d to his own party leadership as he did to the opposition. the senate has always needed mavericks. the keep the institution bubbling. if they were all mavericks, nothing would get done. we were fortunate that they have been a distinct minority. >> senate historian don ritchie and ray smock on the history of the house and senate, its leaders and scandals host: we want to welcome back senator patrick leahy, democrat of vermont. the longest-serving senator in the senate right now. sir, thank you. we also have an studio with us mike debonis and dustin volz. thank you both for being here as well. senator, i want to ask the first

question. in a secret step, nsa expanded its internet spying. can you tell us if you have concerns about its? senator leahy: i do have concerns. i am somewhat limited in terms of what i can say about it, but we are are talking about the fact that they are picking up on foreign material and backtracking it. host: right. the story is -- some are saying it is a major policy decision about how to structure cyber security in the united states. senator leahy: we have to have cyber security. one thing senator lee -- and this is somewhat related -- a bill that would be an update on our own privacy on the internet. it was written back in 1986. we kind of chuckled at a press

conference, senator lee mentioned he was in sixth grade at the time. i said that i was one of the ones writing the bill at the time. but it dealt with the internet as we knew it then. it dealt with -- you know -- it is so different. you have far more computing power on your phone than that massive computer in your office would have had back in 1986. and our records, our files everything is stored usually in the cloud. it is very easy to track. we want to change this to require a warrant, a search warrant to do it. the example i give and people understand -- if you have your files, your records, all your personal things in the filing cabinet in your home, you fully

expect somebody will have to get a search warrant to come into your home and get it. it should be the same if they're going to take it out of a server held in the cloud. you want to have privacy. we have so whittled away the privacy of americans that i think most americans would be fighting if they knew how much of their privacy they have given up. not only to the government, also to commercial interests. whether it is the companies that run the internet or -- or stores where you buy things and so forth. host: this program, revealed by edward snowden, means that because of the secret memos that were written by the nsa in an effort to for to stop a cyber

attack, the nsa can go in to try and track internet travel without a word. so they can go into the cloud? senator leahy: this is where i think they should have to have a warrant. remember, some rules -- we don't get a warrant to go into isis, for example, but we do get warrants if there are americans being involved. the program you are talking about leaves a huge gray area. and what i'm concerned about is the number of times the has been a gray area that has gone so far beyond what was ever intended by the law, or what is allowed by the law. the collection, use out the second circuit did. and ruling it illegal. now, we have ended bulk collection with legislation that

we just passed in the house and the senate and the president signed into law. but i don't think everybody should breathe a sigh of relief and say, well, the nation is secure and our privacy is secure. i say we still have questions of both cases. mike debonis: senator, as you said, it has been a remarkable week on capitol hill. the senate passed what you called the most significant intelligence reform in decades since the late 1970's. i want to step back and ask you about this. as the "new york times" story today, we were talking about this before hand. it is a reminder that edwards snowden is still here. the material that he released the still around and it is still leaking out. do you think that two years later -- monday is the second anniversary of the first disclosures from his cache, has

congress's action in this week anyway vindicated him as a whistleblower or does he remain a criminal who should be prosecuted? a criminal? senator leahy: i think that a number of senators have voted for reform, and those who voted against it -- i will let them speak for themselves. the fact of the matter is what we have done. one of the reasons -- it is interesting.

he was, at that time, the majority leader of the house. and we got together to put the provision in. now, if we didn't have the sunset provision, do you think congress would have been acting and looking at these things from snowden? you can argue whether his disclosures -- the thing that really made it happen is that we had sunset provisions and we had that one way or the other. i glad those were there. i wish we had acted last year. but that was filibustered. it tells us in a changing world and increasingly complex cyber world, we make a huge mistake if we take, ok, we passed the bill, now it is all set. everybody's good. we saw the materials that have come out and we also saw the

public -- there were some wonderful men and women who worked there, very dedicated to this country, who had a spokesperson for them say, well, this stop 52 terrorist attacks. when they came before my committee and the public, the 52 went down to 12, which then went down to one after the fact. that, you know, or those on the floor of the senate would argue if we had had all this bulk collection and everything, we never would have had 9/11. baloney. we had all the information necessary. as your reporters have brought out subsequently, and we didn't connect the dots. when i find that some of the wire tells they had before 9/11 after 9/11, they said, we have to get somebody in here to translate the information. mike debonis: just to follow-up, if not for whistleblowers and those willing to break the law like edward snowden, how do we spur reform in these programs?

