responding to the crisis and have knowledge of nigerians that have been coming out to actually push and talk about the current crisis. of course there have been many push by the international community to come in and support. the government were very skeptical. they are very slow in accepting these offers. i think nigerians have actually pushed for that. we've seen it happening now and we hope apart from just wanting the girls released and work beyond the abduction to address the root causes. >> thank you. i turn it back to the chairman. >> thank you for your participation. we really appreciate you doing this. >> thank you so much. >> ms. abdullah, if you have closing comments you would like to make us to, we have to go back to the senate floor in just a moment for another vote. i know it was a little

disjointed between senator cardin, senator flake and myself. if there are any closing comments you have for us suggestions how we can most be helpful supporting reconciliation and development in the north that will address some of the root causes of the boko haram insurgency or that can address some of the root causes of violence and of difficulties between communities, i would welcome that. if you have any other suggestions for how we can best support the nigerian school girls kidnapped and their families, we welcome that as well. thank you so much for your testimony. we look forward to a closing comment from you. >> thank you so much for the opportunity to actually talk today. of course, like i said we need a lot of support. there is weak presence of civil society on ground to actually support the current crisis in the region.

we want the u.s. senate to push how we can have more actions in the region starting out with the humanitarian issues immediately but also looking out to plan long-term interventions. what can we do to promote civilian protection and also promote human rights by armed forces and under community-driven efforts. >> thank you so much. thank you for your focus on peace-building respecting human rights and reconciliation. we are grateful for the effort you made to testify before us today. i will leave the record open for an additional week until the close of business thursday may 22nd for any members of this committee not able to attend but have questions for our first or second panel we greatly appreciate the testimony offered today by all four of our witnesses and the very hard work many are doing here in the

capitol of the united states to provide support for the girls and families and the people of nigeria. thank you thank you, and with that this >> for over 35 years, c-span bring public affairs events from washington directly to you. putting them in the room, briefings and conferences and offering complete gavel to gavel coverage to the u.s. house. we're c-span, created bethe cable tv industry 35 years ago and brought to you as a public service by your local cable or

satellite provider. >> one year ago, nasa surveillance program became public knowledge. here's a look how that came about from "washington journal." this is 45 minutes. >> more nasa revelation. deep look into the mind of the man who made those revelationso ma who two reasons to pick up general glenn greenwald "no place to hide." empty to story by -- i want to story by the story you lay out. ntacted me. he is a fifth century leader of rome. there came a time when rome was the siege by all sorts of enemies and was under attack and they needed a leader who they thought could lead rome to

victory. they recruited him. he had gone off to his farm to retire and live a peaceful life and they persuaded him to come back to the bedroom. he led a successful war victory and he was incredibly popular and had immense amounts of power and instead of keeping that power, he did what he said he was quick to do, which was relinquished voluntarily -- relinquished it voluntarily and he became this model of civic virtue. someone who uses power for the collective good, not their own. i guess snowden found that inspiring and use that name. host: is this who edward snowden thought he was? guest: he did not think he was a roman emperor or anything like that. he admired what he did. he paid tribute to the relinquishment of power and the use of power for the public good

by adopting his name as a pseudonym. host: you have been writing about these issues for many years. you have a lot of tips on different inks that people are willing to give you. what was it about the tips he got from edward snowden and made you trust him? guest: it took a while to establish trust. he first contacted me, he was quite reluctant to say anything about who he was or what he had. when you communicate in an unencrypted environment, there's a chance that others are listening to the things you're saying. it took many weeks before we could begin communicating. once we did, i can't say that i fully trusted what he was saying or who he was. not until a got to hong kong and was able to sit down with him at a room and subject him to six hours of extremely intense and nonstop interrogation where i asked him every question that i had.

