today featuring an exclusive sit down interview with two and a say whistleblowers bill binnie and co levy so let's get to it and let's break the said. the butler. and leave very hard to take that. lightly he ever had sex with that her right there.

tomorrow marks the one year anniversary since the first bombshell story broke i'm sorry tomorrow marks the one year since the first bombshell story broke based on top secret leave documents provided by national security agency contractor edward snowden over the past year we've learned that the n.s.a. is using a multitude of programs with names like prism and boundless informant to engage in massive dragnet surveillance of every american citizen and these revelations have completely redefined the notion of intelligence gathering and shed light on technologies that were in comprehensible mere years ago but to former n.s.a. insiders saw the rise of the surveillance state long before the world knew edward snowden's name bill benny was an n.s.a. technical director from one thousand nine hundred sixty five to two thousand and one and kirk wiebe you a senior analyst in the n.s.a. from nine hundred seventy five to two thousand and one and the months following the nine eleven attacks these two men witnessed a complete transformation of the government agency they had worked for decades and were forced to retire to the grave and concerns of the illegal. constitutional

direction of the agency so to discuss their experiences at the n.s.a. as well as what the snowden revelations mean for all of us i'm joined now by building and kirk we thank you so much both of you for coming on though i want to start with you you were one of the creators of the preen man alive and data collection survey on the program called the right which actually did have privacy protections instead for american citizens why was this program a band and what kind of system replaced it will it actually was in the band in the back part of the analysis part the part that allowed them to deal with massive amounts of data and index it was taken in to manage that was the way they they actually were able to to build surveillance on the entire world that that particular program was that powerful and that's why we put in those protections so that it would be impossible for them to abuse it and that was the first thing they removed when they took it into the new program still wind. and kirk after you guys found out about what they had done how did you bill and other intelligence insiders

address these concerns within the government and how were those concerns matt from officials in reality we had been trying to address what was going on and it's a terms of modernization for years. and it's kind of like nine eleven the events of nine eleven were the culmination. it in our minds of our failure to get those at the agency to see the potential of what we were developing what bill had vented in the same thread project. and it was within six weeks of nine eleven that we had movements myself bill binnie retiring from n.s.a. in absolute disgust because we had failed we had been trying to tell them they were going to fail. and we lost the battle. and bill in two thousand and seven the f.b.i. raided both of your homes along with other officials who had spoken out on the

false premise that you guys had leaked classified documents or information to the press what was that experience like for you and were you surprised at the aggressiveness of the response and yes the cia i had been cooperating with the f.b.i. and in their investigation into the new york times leak. for months several months about four months before the raid and when they came at me. you know it's hard to understand why they would do that and why they were here and pointing guns at me to so and my family so it's all a question of you know what was this all about and finally it didn't take me too long to figure out that what they were really doing was trying to intimidate us because this was like the morning of the second day of their guns all this is testimony to the senate judiciary committee about the terrorist surveillance program that the president had talked about which was he only talked about the warrantless wiretaps at the time but there were many other programs involved at cia and also at n.s.a. i think that included spying on everybody in the country and building the knowledge

and understanding of their lives of everybody as they were living them you know so it was a matter of pulling actually it was a computer program that was reassembling dossiers on everybody in the country in the world eventually so it was clear to me at that point that that's why they were there to keep us quiet so i started getting mad at these people while they were still there and so that's what i reported to the f.b.i. the real crime that they were sent there which was bush cheney hayden and tenet this is the core who core of individuals who decided to subvert the constitution and violate all the laws basic a lot of the laws that we had in statutes at the time and i told them what it was still when programming what data they were using how they were organizing what i was doing i was telling that all the f.b.i. agent on on my back porch so the only one who was acquired for it was the one fellow who was the special agent in charge palmarejo he was the only one who was cleared for that program the only thing. he could do when i was doing that was look at the floor because i what i was doing was causing him a problem because telling all these other agents f.b.i.

