bill sapphire was very clever. he started this business of putting gate at the end of everything to diminish watergate. they all do it. it's all the same. it was -- anybody who does this now, i won't shoot you, but i will be very unhappy with you. you are falling for this trick that he did. it diminishes the horror, the important of what watergate was. that was exactly what bill was after. if you look for a minute that week, if you talk to people at all, you knew they were also doing this liberal groups. people went out of business because they couldn't get tax exemption in time. why did it not make sense? suddenly all these groups, you enter code words, because that's how you will find them. nobody was denied their tax exemption. what's going on on the hill is they are trying to weaken the irs. they have done so. there's a question of proportion here. this is highly shocking thing to say. one problem with watergate is we're so scandal prone. if it's not a scandal, it's not interesting. the thing that we went down

what we have learned is that -- bill sapphire, many years ago in t"the new york times" was the first to say we are heading in the direction where privacy is over, where this huge capacity of the government to eavesdrop is becoming more and more problematic. so we have a conflict of civil liberties. the necessary protection of the country and ourselves. >> but snowden is -- it informs people of -- in detail in a way that clearly we did not know. the massive nature of it and i think particularly our paper, the post, has been responsible and aggressive in presenting that information. there are no grand juries, to my knowledge. there is apparently no crime. this is a policy discussion which is going on which is going to go on for a long time. president obama himself has said it's good we're having this policy discussion. so i think this is about informing the public in a very important way. it is not the criminality of watergate. >> one quick think, and that is what snowden has really done is shown how insufficient the oversight of this is in the courts that have been established to look

bill sapphire was very clever.tarted this business of putting gate at the end of everything to diminish watergate. they all do it. it's all the same. it was -- anybody who does this now, i won't shoot you, but i will be very unhappy with you. you are falling for this trick that he did. it diminishes the horror, the important of what watergate was. that was exactly what bill was after. if you look for a minute that week, if you talk to people at all, you knew they were also doing this liberal groups. people went out of business because they couldn't get tax exemption in time. why did it not make sense? suddenly all these groups, you enter code words, because that's how you will find them. nobody was denied their tax exemption. what's going on on the hill is they are trying to weaken the irs. they have done so. there's a question of proportion here. this is highly shocking thing to say. one problem with watergate is we're so scandal prone. if it's not a scandal, it's not interesting. the thing that we went down the p

bill sapphire was very clever.tarted this business of putting gate at the end of everything to diminish watergate. they all do it. it's all the same. it was -- anybody who does this now, i won't shoot you, but i will be very unhappy with you. you are falling for this trick that he did. it diminishes the horror, the important of what watergate was. that was exactly what bill was after. if you look for a minute that week, if you talk to people at all, you knew they were also doing this liberal groups. people went out of business because they couldn't get tax exemption in time. why did it not make sense? suddenly all these groups, you enter code words, because that's how you will find them. nobody was denied their tax exemption. what's going on on the hill is they are trying to weaken the irs. they have done so. there's a question of proportion here. this is highly shocking thing to say. one problem with watergate is we're so scandal prone. if it's not a scandal, it's not interesting. the thing that we went down the p

what we have learned is that -- bill sapphire, many years ago in "the new york times" was the first to say we're heading in a direction where privacy is over. where this huge capacity of the government to eavesdrop is becoming more and more problematic. so we've got a conflict of civil liberties. and the necessary protection of the country and ourselves. >> but snowden is -- it informs people of -- in detail in a way that clearly we did not know. >> that's right. >> and the massive nature of it. i think particularly our paper, the "post" has been quite responsible and aggressive in presenting that information. there are no grand juries, to my knowledge. there is apparently no crime. this is a policy discussion which is going on which is going to go on for a long time. president obama, himself, has said it's food we're having this policy discussion. so i think this is about informing the public in a very important way. it is not the criminality of watergate. at least based on what we know now. >> also, let me just add one quick thing here. >> okay. >> and that is that what snowden has r