we have oversight committees obviously, but the people on those oversight committees are hamstrung that they can't reveal the scope of these programs. given the fact that he is on the committee and he cannot break the law, you cannot let the people know and really create the debate that is needed to spark his reform. senator leahy: it is a difficult thing. if you knew the number of times i have raised in these closed sessions problems -- which i won't go into here -- but what i would suggest is that if somebody said that they weren't being a whistleblower, we do have protections for whistleblowers. if we need to make them tighter do it.

but there are good people in the house and the senate and some of these oversight committees in both parties. go to them and say, look, i want to come as a whistleblower. will you bring me before your committee and let me tell you what is going on? i think that is a better way. and we've done this in some law enforcement things, i know, in the past. i wish it would have been done this way because then you can get the information and act on it, but you also don't release information to the whole world that may put the united states in jeopardy. dustin volz: i want to go back to the freedom act and its passage earlier this week. you mentioned that the bill came up in the senate last are, last november, and came just short of passing. i think it had 50 votes. senator leahy: when i came to the senate, 51 votes is all it took. at 58, we still go to get past because of the filibuster. dustin volz: it fell short when the democrats still held the

senate last year. after the takeover i think a lot , of people thought reform was not going to happen because mr. mcconnell was very clear on his reform, which he did again last week. it then came up again before the memorial day recess before you are finally able to get the victory this week. what do you credit on the -- on finally overcoming that 60 votes threshold and finally being able to go forward that finally allowed you to get this bill through? senator leahy: that is a good question. it came about because of a whole lot of work. done by dedicated senators. i have publicly complimented senator lee of utah. he and i are miles apart politically, but we made the decision to work very closely together on this. we didn't call press conferences. we didn't talk about what we were doing, as we sometimes do but we went senator to senator

to senator, worked closely with them -- i was looking back at the log of my own calls during the recess just before we came back in. i was making calls to senators all over the country. and mike was doing the same thing. we did it the old-fashioned way. the way it was when i first came to the senate. you had senators who kept their word to each other. diane feinstein spoke very strongly in favor of our legislation, even though when she was chair, she would have liked more done, but realized more was not going to be done. ron white, he worked hard. we had people on both sides of the aisle and it was just hard work. step-by-step. and we all decided one thing. we are not going to be fighting

-- frightened by going over the precipice. because there have been plenty of times -- one that makes me angry, there would have been plenty of time to have done this a month ago or last year. so we were not going to allow a manufactured crises of going over the precipice. if we had to go longer than that, we would have gone longer than that and get it done. host: does senator rand paul deserves some credit for not allowing the usa freedom act to be watered down? senator leahy: yes, he does. and i will let the two of them , both from kentucky, work out how they feel about that. and senator paul voted against the bill. he did not offer a bill of his own, which i wish he had. we could've debated it. the fact of the matter is it is always easy to vote against

something. it is more difficult to have something and to get votes for it. and that is what senator lee and i tried to do. and did do. i think the fact that senator paul would not allow us the -- us to be railroaded on anything, he deserves credit for that. but if he hadn't objected others would have objected. we had made up our mind, we are not going to be railroaded into continuing a program that has been found illegal, in part by the second circuit, the unanimous decision, and we also looked at the fact that the house of representatives with members across the political spectrum voted overwhelmingly to make the changes we had in our bill. and that goes back to your

question, the amount of work done with house members over there. and have kept that work up constantly. the speaker, the majority leader in the house made it clear they , were not going to take a watering down of what they did from the senate. and that also helped build up our chances. but mostly this was not doing press conferences every day, but actually doing the work. frankly, it brought me back to my days when i was a prosecutor. we would announce what our results would be when the jury came back. not before. mike debonis: senator, you mentioned the fact that the reason we are able to do this is because there was a sunset that you wrote into this law. we know there is another major authority that is going to

