an even more heated debate about the obama administration's surveillance practices. let's go to our chief white house correspondent jessica yellen, she's got more on this part of the story. yesk? >> reporter: no comment from president obama on edward snowden or the leeaks, but his press secretary insisted the programs are legal and have congress's signoff. not everyone agrees. some of the critics say they're an overreach. what does president obama think

of charges that he's grabbed too much power? >> this is a matter that is absolutely appropriate for public debate. this is a conversation especially worth having. >> reporter: some critics want to do more than talk. they want to change the law. does the president agree that the law should be reopened? >> the president believes that with the oversight that exists and the implementation of the programs as they are implemented, that the balance is appropriately struck. >> reporter: in fact, the president said 20 times that he thinks -- >> we've got congressional oversight and judicial oversight. >> reporter: and the administration insists congress has been well-informed, pointing to a list of congressional briefings. but many members say they have no idea how far the programs went. on abc's "this week", a democrat was asked how much he was allowed to know. >> i'd say almost nothing. >> reporter: even the republican who wrote a key part of the patriot act said he was

extremely disturbed by the way the law was applied, and this democrat wants the see the patriot act rewritten. >> this is the law, but the way the law is being interpreted has really concerned me. the law has been interpreted in a secret way. that's what i've been calling for. let's have full disclosure of how this law is being applied. >> reporter: what about the courts? since nsa surveillance came to light in 2006, the government has requested more than 13,000 warrants from the secret fisa court, and the court has said no only seven times. only once since president obama has been in office. >> these orders are done in secret. the people who are being targeted don't know they're being targeted, so when the government goes to ask for an order, there's no one really arguing the other side. >> reporter: so is it up to just trust our leaders? >> i don't think anyone would be satisfied if they don't trust the president, the courts, the congress. they wouldn't be satisfied by telling more senators. that's not going to make them

happy. >> reporter: now, there is a petition posted on whitehouse.gov calling for a pardon of edward snowden. it was posted last night. as of now, i checked right before i came out here, there were 27,500 signatures calling for his pardon. obviously that's not going to happen, but it's just a sign of how engaged the left is on this issue. wolf? >> 27,900 as of right now. we just double checked after you. thanks very much, jessica yellen. so how much damage have these leaks actually caused? we're going to break it down with a man who was leon panetta's chief of staff over at the cia as well as the pentagon. stand by. and we're also taking you inside one of the most secretive agencies in the u.s. government. ready? happy birthday! it's a painting easel! the tide's coming in!

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so how much damage has been done to u.s. national security as a result of these massive leaks? cnn pentagon correspondent barbara starr has this part of the story. >> i'm just another guy who sits there day-to-day in the office, watches what's happening. >> reporter: just another guy, edward snowden is now an international outlaw. and he's also damaged our national security, america's top intelligence officer james clapper charged on msnbc. >> our adversaries benefit from that same transparency, so as we speak, they are going to school and learning how we do this. >> reporter: not so, says a journalist who got the leaks. >> terrorists already know that the u.s. government tries to surveil their communications. nothing that we revealed helps the terrorists. >> reporter: clapper has ordered initial findings by the end of the week on how much harm has been done.

these nsa programs work by collecting information on e-mails, online activity, and phone calls. the leak of the program's existence may make terrorists stop communicating in these basic ways, essentially pushing them further off the grid. >> if you're a terrorist and composing an e-mail, what this system allows the nsa to do is watch you compose the e-mail in realtime and figure out as you're composing the e-mail where you are. >> reporter: and terrorists may now stop using major internet providers. >> they may have had the belief that operating digitally inside the united states offered them a bit of a safe haven. well, now they know that's not true either. >> reporter: but experts say it's impossible to conclude we are less safe now. he knows when the wikileaks controversy broke, over thousands of leaked documents, many said it would hurt national security, but by all accounts, it did not. >> traditionally, these leaks