agents what what crime was being committed that they weren't clear were they were not cleared for this program so now we had they had to have a meeting outside before they left my house of all the agents around the cars they couldn't leave until you instructed them on what they could not say wow and kirk in the case of thomas drake of course that went a little bit farther to say the least talk about exactly what the f.b.i. did to him well let me frame it a little bit for you in november of two thousand and nine bill binney and i received a communication from our lawyer after we were raided in two thousand and seven we went having these on a lawyer rather than pay to. the lawyer was a former u.s. prosecutor so we thought he'd know how to deal with the government. he told us to lay low in november two thousand and nine he sends an e-mail and he says guys i just got a call from the department of justice they're coming after you. so bill and i made

an appointment with him and we went into baltimore and sat down at his desk. he was completely surprised by this move he thought it would go away well that wasn't. so that was the end of that for the holidays it was november when we got this message come january we get another e-mail there's a new prosecutor for the government the old one had left government and we are being offered letters of immunity if we are willing to sit down with the f.b.i. and the prosecutor for the hartmann of justice and sir questions about thomas drake and so bill and i agree we'll do that we knew tom had done nothing wrong easy let's go so we go down to the f.b.i. facility just outside d.c. in maryland and separately we address questions of questions mostly were questions

like. did you meet with tom and what occasions and of course we had lunch was sure said hello but nothing very interesting and did he talk about mulching papers destroying evidence or no sorry. so long story short we get letters of immunity in february saying we are under no further threat for this entire matter bill bailey and i bathed and threw their attention. and we think it's because he's the one that went to the press the n.s.a. was very much trying to and the government for that matter send a message if you work in the intelligence community and you talk to the press you're going to get hammered and so they want to make an example where they won the case or not was not important to the government they wanted to send a message and that's why they went after and they actually said you know they they

require this document they had specifically taken out was unclassified. extremely shady. was also material that they had independently released publicly publicly and didn't. for example that also provided that the judge had been that in the court. kirk i wanted to actually build let's talk about that word starting tomorrow of course the anniversary of the leaves i want to play a quick clip from this n.b.c. interview on let's check that out. they found that we had all of the information we needed as an intelligence community as a classified sector as the national defense of the united states to detect this plot we actually had records of the phone calls from the united states and now the cia knew who these guys for the problem was not that we weren't collecting information it wasn't that we didn't have enough dots it wasn't that we didn't have a haystack it was that we did not understand the haystack that we had and of course

this is why you guys you know you will agree with this assessment here oh yeah i know it's specific like six or seven phone calls from san diego back to the yemen facility and by the way all both ends were known i mean both numbers were there but that's how caller id works you know and you're talking about switches and then the switches have to know exactly how to pass or where it's coming from the past the other line back so that they have to have the information to make the connection otherwise it doesn't happen why expand the haystack if the haystack was already there could have prevented the terrorism well the very simple reason they did it was for money it was to build up an empire of an industrial complex around and say in other agencies and that's exactly what they've done their budget is running these spend on the order of seventy billion a year on contracts well let's go along with the n.s.a. apologists i hate in clapper who say that there is no tangible evidence that the

n.s.a. is actually using this data against us so why should we worry what's your response curt. and i say operates behind a wall of secrecy you need a clearance just to enter the building. and so what goes on behind those fences and facilities is unbeknownst to anyone except an essay so n.s.a. has the license to say what it wants to when there's no ability to challenge it virtually not. i would also add that it's not so much n.s.a. using that data it is it is law enforcement f.b.i. and the e.a. they're using this data directly they have ways and means to interrogate him directly to the director mueller testified to this to the senate judiciary committee he said he had access to a technology database which he put together with the o d where he can go in and get e-mails with one query get all past e-mails and all future ones as they come in on a person what he's doing is he's going into the n.s.a. database because the n.s.a. and the it's responsible for communications that's that's e-mail ok so they're and