sunset i believe 2017 senator 2017. mike debonis: is there any hope in mitch mcconnell's senate, is there any hope before the subset, or are we heading towards another brinkmanship cliff moment here? senator leahy: it is too early to tell, but i hope we don't have another brinksmanship. and you have less ability to bring parties together in brinksmanship. these articles have just come out in the last couple of days and are being used as a backdoor way of going into americans' information. that is going to help us. there is going to be two or three major debates coming up,

702 being one of them. and then the other one is a major -- it is going to be a major thing. frankly, i would like the side having a way for americans to know -- not just what their government collects -- what industry is collecting. what happens to the information when you go to a grocery store or a major chain and use your credit card? how is that being done? what happens if they are tracking your phone and you are walking near the xyz store, and all of a sudden pops up on your phone, the store is having 12% off for those who hold such and such a credit card? that scares the hell out of me.

dustin volz: what is a greater threat to americans privacy, is it government or industry? senator leahy: the government. i don't want my government spying on me. it's -- i remember a very chilling meeting. i was on the board of directors. of the national district attorneys association. four or five of us met with the fbi director, and we had republicans and democrats and we were all prosecutors. boy, tough law and order and so on. we walked out. we were almost as shocked having listened to mr. hoover talk about he is going to investigate people.

several of these prosecutors had major organized crime investigations underway. he said, no, it's communist, and also some of the civil rights groups. i am investigating them, and he says, you know, the "new york times" is becoming left-wing in their support of civil rights and so on that they are almost a communist paper and then i will , investigate it as such. now, just think about that. and he died shortly thereafter but think to yourself if , somebody like that, the government, had the tools at the hands that the government today has in its ability. now, i do want that to happen. fortunately, we have had some excellent fbi directors. we have a very good when now, but but here is a man, they

could replace him because he was blackmailing different presidents. do we want to have that ability of anybody in our government? i don't. i don't care if it is a democratic or republican administration. i don't want that to happen. host: we have a little bit more than five minutes left. dustin volz: another thing is with cyber security and specifically an effort to increase sharing between the private industry and the government. the news today is the office of personal management announcing the data of four million federal employees has -- at least four million, maybe more, has been accessed by hackers believed to be linked to china. some of your colleagues are already saying this is a need to pass the information sharing legislation swiftly. we need to get this ready. this will help us sort of combat

these type of cyber intrusions. i know that you and some others have some privacy concerns about that legislation. do you still have outstanding concerns about giving the government more information? senator leahy: yes i do have concerns. i want to look more at what happened at opm. but we need to pass this law immediately, otherwise we are filling the blank. you would think isis is marching up pennsylvania avenue during this last debate if we didn't pass it immediately. look what happened after after 9/11, you had an administration come in and say, you have to pass our legislation by friday, or whatever it was. do you have the legislation? no, we are drafting it. but you have to be prepared to pass it immediately. i said, why don't we just have some hearings on what you have here? it's when it forces things and then you find the evidence is different.

we had the vice president back at that time saying that saddam hussein had weapons of mass distraction. and suggesting that he was involved in 9/11. of course, he wasn't involved in 9/11 and our own intelligence showed there were no weapons of mass destruction. yet, we went into a $2 trillion to $3 trillion war, which is now destabilized the whole area, based on that. take a breather. there are always going to be attacks. there is always going to be hacking. i worry about us spending the money to improve our own security, our own computer security. you want something that could be a frightening thought? if somebody really wants to attack us, find vulnerabilities in our power grids. then when you are having 10 degree below zero weather in the

northeast, close down the power to 10 million people. let's start spending the kind of money to improve our own infrastructure. dustin volz: another tech issue, it has been a very busy week for you, but yesterday, the committee passed the patent act 16-4. one of the minority votes against it was from dick durbin. last year, the committee did not even get a bill out because, in part, be then senate majority leader harry reid the not want to bring it to the floor. is the democratic leadership going to stand in the way of efforts to reform? senator leahy: well, some will. we would have gotten out of committee last year if we had the votes for it. but when i heard it was not going even to be put on the -- the agenda, i pulled the bill

