who is dead and the amount of money sent to those survivors. everydayon journal," at 7:00 eastern time. thanks for joining us for the sunday edition of "washington journal." today on c-span, "newsmakers" with senator patrick leahy followed by president obama's remarks on extending health insurance went under the health care law. manchincussion with joe and john hoban. the life and legacy of first lady lady jacqueline can indeed. kennedy.line

>> of this week, senator patrick leahy on a democrat of vermont, joins us to talk about the nsa surveillance program. john s is a white house reporter covering issues for politico and the wall street journal. thank you for coming. i wanted to start talking about the legislation you have on the programs that collects nearly all americans phone records. section 215. we voted on another collection program that the sichuan intelligence agency has that tracks international money transfers. by the international transfers, it picks up a fair amount of american data as well.

i was wondering whether that also raises concerns. you talked a lot about the privacy and locations of that. >> it does add to this. i where he about any kind of bulk collection. ofi worry about any kind bulk collection for a couple of region. what have you collected? so much, do you have anything? these intelligence agencies and others if you want the police to go into your home and go through all their records, everybody knows they would have to have a search warrant. it would be inconceivable otherwise. s andty of record everything else are online. they go in there.

is this any different? reaching a point in this country where many people feel we can do this so let's do this. it, doesuse we can do it make any sense? secondly, do we have the legal right to do it? thirdly, if we do have a legal right, why? where i thinktry most americans like their privacy. the concern i have had since the first patriot act since this has evolved, more and more the privacy of americans is disappearing. that is going to hurt us as a country. it will not make us safer. some will be successful, as much as we hate to think about that. if we take away all of our privacy rates we will become our own terrorist.

>> you have a sense of how many of these programs are being used at this point? all of them presumably would be affected by the legislation. >> i have held public hearings on these things in the judiciary committee. we have another when coming up in a few days. questions we ask. we will get the answers. there are a lot of collections and implications that we have had in open sessions. what do we get from it? you mentioned the cia. i completely understand the difference. nsa, we will talk about all the abilities to collect everything, enormous abilities.

they were not competent enough to keep a subcontractor -- --contractor to steal it from stealing it all. the only silver lining and that is the fact that they love the people are now asking and why were you collecting all of this stuff? one thing that was interesting to me was that people do not necessarily think of the cia as collecting information on americans at all. >> they are not supposed to. to bere not supposed involved in the mustek law enforcement to read >> in this case, it sounds like it is almost picked up collaterally. there are a lot of transactions between the u.s. and overseas.

that comes into the system. i was wondering whether there is or whether they prison similar concerns. >> i think there are overlapping concerns. i believe the article in your paper pointed out the fact that procedures onain are transfers that monitored. people assume they are monitored not only by us but by other countries for the obvious andons of money laundering just tax matters and so on. that is fine. .here are certain things you do i have a problem with that. we may argue about the amount. you know up front.

how far doesis this go? let me give an example. if reposes with the obvious conclusion that there are right to do all kinds of collections, it could be your medical records. a family members medical records. inyour children's record school. your employment records so that you get turned down for a job and you never know why. there's something that has been misread where read incorrectly. -- or read incorrectly. is easy to say that people want to support all of this stuff and they want to keep from having another 9/11. is the fact that they had the evidence to stop 9/11 before. they acknowledge it. they dropped the ball.

they say we have to spy on you and everything you do to stop another 9/11. that is not a question i asked. how much of your privacy are you willing to give up? there are surveillance cameras when he was down the street. how much of your personal privacy are you willing to get up? if you give up everything, what have you gained? if you give it up all your privacy, have you made yourself safer? i would argue no. >> i would like to ask you about legislation but before i do that, there is one other program that has been declassified. that is the one that ran for a few years looking at data from e-mails that the administration abandoned. >> because there's the question of whether they have the legal right to do it. >> they said they gave it up because they thought it was ineffective.

until that point, had not the court said it was ok for them to be doing that? what is your view on that program? what does that tell us about the level of oversight? i am concerned about the level of oversight. most of this was done secretly. it is very difficult to talk about. i liked it better when i can talk about things in the press and say assuming that this is true and going from there. i think there should be more less of we are going to tell you this seeker because only you and i know. that can be said that it. i would like to have more oversight. one of the ones we heard from the intelligence committee saved terrorist activities.

when we got into an open hearing and started going specifically on that or people have to tell the truth, we went from 54 to maybe a dozen and questions it down to possibly one that was following up on it at the i investigation. the reality often does not match the rhetoric. more of this will be open. my hearings are open. you come down this bottom line. if you collect everything do you has anything? it becomes so massive. >> what are the prospects

forward at this link? >> we have bipartisan support for this. there were similar legislation. not an issue. this would be considered a liberal democrat. we can come together on that. i want to have real up and down votes. there will not be secretive

votes. legwe go.e how if you are an american, you can understand why he cannot come into your house and go through your piles. should they be able to go to them electronically? >> senator feinstein also had the intelligence committee. she said she thought we should continue. this is going to lead to what often happens in the senate which is nothing? >> i disagree with the legislation.

i can tell you right now i will not vote for the status quo. it makes usnk safer. we have seen because of the leaks in some cases we look silly by what we have collected. i would rather have us more specific about what we do. we use very good intelligence. superbble to get intelligence. a lot of it was very specific human intelligence based on what

has come out publicly. >> one more quick question on reform legislation. do you think the senate intelligence committee has the credibility to push forward a reform package given that it oversaw this program for a number of years? >> i will let you asked them that question. i am sure they will be anxious to answer. we have a basic disagreement on this idea.