they're they've got all these nearest devices around the network collecting all this e-mail so they're going into the base they're creating interrogating all of this material to get criminal activity yeah i mean as i read snowden has said repeatedly this is about the potential for retroactive prosecution kind of building this whole that framework that's exactly what they're doing exactly right we're going to take a break now and we'll be back with the two n.s.a. whistleblowers you guys stick around. seven years old it's one of the largest ten cities on the east coast of america and it's got about one hundred people here just because the back and the cost of i was a in this area especially is very high i believe as an american we have a right. to. possess public land until something is created

that's my house you see back there live it set them to well at least then spend the . rest but. if we had done that we wouldn't have been home i want to go we don't just have you know people that didn't see the bleak. anybody that needs help so tell your friend to just take care of. a mistake i'm never going to get. one thousand got a place to live once on monday i'll be out here. number one the people in kiev's independence square were not terrorists and the people of them boss they all the terrorists also just because we don't agree with what kiev is trying to impose on us and stand by our old conviction of a civilian in the room and those would.

go off the tried to. a polish going to. get much more efficient teaching every minute. and. somehow make. the law the weapon. of my own life but i. think this side of. this case is its limits. sometimes for nothing which. is silly and it's still. it's not just he still can still be just if he's safe because he stayed eight look easy. but speech was.

and we're back with and i say whistle blowers bill benny and kirk we want to start with you when obama took office he was briefed on the programs he decided to go forward with them why do you think he did this given the fact that he ran his presidency on a platform of transparency and strict constitutional hearings. i think it's the result of what i call techno speak when i say he talks about what it does it tends to put it in somewhat difficult abstract terms it also uses words to to see so for example being the sales say we're not doing such and such under this program. but what program are they doing it and so these are correct statements in

front of congress but they're meant to mislead. to be deceptive so i'm not sure that that obama ever do good or bad but really what was going on you're never sure that anybody does congress where's the big briefings all the time but still don't understand what will certainly didn't look like pushing. for i find it hard to believe that obama a constitutional lawyer yeah one at least want to know hey what is this not spying that we have to believe in before snowden made his revelations you had said that the u.s. had turned into a police state i was worried if you can expand on why you made that comment and what snowden's revelations that kind of expose that have helped further cement that notion well i said it because i knew that the capacity of collecting of information on everybody mostly their focus was on the united states initially but it spread around the world so it's really collecting data on everybody in the planet and i knew the capacity of the systems involved there was no limit on what you could do

with them that i saw anyway when i left there so the point was then how were they using it and that came out with director mueller the f.b.i. when he testified to the senate judiciary committee on the thirtieth of march of two thousand and eleven it's on the web where he. said he got together with the with the d.o.d. and created this database well that told me that he was interrogating all the email collection that they were making also had access to the phone network he said he talked about phone data too not at that it would but in another one so they were using this data for police operations and so it was reuters published an article on it in august of last year talking about the d.n.a. in the saw the special operations division in d a which was specifically to look at the data that n.s.a. collected to find criminal activity and then they would use that to go arrest people and after the arrest you know if they'd say part way here in this park in what way for a truck to pull in go arrest the guy bring the drug dog in and go step out the

drugs and then you can't the policy was you could not use any of this information documented in any court records and you couldn't tell the judge where the prosecuting of defending attorneys about it you had to do a parallel construction that meant they knew where the data was so you go through do your normal policing that you would do to find evidence and then you substitute that for the n.s.a. data as the basis for arresting them but i call that a basically a plan program perjury policy run by the department of justice of the united states now it's not only the united states now because they share that with foreign counterparts so that goes all the way around the world so they're subverting the entire judicial process here and around the world so they're really undermining democracy everywhere. it's important to point out this is the five eyes this is not just it's not genuine it's it's a lot more. current there's been criticism from journalist glenn greenwald for the