because i felt why make senators have to stand up against some of their supporters, which they would to pass the bill? , again, quite work behind the scenes during the break at the end of the year. and for weeks and months, people in my office have just done unbelievable amount of work. alexander givens and others, they worked with their counterparts in both the house and the senate both parties. we've got a lot of work done to get to where we were yesterday. christine loosest lucius is the democratic leader in the legal staff in the judiciary -- this was amazing, but it was a lot of hard work. and we still have to get past

the senate. and there will be more amendments, but we cannot have a situation where if you are made -- main street, where have a little coffee shop and you bought legitimately off-the-shelf router or whatever so you can advertise you have wi-fi and someone comes in and says, i have a patent which may be on that, but if you give me $20,000, i won't sue you and shut you down. there is too much of that going on. host: we have time for one more question. mica, if you want to get one in? mike debonis: let's turn to a completely different subject. we are coming up on a momentous anniversary, the voting rights act 50 years ago today. this legislation was moving through congress. i know this is something you feel strongly about that -- that congress needs to act to restore the protections. what are the prospects that there will be any movement on that in this congress?

are there any republicans who are willing to sign on to restore what the voting rights act once did? senator leahy: it is difficult but i think we will find something. it is unfortunate the supreme court made a terrible decision in the shelby case, but we have got -- we have got to do this. now, people are trying to figure out how -- based on the number of voters in the district -- how -- not the population -- there are some efforts underway to disenfranchise the elderly minority communities, other people. that is not america. we thought we won the civil rights battle after selma. we still have to fight. and i think the right to vote is the most important and there are

so many efforts to cut away a large part of our population, the right to vote, and that is wrong and that will destroy america if it is allowed to continue. mike debonis: very quickly hillary clinton, the presidential, has made a lot of comments about improving the voter access. were you happy to hear that? senator leahy: i am very happy to hear that. and now i will be happy to hear about the 15 or so others on the other side. what would they do to improve access? host: we will have to leave it there. thank you very much for being our newsmaker. appreciate it. and we are back with our reporters, mike debonis: and and dustin volz. usa freedom act, the senate on -- finally passes it last week.

the president quickly signs it into law. this is not sunset now until 2019, but there is more debate happening on the nsa and its surveillance programs. what is next? mike debonis: as the senator mentioned, you know, we have a number -- another sunset coming. it has to do with section 702 of the foreign intelligence surveillance act. that deals with basically all internet traffic in a way that the things that we were dealing with now we are only dealing , with the phone metadata. this deals with all the sorts of different programs that edward snowden revealed about the nsa being able to cap into google and facebook and these cloud services and monitor information in those spheres. and i think that, to a lot of people, people have found that

almost to be more invasive and more problematic than the collection of phone metadata which is records of calls that you have made and when you made them and how long those calls were. both problematic, but the 702 authority is just a whole different level. what senator leahy has said is that now we have this coalition that we have proven is concerned about these things and interested in reform. the question is is whether we are going to come to another cliff type situation in two years or whether some actual reform bills can go through regular order, as they say, and get passed before that. given that were going into a presidential year, it's hard to say what's going to happen. host: dustin volz, explain this a little bit more, though. what we talking about here?

that the nsa doesn't need a warrant to go in and follow the internet traffic, google searches, or whatever. is it because this originates overseas? that doesn't need a warrant to go in and follow the searches? dustin volz: right. the foreign part is the key here. as senator ron white and others note, domestic data can be instantly collected. your e-mails and the content in many cases can be scooped up in that. this does implicate u.s. privacy as well. but i think an important thing to note about what senator leahy said about having this momentum and coalition going forward the , program that is being ended was considered an effective by -- ineffective by two government review panels. president obama said he wanted to end it 18 months ago. some members of the intelligence community even indicated they wanted to jettison it. so the momentum for them, there