he was extremely able to withstand that questioning. everything he said was very consistent. there was no hesitation. i was entirely convinced that he was who he said he was and was convinced that his motives are what you are presented them to be. host: you talk in your book about what you were expecting versus what you found when you first met him. guest: when he first contacted me, he made claims about the kind of documents he had. he said they were extremely sensitive, top-secret documents that were highly incriminating. before i would go to hong kong to meet him, asked him to provide me with some samples selected know he was serious and real. he provided those and those documents were explosive. they were unlike anything that had leaked from the agency before. that fact that he had access to this material combined with his

sophisticated insight that he demonstrated to me made me assume that he was very sincere. the fact that he was adamant about the fact that he wanted to be identified as the source, not to hide or remain anonymous knowing the risks also made me assume that he had been around for somebody decades that he became so disillusioned by what he was seeing that he was willing to do that. when i met him and he turned out to be this kid, it was really disorienting and confusing and it took me a good couple of hours to get my composure and figure out what was going on. host: you said you kept coming back to the question of why he was doing this. finally, he gave me an answer. the true measurement of a person's worth is not what they say they believe in, but what they do in defense of those police. if you're not acting on your believes, they are probably not

real. guest: if you go back and try to put yourself in the position that i was in, which is part of what i tried to do in this book to me, the most cold thing to understand was why was this 29-year-old who had a very stable life and prosperous career and a girlfriend who he loved and a family that was supportive, why was he willing to unravel his whole life and throw it all away in defense of his political principle? i need to know that he had thought this through and there were motives that were genuine that he understood. he finally was able to access those during that time and said, look my conscious demands that i not let these injustices linger. i can only look at myself in the

mirror if i know i took defense. host: no place to hide. edward snowden, the nsa and the western real estate. we will get two calls. eric is waiting in georgia. on our line for democrats. you are on. caller: thank you. what snowden did -- i have a couple of points i would like to make. what snowden did, would you recommend that everyone who worked in this agency tell what they know? take it upon themselves to make themselves the king who determines what is constitutional and what is unconstitutional. all of these documents that you have brought -- these documents are national security issues. what makes you think you are the

people who should disseminate the this this information? guest: there is a history in the united states that is extremely important where whistleblowers inside the government discover things that the u.s. government is doing and come forward. probably the most significant case prior to the ones of the last five years was -- he discovered classified information showing the u.s. government was systematically lying to the american people about the vietnam war ended upon himself -- and took it upon himself to come forward and bring that to newspapers which then published it and informed people. the reason there is a constitutional protection of the free press is because the design

of our country recognizes that people inside the government if they can exercise people with transparency, they will abuse the power. the role of the press is embedded into the design of the country that we will report the things people in power are trying to hide. host: a question on twitter -- tommy documents did he take from the nsa? when will they all be released to the public? how many documents? guest: i don't know how many documents he took. i know how many he gave me. i have said it's tens of thousands. that has been publicly disclosed many times. the government keeps trying to claim that he took 1.7 million documents. keith alexander just said last week that they actually have no idea how many took. that is a made up number. the media has been reporting it.

when edward snowden came to us, he was very clear that he was giving us these documents because -- if you wanted them all to be published, he would not have come to us. he would not need us. he could have uploaded them all to the internet himself. that would have been very easy for him to do. what he said was, there is a lot of documents here and i don't believe i should be in the position to decide which ones should and should not be published. there are some that i think should not be published. there is these kinds of documents that should be published and there is a lot in the middle that i want you with your editors and fellow journalists to make decisions about and report on responsibly. we are reporting on them one by one and we agreed we would do so. that is the best way to do so. i don't think all of the documents will be published

because that is not what you wanted. all of the newsworthy stories here will be published. host: andrew is waiting in california on our line for independents. caller: thank you for taking my call. it's an honor to speak to you. i believe in restoring basic fourth amendment rights. given the tendency of government to maximize their own power over time, what safeguards could be put in place today which are likely to continue protecting our privacy 20 years down the road? guest: great question. a hard one to answer in the digital age when so much information is transmitted electronically. there is a lot of different ways that the powers of the u.s. government are going to incur -- there is an institutional

setting a couple of blocks away from us called the was congress that is in the process of passing some bills that will rein in a bit of what the nsa is doing. there are other countries in the world's populations and governments are indignant over what the united states is doing. i think they are in the process of working on ways to re-create the internet so that u.s. hegemony is not possible. they now perceive nsa surveillance as a serious threat to their prosperity. the most promising change is that individuals around the world now realize the extent to which their privacy is compromised. they are series and crypt and tools that do work that let you wrap your e-mails and protective covers or containers that the nsa can't penetrate. for more people who use those, the hardwer it will be for the surveillance to continue.