way that he's distributing the leaks i want to see if you're happy with the process of how the leaks have been distributed you know it's almost a moot discussion for me because we have a government subverting the constitution that's what. should be focused on not the peculiar details of greenwald's leaks cetera i think for an. indoctrinated non intel person he's probably done a pretty good job people have asked me when you look at what has been leaked by the greenwald snowden team. i tell people what does it mean to you when you see prism they say there's a word i don't know what it means because well that's right you don't and so most of water on these slides are a bunch of names shown in relationship to each other but it's difficult to interpret what's going on because the words are few and if you're not part of this

system it's difficult to know you have to infer now bill and i have an advantage we've dealt with this kind of speech before so we can infer things from it but i think they've done a pretty good job. and you know snowden is clearly not an anarchist he doesn't want to abolish the government he does want to abolish the n.s.a. he's made a deal with these journalists to actually vet every document to consult with the government as we've found out he's very careful in the way that he wants this distributed bill are you any comments on that. well i come basically when i look at that i see what he's what he's released and what they publish and i don't see any damage to the united states at all because after all when they claim there's this is irreparable damage they're doing that just to hype up the attack on the person what their what the slides are really showing is that we do all this stuff which everybody knew we were doing anyway so the other the other point is very simple what alternative people in the world have if you don't

want to use the phone that's that that's a choice you could make but you can't use any phone right so you have no choice just because we're monitoring phones you have to be if you have if you have to communicate you have to use a phone or e-mail or something so you have no choice that's like all the verizon people know their information being transferred the government but they have to change companies why what is their choice to another good point made in the united states in secret was that this is not just about government surveillance this is about corporate surveillance but people don't seem to care as much because it's used for advertising collection instead of intelligence gathering but it's very scary when you have an apparatus working in conjunction with each other that's exactly say exactly the point see the industry can come and arrest you and put you in jail governments can but when they cooperate they can add extra dimensions to what the government has knowledge in terms of knowledge of the government has instituted bill you brought a really good point about a minute ago when you said you know there's people that we knew about this for ten years you guys have been saying that you've been yelling on the rooftops as well as a couple of people like thomas drake what is your response to people who say

snowden hasn't brought us anything new we already knew about this the documents don't tell us anything that their response is pretty simple this is irrefutable evidence up until then they could have denied it and said not. it's not really too true but now with the evidence that's why you took all the data out because that was the only way to convince people now you had the evidence which was the government's data so the government can't they cannot there's no way they can deny it so we have documents finally you've got a good point as well when you said that people are focusing on character assassinations and the way that this is all being done why why are people focusing so much on snowden and greenwald and not the leaks that's a good question. you know over to europe right now there's a greater debate about this entire matter they seem to appreciate the threat more than the typical american we're spoiled we've now enjoyed this country for two to three hundred years but we've never lived under

a dictatorship we've never lived under the nazis we've never lived under this the secret police at the germans and many of the europeans have and they remember those harsh conditions and they don't want that to return so i think that's why they understand it and get it a little bit better but i think most of the polling that i've seen pretty much the majority still side with snow on this one which is encouraging it really goes it is all about the constitution it really is no matter how much they try to frame it here. really is about the content of the doc like it's like the wizard of oz you know attention of the man behind the curtain right ok. that's what the game they're playing bill i want to play another clip from the stone interview where he talks about what it means to be a patriot. patriot doesn't mean prioritizing service to govern but above all else. being a patriot means knowing when to protect your country knowing when to

protect your constitution knowing when to protect your country. from the violations of any. roach moments of adversaries and those adversaries don't have to be foreign countries. that quip really resonated with me do you agree that you sometimes need to break the law in order to stand up for what's right bill well let's put it this way there are several things that are involved here first the oath of office that everybody takes in government including the congress and the president and everybody else is to protect and defend the constitution not defend the government not defend an agency not defend the president so that's the first thing secondly. the point that he was making in terms of standing up is really what the responsibility of citizens is that you have to stand up to defend the constant you cannot sit by and be quiet if you acquiesce to it and