have thefr benever been as bad government says they are. it's just a fact. we are still sitting here. >> reporter: and the government is now scouring every computer that this leaker, that this man snowden used looking at what he logged on to, what he downloaded and what national security information he may now have put at risk. wolf? >> barbara, thank you. joining us now is jeremy bash, he served as leon panetta's chief of staff, both at the cia as well as the defense department. thanks for coming in. >> great to be here, wolf. >> in the interview that he gave, edward snowden, he made several boasts. i'm going to play some clips and you give us your expertise as to whether he's right or wrong. listen to this one first. >> i sit in my desk, certainly have the authorities to wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president, if i had a personal e-mail. >> that's the claim right now. i can wiretap any personal e-mail, even the president of

the united states. is that true? a 29-year-old contract employee working with the nsa could do that? >> wolf, he's misinformed. he's not reading the law. the law says that if you want to conduct surveillance inside the united states, you know you've got to go to the fisa report, square out exactly who you want to listen to and what purpose. the judge has to bless this, just like we do in the criminal context. that whole process is overseen by the court and by congress. he's simply wrong. >> but what if he doesn't want to go through the court. what if he just wants to go through himself and he makes the decision i'm not going to get a warrant, i'm going to eavesdrop and listen to your conversations or my conversations or the president's conversations. technical technically, does he have that capability? >> no, the systems are set up to require that permission, that warrant, that authority. he's got to go to supervisors, he's got to go through the chain of command, they've got to apply for the warrant at the court in washington. he can't just flip the switch -- >> even though he's an i.t. guy?

>> he can't just flip the switch and start listening to everybody he wants. he could do the law and do things out of his purview, but that would be totally illegal, and totally at odds. >> but technically, if he wanted to break the law, he could've could eavesdrop? >> they have to follow the law, they have to follow procedures, and they have to be overseen. and that's the situation here with our intelligence agency. >> so if he wanted to break the law, even as he was an nsa employee or a contract employee, he could have done that. >> wolf, that's so hypothetical, i don't know if it's ever happened, and when it's happened, it's been remedied. they would be all over that. >> here's another boast that he made. i'll play the clip. >> i had access to the full rosters of everyone working at the nsa, the entire intelligence community, and undercover assets all around the world, the locations of every station we

had, what their missions are and so forth. >> you think that's realistic? he knew where every covert cia operative was located? >> i can't believe that for a second, wolf. i didn't have that access. the director of the agencies don't have that access. i can't imagine he would. i just think that's hyperbole and a boast and i don't put any credibility in that whatsoever. listen, wolf, he's giving whistleblowers a bad name. he's not a whistleblower. whistleblowers want to ensure that the law is followed. he broke the law. he copied classified documents and he made a run for the border. >> here's another claim that he made. i'll play this clip. >> even if you're not doing anything wrong, you're being watched and recorded. and the storage capability of these systems increases every year consistently by orders of magnitude. to where it's getting to the point you don't have to have done anything wrong. you simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody, even by a wrong call, and then they can use the system to go back in time and

scrutinize every decision you've ever made, every friend you've ever discussed something with, and attack you on that basis to sort of derive suspicion from an innocent life and paint anyone in the context of a wrongdoer. >> what do you think about that? >> i think there's so many misconceptions and misrepresentations there, it's hard to know where to start. i would say for the intelligence agencies, one more time, wolf, for them to intercept the phone calls of anybody in the united states, you have to get a warrant. they have got to go to the court. got to show probable cause that that person is a terrorist or a spy. can't just intercept phone calls and read e-mails and track everything without any oversight. >> but what happens if a terrorist, let's say, in yemen makes a call to the united states and misdials and calls your phone or my phone. what happens then? >> that's a great question. if any u.s. person's information is collected inadvertently or accidentally there are procedures in place at the agencies overseen by the lawyers

and the general council, they're called minu . >> caller: -- they're called minimizeation procedures. >> here is his explanation of why china. >> so there's a couple assertions in those agents that are sort of imbedded in the questioning of the choice of hong kong. the first is that china is an enemy of the united states. it's not there. are conflicts between the united states government and the chinese erc government, but the. we're not at war. we're not in conflict and we're not trying to be. >> what, if anything, do you read into his decision to go to hong kong? >> he finally said something that i agree with, which is that