the default will be that everyone's communications online are encrypted. host: no place to hide. a book about snowden and the nsa. also a book about your experience, which brings a broad question. to what degree has relied and the lives of others been disrupted by u.s. government retaliation for your support of snowden? guest: it has been disruptive to a substantial degree. it's fairly well known that after 10 months, my reporting partner -- senior officials repeatedly come explicitly characterized what we were doing is criminal and they ask why escalated to that characterization. our partner was was held for

nine hours under a terrorism law. there was a lot of concern about what would happen if we did return. there are all sorts of her secur security risks. at the same time i think if you're going to do a pic of journalism and you want to challenge people in power, there will be some disruption and journalists around the world have more risk and threats than we have confronted in standing up to corrupt police departments and the like. host: that's good to james in jacksonville, north carolina our line for independents. good morning. caller: good morning. i studied your book last night. i do have three quick questions today.

when is -- richard responded to snowden's appearance and said that the conversation could have taken place about what the nsa was doing. it was the way the documents were released that it showed methods. organizations were moving away from using telecommunications which made it harder for us to gain insight. my second is, edward snowden turned over top-secret documents to journalists. do you guys use anything to determine which to disseminate to the public and which do not? did anybody have a background in intelligence to know the full scope of what they were releasing? guest: the question about whether or not the disclosures

helped the terrorists avoid communication, if you look at every unwanted disclosure over the last 50 years, they make the same arguments. daniel was told that he would have blood on his hands and he would endanger the lives of men and women in uniform. every subsequent disclosure faces the same thing. there is zero evidence that any of that actually happens. that is the fear mongering of state officials. transparency -- i was asked about the number of documents we were given. we have published a small percentage. we have been criticized in some quarters that don't get a lot of attention for not publishing a documents. for holding onto too many.

i have that criticism much more then the claim that we publish too much. i think we have aired on the side of caution, especially in the beginning. we work with editors and the most experienced national security reporters around the world and we consult with experts in cryptography intelligence -- cryptology and diligence. we end up releasing them and get the information that way. we go through the same process that all journalists do when making choices. host: the caller brings up edward snowden's appearance on sxsw. we have seen appearances in russia. how does that square with this nonmedia strategy that you talk about?

he said, once identify and explore myself, i don't want to be the story. guest: he stuck to that for a long time. when we revealed edward snowden to the world, he became the most wanted media guest in the united states. every dayi hathe ... the of the american media and the political class in washington is to demonize the messenger. he wanted the focus to remain on the revelations. that really work. that is why there is a worldwide debate. he is now participating more actively in the debate that he

helped start around the world. he does it when he can talk about the documents and surveillance. not when he is going to be asked , what do you do with your day in moscow and do you miss your girlfriend? even now that he is becoming more assertive about expressing himself, he does so in a way that ensures that that participation will be substantive. host: how much are you still in contact with them? guest: i am in regular contact with him where he is able to communicate entirely through encrypted chat technology. we have appeared together on a couple of occasions and events. he sits on the board of an organization, the freedom of the press foundation. i see him on video when we have board meetings. host: let's go to chuck in kansas city on our live for democrats.

good morning. caller: i wanted to ask, if we can't address the surveillance -- why aren't more journalists writing about building seven on 9/11 -- host: we will stick to edward snowden. let's go to lance waiting in springfield, missouri. on our live for republicans. caller: it is great to talk to you i can't wait to read her book. -- it is great to talk to you. i can't wait to read your book. british intelligence agencies have treated you guys, rating your compound and a string or personal property, holding your partner -- i was curious if mr.

snowden is being pressured in any way by the russian federation in agreement with his political asylum not to release any more documents? the last thing i would ask is, i believe you live in brazil correct? i am from middle america and they like to keep us in poverty here. i'm curious about moving to south america myself before too long. i would like to hear your thoughts on what you think about it down there. guest: as far as mr. snowden and the pressure he faces or does not face in russia, i think it's quite clear that the russian document has never pressured -- russian government has never pressured him in any way. he does not even have any of the documents with them any longer. as far as the erring on the side of caution, the way this works is that, what we were in hong

kong, he gave us many thousands of documents. those were all the documents that he ever released. he has not released a single document to anybody. since june of last year. since then, the decision about which documents to be released have been made by journalists. whether you agree with the disclosure not, that decision is made by the journalist who published them. there is a framework he created to which we agreed about how it would work and which kinds of documents would be created. in general, he is not the one making those decisions. it's really the journalists. all i can say isy about south america, it's a beautiful content. you could do a lot worse than those kinds of places. host: there has been criticism about picking hong kong to meet with you.