oh like two things. i would like more the opinions to be made public. they support the idea. they would like to make it public. a closede kind of door. i like to have an advocate in their. if you have somebody on both sides, those are prevented. some of these are things senator feinstein and i can agree on. that is something i look forward

to. what yourondering read is on the other sense of road grams that we learned a lot more about. senator wyden has raised privacy protections for data collection. i was wondering what your read is. >> a lot of changes need to be made. we face a real problem if we do

not ring this in. you find some support to rein some of this in. . we're going to see the american industry really hurt overseas if it is seen as an anonymous by. having said that, i get a little bit tired of hearing some of the complaints. i am shocked to find gambling going on. >> to the other countries spy on us? >> i think yes the do. countries spy on each other.

they have the kind of relationship we have with written where we have a sharing of intelligence. there are very few examples of that. ,f we give the impression everyone of our technological advances are really in an shipment of our intelligence agency. >> they do not like it. we had one testifying the other day. i asked the question of how they felt. i asked if they had been under any court orders they are not

allowed to talk about. he said i cannot answer that question. do you think national security would you heard? no. let's get the exact thing. they can go in and say we have your information. we have overclassification. every single administration has classified too much stuff. now it is getting out-of- control. you make a mistake, classify it. then you do not have to admit the mistake. >> we have seen these coming

down. mishandled it. >> they did. it should have been caught long before. when it finally does, they do not want to do that. >> to have a lot of concerns? if you had a corporation that involved a major product or and they are in corporate espionage to come in and still all the stuff, don't you thing heads would roll? cuba's and fire? you has in recommended -- who has been -- you has been in a fire? who has been recommended?

>> could the head of nsa be a civilian and you separate cyber command from the nsa chief position? edwardmentioned snowden is now hold up to in rochester. -- russia. >> because they are so protective of human rights and free speech. >> being sarcastic. >> we do not have billboards in vermont. think of him?

do you think is more of a whistleblower or traitor? the traitor the decision of court will have to make. the fact they go first with it to china and then russia. and freefor freedom speech. i wish we had that available for the appropriate oversight and it raises questions of why we are doing it.

one was with private first class a lady with material gaga cd. that created some very real dangers for a lot of people. theked the question who was person who made the enormous mistake of putting all that stuff in a place where somebody could come in and download the old lady gaga tape? >> what should happen? to have private controls. i got the impression and i'm sure a lot of them disagree with me. many say we are the nsa, look

what we can do. we can do no wrong. they did not do the things that should be done to protect what they are doing. there have been too many that have been carried away with all of the technology. war, there was the development of an y -- it sureyl nearly expensive satellite an extraordinarily expensive satellite system. the overlook the fact that the soviet union was raking up. -- breaking up.

sometimes we can get too carried away. >> do you think someone needs to be reassigned? >> who has been recommended? who has suffered the consequences of having such life controls? >> if you would be responsible in this case? -- who would be responsible and this case? >> who do you think should be fired? >> general alexander is leaving early in these ring. it becomes a moot point. one reason i like to see the successor be somebody who first had a confirmation. one of the major questions that wh where is theis

line of responsibility? who do we know is in charge? >> we have about five minutes. lacks what you think about president obama's handling of this situation? do you think in the wake of the manic episode enough was done to secure classified information? there was a warning call. it is not as though this happened out of the blue. one was nsa. when was the state department defense. i would argue -- one was the state department defense. i would argue that in the electronic era when it is easy to transfer massive amount of that has to be far better controls. i would talk to some that haverations

checks and balances within their own corporations. they should be a jewel or try key system. there are ways to do it. uel or tri-key situation. there are ways to do it. >> issa we have now learned about some activities that we were not aware enough. given the legislation that your pressing ahead on, have you learned about new programs subsequent to the snowden releases? the collection stuff is right in your wheelhouse. you oversaw that. did you learn new things? >> we are finding out a lot from our hearings.

>> did you learn about the collection programs? >> we are learning a lot from the hearings. we are having the hearings and public era guy learn a lot from the papers. -- public. i learned a lot from the papers. the ciaey was headed over not tell the people he was supposed to about things on the hell, about the second or third time he came up there to explain to him this item we had just read was something she was supposed to report to us. i said you can save a lot of time. just have it delivered to us ."rked "top secret we have that wonderful crossword puzzle. who wasadly for the cia

sitting behind them that started to laugh because of the look he got from mr. casey. the rest has, many times we have learned about things in the thing is, many times we have learned about things in the press. this happens a lot. this is one of the reasons why i is or to lose like reporters shield lost on all of that era and may not be happy about some the things that read or two but if you're going to have a free that were reported, but if you're going to have a free country, you need that. >> this is largely about how our legal system is being tortured by the war on terror. the justice department seems to be trying the tax to of delaying bringing people who -- to court who have been charged with crimes to court.

the department actually impose a lawyer being assigned to represent that fellow. do you think that this something that needs to be investigated? i was a prosecutor for eight years. about a lawyer being assigned or a miranda warning being governed. if you have somebody who want to confess whether you give a miranda warning are not, i cannot quite understand what happened at lax. in the boston bomber, the magistrate came to the house and majorspital somebody was assigned to. it is a relevant.