you know if nobody speaks up you could end up with a state like the nazis developed that's fundamentally what it is and we're on that path now with section ten twenty one of the n d a were talked about giving the president the power to declare somebody a terrorist threat take them up the street with the military incarcerate them indefinitely give them no due process that's that's not the nazi order of forty eight issued in one nine hundred thirty three that's exactly what they did if you go on the web you can read it it says basically the same thing and at what point are they going to stop following orders and stand up for what's right kirk what's your opinion on the usa freedom act of course this is the it's been transformed quite a bit passed in the house now in passage in the senate disappointment. much disappointment while it narrows method data collection using accounts of tops from a known or suspected bad person. when you do the math and the numbers are still huge numbers of innocent people that get swept up into this vacuum cleaner.

all along bill and i and others have tried to build a system the thin thread that we talked about earlier that was focused on very closely on known bad people and their relationships with others is yet to be determined. but collecting all the measured data but encrypting it to protect. the identities of all those innocent people out there that gave you the best chance to find things you didn't know about and also focus analysis on the things you do know about and do your job and make sure you cover that well with that kind of technique we don't think we would have had a boston marathon for example explosion and so forth so n.s.a. is not operating at optimal what we would call optimal levels of analysis so when i look at the freedom act narrowing mehta data it sounds good in the protection of privacy but it really doesn't afford that much and i do hear nothing about

encrypting the innocent the identities of innocent people so n.s.a. can still look at those people illegally as far as i'm concerned we have about a minute left but you know for people like me in the audience is watching this show i feel like we really want to get our hands on encrypted and try to figure out how we can protect our data online and i feel like it's not as user friendly as i guess it should be what's your advice to people who want to protect their data i think if they are after you there's no way virtually you can do that no not at all it's unfortunately that's true i mean because when i look at pretty much this way there's so much capability even if you have an encryption once you decrypt it then there's enough of them to look at you and then once you put it in your system in a decrypted form they can come through a break in your computer and take it out that way so it doesn't make any difference what you do my point all along has been that's why i call the police state is that ronald reagan said we are a country with a government we're now we're

a government with a country. that's what we're turning into we've got ten seconds i would just simply say if you would crypt all the meditator they can't get here coming through because they don't know to whom it belongs amazing to have both gone bill benny really really appreciated you guys thank you so much for what you've done. and that's our show you guys are i'm a going tomorrow when i break the sad all over again thank you so much. indecision in ukraine while it appears there is a commitment to a multilateral ceasefire in the country fighting continues again talks the talk of peace though its forces pursued their assaults in the east is foreshadow in control . of the. war is probably the most complex and difficult to.

all of us are still locked up. in the phenomenon of friendly fire probably extends back to the invention of gunpowder. just killed a bunch of people you know don't know one thing their families there are a us people. reading. this some of them shoots my brother in the leg not intentional because it is because it was night times four in the morning even the best even the best shoulders. are going to make mistakes and this is this whole idea of brotherhood and author. and camaraderie in this sense it was in this context that has absolutely no place.

as a new thing. i swear to abide by the hippocratic oath. to the best of my ability and judgment. i will prescribe for the good of my patients. i will not give deadly doses to anybody. or advise others to do so. i will never do harm to the law. doctors of the dogs on. dramas that trying to be ignored. stories others who refuse to notice. faces change the world writes never.

full picture of today's leaves. on demand from around the globe. local. t.v. . this is a see international tonight more residential areas come under fire in east ukraine where people say they are living in constant fear now shelling even though the president promised not to endanger civilians. elsewhere israeli police fired tear gas on a list today in protesters venting their anger at what they say was a revenge killing of a teenager as thousands joined his funeral in east jerusalem. back to iraq the top general of the united states says the country may actually launch an assault on the isis insurgents while saudi arabia since thirty thousand troops to the border sparking fears of an armed invasion.