where would snowden have landed had we not taken his passport when he was in the moscow airport? guest: on the question of hong kong, when he decided he was going to take these documents and, his overarching priority was to make sure it happened. that he got his documents into the hands of the journalists he had chosen to work with. he needed to be in a place where he felt secure that it united states government had detected what he was doing, they would be unable to operate easily guessed him to stop him from doing this. if you got to iceland, the u.s. government could have pressured the icelandic government to turn him over. if you got to ecuador, the cia operates very freely and that would or and they could have stopped him. hong kong was a place that gave him some degree of security because the u.s. government does have a hard time operating there

, but he wanted to be in a place that had political values that he felt come bowl with. hong kong has this climate of dissidents -- there was this massive protest against the chinese government. he felt like it was this perfectly calibrated lays in which to be. the public record is clear that he is in moscow. because he just to be there -- he was trying to transit out of moscow in order to get to cuba and fly on to ecuador. he never got out of moscow because the was government revoked his passport. host: where will snowden -- what will snowden do when his temporary asylum expires? guest: it is unclear. the russians have indicated that they intend to extend his asylum by another year. there are very active debates

about whether they should offer him asylum. in recognition of the acts that he undertook to protect the privacy of the citizens of those countries. for at least a good while longer, he will be safel. host: diane is calling in from florida on outline for democrats. good morning. caller: hello. it is an honor to speak with you and i want to thank you so much for your journalism and your ethics. i watched the frontline show last night. it was amazing. it it was so informative and so well put together. my question goes to an interview you did on democracy now regarding the cisco equipment and going through fedex and being intercepted. you had the nsa altering the

equipment. guest: that is a perfectly fine description. host:caller: if they are using the postal service, which is a government entity, packages first class are sealed to inspection unless under warned by postal inspectors. you were saying that the postal service is part of that? i know you made a comment and that you weren't sure how it worked. guest: the document that you're talking about is one that we published for the first time in the book. like all the documents in the book, we put them online so people could see them for free. the document is a page, 149 in

the book, describes a program in the boo nsa to provide internet services to villages or municipalities. the nsa will physically intercept the product in transit, open it up and re-seal it with a factory seal and send it on to the end user. one of the photos actually shows the nsa boasting about what they do. having opened a package from cisco. and then resealing it with a factory seal and sending it on after the implant a surveillance device that is undetectable to the eye. whether they do that from the u.s. postal service or from private mail companies like

fedex or ups is unclear from the document. it's a good question. i think that is something we ought to know. what is clear is that they do it. they have a team devoted to that being done. this is something the government has been vehemently denies and the chinese for allegedly doing and warning thae public about. here is the nsa doing exactly that. trying to ward the world off of chinese products. that gives the nsa access to more people's devices. host: let's go to mark in maryland. on our line for independents. good morning. caller: good morning. i do find this whole issue very interesting.

when he first came out, there was a lot of revelation about his character and what have you. how he will be viewed in the long-term. my question involves -- do you see that mr. snowden -- do you think he was naïve in any way as to how this would affect international relations among the different countries? how do you think you've use it now as to what he has done to the international community? guest: for me, the guiding light of how to understand these issues is what happened to daniel, my political hero from my childhood. i spent a lot of time talking to them about what he went through and he has been one of mr.

snowden's most ardent defenders. all the things being said now by democrats and some republicans that we have supporters on both sides as well -- they were saying he was a russian spy and was reckless and anti-american. the country regards what he did as noble and heroic. that is how history will view mr. snowden as well. there are a lot of adjectives you could to edward snowden. naïve is not one of them. he had a very clear understanding of how the international community would react to this finding. i think part of his hope for reform lay in the fact that most people around the world had no idea that the u.s. government was doing these things. they would demand that the government take action against them. he hoped that was one of the primary ways that reform could come about. host: kentucky on our line for republicans. the money.