the china and the united states are not enemies. we just saw the summit this past week. but what i make of his decision to run away is he wants to evade u.s. law enforcement. if he was proud of what he had done, if he thought this was some noble cause, he would have stepped forward and said i've done this because i believe it's what i was born to do. >> do you think there's something else going on as far as china is concerned? >> i don't know, but i think we have to be concerned that whatever information he may still have, that perhaps hasn't been released may fall into the hands of a foreign government, whether it's china or anybody else. >> why are you concerned about that? >> well, because if someone takes classified documents out of the agency, if they take a polygraph test and swear a nondisclosure agreement and voluntarily agree to be bound by the secrecy rules and then steal that information and take it to a foreign country, i think we've got to be concerned that that material may get into the wrong hands. >> jeremy bash, thanks very much for coming. when we come bark it's been called the most secretive agency

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chris lawrence reports the agency is so secretive people have joked those initials actually stand for no such agency. cia spies have their secrets. so do the men in special ops. but they can't compare to the national security agency. >> the nsa is the most secretive agency in the country. it's far more secret than the cia. >> reporter: they are head quartered in a highly secured section of ft. meade army base and building a new surveillance center in the middle of a utah desert. there, spread out over a million square feet of cables and computers, the nsa will capture everything from e-mails to internet searches, phone calls and personal data. >> it's designed to hold an enormous amount of communications. >> reporter: author james banford estimates the center will be able to store enough data to equal 500 quintillion pages. that's a 5 with 20 zeros behind

it. and if you printed those pages, stacked them one on top of the other, it would be long enough to stretch all the way to the moon and back 66 million times. a former official who spoke on background to cnn described the nsa has incredibly aggressive, but he says i can't emphasize how fanatical they are about americans' privacy. there's a sign in the center of a room that reads what constitutes a u.s. person. and then lists a dozen points to consider. >> i think it's absolutely important for people to understand we're not asking for content, we're asking for information about threats. >> reporter: the nsa's 35,000 employees are an even mix of military and civilians. the former official says the troops are younger and give the agency its energy. the civilians, mostly mathematicians, provide, quote, adult supervision and tend to be more socially introverted.

the former official says an inside joke at nsa goes something like how do you spot an extrovert at nsa? when he's talking to you, he looks down at your shoes instead of his own. the former official says it's not the cia where they are recruiting agents in coffee shops all over the wourrld. the nsa is set up to be secretive. they don't talk, don't write books and have some pro tooechxz other intelligence organizations don't have. chris lawrence, cnn, the pentagon. up next, words that edward snowden's supporters will find chilling. guess what day it is?? guess what day it is! huh...anybody? julie! hey...guess what day it is?? ah come on, i know you can hear me. mike mike mike mike mike... what day is it mike? ha ha ha ha ha ha! leslie, guess what today is? it's hump day. whoot whoot! ronny, how happy are folks who save hundreds of dollars switching to geico?

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the fallout from the biggest intelligence leak in a generation is only just beginning. edward snowden says that he knows that the federal government is probably going to come after him. listen to what his take is on the spy agencies, what they will be doing in the days ahead as they try to track him down and punish him. >> i'm sure they're going to be very busy for the next week. and that's -- that's a fear i'll live under for the rest of my life, however long that happens to be. you can't come forward against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and be completely free from risk, because they're such powerful adversaries. no one can meaningfully oppose them. if they want to get you, they'll get you in time.

>> we'll be following this story every step of the way. thanks very much for watching. i'm wolf blitzer in washington. remember, you can always follow what's going on here in the situation room on twitter. just tweet me @wolfblitzer. "erin burnett outfront" starts right now. outfront next, the man who leaked the details about the nsa's top secret surveillance plan is hiding out in hong kong. is he a threat to sell out america to china? one of the reporters who met him face to face joins us tonight. plus jury selection begins in the george zimmerman trial. how one of his closest friends could hurt him during the trial. we have an exclusive report on that. and apple with a huge announcement today. we have the details and of course whether it will be enough. let's go outfront. good evening, everyone, i'm erin burnett. outfront tonight, hero or