caller: -- good morning. caller: the information that you now know, is there any hope for some nuremberg trials in the future for corrupt politicians who are trying to start world war iii with russia? do you think the mainstream media will derail rand paul's 2016 presidential run like they did his father in 2012? guest: the last time i was on c-span, it was in conjunction with my 2011 book, which is a book about how political allegiance in the united states have committed the most egregious crimes you can imagine over the last decade. from torturing people systematically to rendering

kidnapping them into invading and destroying a country of 26 million people. also causing a financial collapse around the world through systemic financial fraud. none of the people responsible for any of those policies were even remotely punish or held accountable. political and financial -- the lesson from the armored trials -- nuremberg trials was that all countries -- as far as rand paul, it's true for both the democratic and republican parties, whenever there is a candidate whoo challenges prevailing politics in washington, they step outside the confines of orthodoxy the

reflection of the media is to demonize them. that will happen to any politician in 2016 who does that. host: what is establishment journalism and corporate journalism as you describe it in your book? guest: one of the big changes in american journalism over the last 30 years has become this corporatization of journalism. when you went to work for your local paper or a television program, you were essentially working for families or companies that had primary business journalism. that was the general rule. now, if you work for a large media outlet, what you really are is a comcast employee. you go to work for the washington post, you are an employee of a corporation that owns educational services. these corporations have somebody different relationships and

dependencies on the united states government and other factions that will power -- that will power. they have an overwhelming interest in being cooperative. corporate ties affect how journalism functions. there is no adversarial youth those of what journalism is. it's a button-down, like the insurance industry. it is transforming journalism for the worst. new media and the digital age is allowing the older spirit of journalism that is more noble and more constructive to reemerge. you can now do journalism outside of those confines. host: how do you feel about your interaction with some of those media identities that you were talking about? how do you feel about the washington post and new york times doing book reviews on your book this week? guest: despite what i said

there are good journalists at every single one of the large media institutions, including the new york times and the washington post. it has been interesting to watch that over the past year, because i've been able to do the story and the reporting has received awards, the way that the reporting has been treated as changed to some extent. you see embedded in the reviews even the post and the new york times, this sort of closing up the ranks criticism and attacks on what i wrote. largely due to the fact that i've been critical of the bombings to ration -- critical of the obama administration. host: from the new york times review that came out yesterday noting towards the end of that review "he makes false assertion that one unwritten rule designed to protect the government is that media outlets published only a few secret documents and stop. they would report on the archives like snowden's to limit its impact and publish and full

stories, revel in the accolades of the big scoop, click prizes and walk away come ensuring that nothing had really changed. based at which media outlets continue to pursue the story. many of his gross generalizations about the establishment media do a terrible disservice to the many tenacious investigative reporters who broken important stories on some of of the very subjects that he feels so strongly about." guest: it was a very positive review overall. surprise surprise that he disliked my critiques of the dark times. it -- of the new york times. the new york times has been in possession of many tens of thousands of documents from the nsa. the received them from the guardian. they have produced very few stories over the past eight months since they have received the material. there absolutely are good journalists and these

newspapers. they do break good stories sometimes. everybody knows what the new york times did in the run-up to the iraq war. they sat on the story of the nsa -- in general, although there are exceptions, there is an overwhelming closeness between media outlets that are the largest and most influential and the government. host: let's go to dan in george on our line for republicans. caller: i was talking to amy goodman about what the nsa already knows about -- a lot of people in the world claim treason for this. it is noted going to be able to discredit the nsa where we can get away with our 201330

deal? guest: what will happen to the nsa is unknown because so much of it depends on how people around the world respond in terms of commanding reforms. mr. snowden already faces serious charges. that is why he has been given asylum at four different countries. host: another question on 9/11 relating to your work. do you have anything on the events surrounding 9/11 and the snowden archive? guest: i try not to comment on the stuff we have not published. it is very easy to say things that are not accurate representations. the documents that he took tended to be very recent documents. almost all of what we published have been from 2012 and 2013. there are things like investigations into 9/11 that occurred 10 years ago -- they tend not to be in what he turned

over. host: let's go to mike in florida on our life for republicans. the morning. caller:-- good morning. caller: good morning. president kennedy had concern about secret government -- i know snowden, if yet gone to the regular process of whistleblowing, he would have been accused of treason anyway. my concern is, how can we better the process if we have an employee under federal contract -- if he wants to step forward protective enough if there is a legitimate enough claim of wrongdoing without this political infighting about him being a traitor.

he knows if you went through that process, he would have been tried and convicted for being a traitor. i just wanted to ask you of your opinion about how to better that process. guest: it's a good question because so much of what is said here is designed to deceive and mislead the public. mr. snowden should have invoked the protections he had under the laws of a whistleblower. which is something president obama himself said. the reason it is so false is because the law that president obama was talking about is not even apply to private contractor employees. which is significant because a huge part of the national security state is outsourced to private corporations. something like 70% of the overall budget goes to the nsa. it ends up going to the functions of private corporations.

this idea that there are these great whistleblowing procedures that he should've gone through the way the u.s. government is structured is to hide, not to eliminate secret wrongdoing by people in power. the best proof of that is that there are two democratic senators who sit on the senate intelligence community weapon going round the city and everywhere they can for years warning the public that there are these radical surveillance policies. the public would be stunned to learn about what it was that was being done. yet, those two senders do not -- senators do not have the courage to disclose these programs because the system is designed to gag even powerful senators when they discover the national security is doing something wrong. he knew he cannot go to people like them because they were impotent. the system ensures they are and they ensure that they are. the only way was to go to

newspapers and ask them to publish it. host: along with twitter questions and colors, a few questions over e-mail. one of the questions from jackie in ohio -- he stayed to fight for his ideals. mr. snowden ran for russia and it looks like he is making money off of this, as are you. you are a blogger and are now making a lot of money off the stealing of these documents. guest: he did hide. he had for weeks because he did not want to be rested. he is the person who most vehemently disagrees with the person invoking his name. he wrote an op-ed in the washington post july 2013. mr. snowden was right to flee. he said edward snowden, if he were to come back to the nest is, unlike him, he would not be permitted to speak for himself or released on bail. he did the right thing and

leaving. there is zero evidence that edward snowden made any money off of these disclosures. he could have. he could have sold this information to foreign intelligence agencies for tens of millions of dollars and been extremely rich for the rest of his life. that was not his goal. i am paid for my work. all journalists should be paid for their work. edward snowden himself has never made a single penny from what he has done, except for the few whistleblower awards he has been given around the world. host: a question from scott on facebook. "where do you think we draw the line between being a whistleblower versus illegally hacking into classified systems revealing classified information and thus been guilty of treason ?" guest: this word treason is being thrown around so

frequently. there is a definition of what it means in the constitution. it means aiding and abetting america's enemies. giving them assistance. i don't think he did that. there is no evidence that he illegally hacked into the systems. he was an employee of these corporations that were entitled to access these documents. he was doing it as part of his job. ultimately, the distinction between a whistleblower and someone who commits treason is you look at their actions. they secretly hand information over to america's adversaries. he did exactly what you want a whistleblower to do, come to journalists and say to journalists, i discovered this wrongdoing and i wanted to publish it. federal courts in the united states have said that the program we were able to reveal was a violation of the constitutional rights of millions of americans. that is what a whistleblower is. host: do you ever fear for your

life? guest: there is risk to all of this journalism. the brazilian senate voted back in july to provide me and my partner with federal security and protection. i think there are a lot of journalists all over the world who face much greater risk than we are. host: james is up next in new mexico on our life are independents. good morning. caller: good morning. my comment is that the problems we are experiencing today are only here today after the advent of the internet. i believe to secure the banking systems in america again and business in america again, it would be prudent that we remove business and banking from the internet and allow it to

be for social purposes only. that would address some of the issues we're dealing with today with financial security. host: how would banking and business work under your scenario? guest: we would go back to the paper system and put more people to work. secure the systems like they had in the past. guest: i don't think you can never fight against the wave of technology. you can make the internet a much safer place. our government spends $75 billion to weaken privacy protocols on the internet and allow themselves and other governments to invade our information. imagine if we demanded that just a small fraction of that money comments