daniel elsburg helped change the course of the war and he spoke about this latest scandal. john alston was there, and john he had some strong opinions about this. >> the event wrapped up a short time ago. snowden is a hero who risked his life to benefit the country. elsburg had less kind words for president obama saying that his assurances should not daniel elsburg was the hero tonight. but the man who made history leaking the pentagon papers showing how the government lied about the vietnam war and had higher praise for edward snowden who leaked information about the u.s. secret surveillance program. >> i don't think there has ever been a more significant disclosure than what he has made. it gives us the chance that i thought might never come to never change the situation of total surveillance by the government. >> inside the liberal crowd gave boos and hiss to obama and dianne feinstein, the chair of the intelligence committee because of the surveillance program that elsburg thinks could go back a decade or more. >> that was an impeachable offense under george w. bush. it

daniel elsburg helped change the course of the spoke about this latest scandal. john alston was there, and john he had some strong opinions about this. >> the event wrapped up a short time ago. snowden is a hero who risked his life to benefit the country. elsburg had less kind words for president obama saying that his dassura not daniel elsburg was the hero tonight. but the man who made history leaking the pentagon papers showing how the government lied about the vietnam war and had higher praise for edward snowden who leaked information about the u.s. secret surveillance program. >> i don't think there has ever been a more significant disclosure than what he has made. it gives us the chance that i thought might never come to never change the situation of total surveillance by the govern >> inside the liberal crowd gave boos and hiss to obama and dianne feinstein, the chair of the intelligence committee because of the surveillance program that elsburg thinks could go back a decade or more. >> that was an impeachable offense under george w. bush. it is an impeacha

daniel elsburg helped change the course of the war and he spoke about this latest scandal. john alston was there, and john he had some strong opinions about this. >> the event wrapped up a short time ago. snowden is a hero who risked his life to benefit the country. elsburg had less kind words for president obama saying that his assurances should not daniel elsburg was the hero tonight. but the man who made history leaking the pentagon papers showing how the government am war and for praise for edward snowden who leaked information about the u.s. secret surveillance program. >> i don't think there has ever been a more significant disclosure than what he has made. it gives us the chance that i thought might never come to never change the situation of total surveillance by the government. >> inside th liberal crowd gave boos and hiss to obama and dianne feinstein, the chair of the intelligence committee because of the surveillance program that elsburg thinks could go back a decade or more. >> that was an impeachable offense under george w. bush. it is an impeachable offense u

. >> this is daniel elsburg decades later. he did exactly what this guy did. he had access to classified documents that shook the foundation of the united states with what was revealed and he took great risk and went through a great process to try to unfold. but i would find that those who i think benefitted from daniel els elsburg to supply the same -- the president of the united states says we need to have this debate, but the president did nothing to precipitate the debate. we're only having the debate. >> can i speak to what the other options are. i have been reporting on ron wyden directly with the senator talking to him extensively for the last two years specifically on this one. point that he has been making for the last two years even back to 2008 is that entirely in secret, the government has an inwere ititation of the law, specifically the so-called business of the patriot act that vastly more surveillance than the text of the public law on its face authorizes. he expressed great frustration that even the interpretation of the law, a public law, is c

. >> what about the point that jeff makes, which is, you know, you quote daniel elsburg as saying heevealed dangerous constitutional activity. that strikes me as wrong because in fact these programs were authorized by law, reauthorized by law. the congress put in place what they regarded as constitutional safeguards. courts then oversee the process. so this has all been done by a democratically elected government under congressional supervision. how is it unconstitutional? >> i didn't make the argument that it's constitutional. i accept most of this is actually legal and i think that's the great scandal. my argument here is that in a sort of broader context, we go back to after 9/11, several things happened to the u.s. you know, we had some positive things, we all came together, a sort of wave of patriotism. that's all good. but we then took several steps in foreign policy invading iraq, in national security, renditions, kwagone tone mow, de attacks and domestic surveillance. as president obama said about a month ago in his speech on drone attacks and the war on terror, it's time to

snowden has been compared to daniel elsburg, the man who leaked the pentagon papers to "the new york times." but elsburg did not hop on a plane to hong kong or moscow once he had unloaded his cache of documents. he stood trial and faced the possibility of more than 100 years in prison before the court dismissed the case against him because of the prosecution's mistakes and abuses of justice. ma hot ghandi spend years in prison in their native land. while snowden is no hero, his revelations have focused attention on a brave new world of total information. we're living with the consequences of two powerful interrelated trends these days. the first is digital life. your life today has a digital signature, where you eat, shop and travel, whom you call, e-mail and text, every website, cafe and museum you have ever visited, it's all stored in the great digital cloud. and you cannot delete anything ever. the second is big data. americans were probably most shocked by the revelation that the u.s. government is collecting massive quantities of their digital signatures, billions of phone calls

this guy is no daniel elsburg. >> you need to explain to the young people who that is. >> you're hurtingdy. he was the one who orchestrated the release of the pentagon papers to neil sheehan at the new york times. the difference is this was not about revealing corruption or lies by government or anything like that. he was revealing secrets that had to do with effective programs to battle terrorists. in this age of anti-terrorism. so, to me, i think this is a guy who took an oath when he said he was going to work as a government contractor for nsa and he broke that oath. i don't think that's a martyr or a hero. i think that's in the category of traitor. he should be prosecuted. if point is we need a debate about secrecy and the balance between civil liberty and national security. that should take place far more than in 2002 when we passed the patriot act. only one senator voted against it, russ finegold of wisconsin. there was such emotion. we need to fight terrorists. now to go back and say, oh, you know what? we didn't know about it. we knew about it all along. we have known about it cl

daniel elsburg, when he released the pentagon papers because he thought it was the right thing to do, stayed in america and faced the consequences. second, he's hurt other people. a gandhi or a martin luther king didn't hurt other people as they did their resistance, and they faced the consequences. so i don't think snowden in any way can be compared to those people and should not be made a good guy, hero, or anything like that by anybody. >> and finally on this subject, senator, are you concerned that watching a man the u.s. really thinks has exposed government secrets, has been charged with spying and with theft of government property, as we sort of track him around the world, are you worried that the u.s. looks kind of powerless to stop this one guy? >> well, let's wait and see. diplomacy has its funny ways of working, and sometimes it takes a little while. so i wouldn't prejudge that yet. >> now, let's get to immigration reform. you've got a big vote coming up. i know that you agreed to and will vote on first this new border security plan that is going to double the force that is

wikileaks whistle blower daniel manning and daniel elsburg, the man who revealed the pentagon papers. a spokesman for the director of national intelligence issued a statement on sunday saying in part the intelligence community is currently revealing the damage that has been done by these recent disclosures and any person who has a security clearance knows he or she has an obligation to protect classified information. >> senior correspondent john miller is a former deputy director of national intelligence. john, good morning. so snowden is 29 years old. he doesn't have a high schoolkoolchool diploma. should he have access to all this information? >> the intelligence community is largely run by contractors. when i was working as the director of national intelligence i had a staff of six or seven employees and 38 contractors. so he's got a high school equivalency. he studyied computers. his access is not derived from his experience as an intelligence officer. his access is derived that he's a computer guy. he's got system administrator position. according to him, he's supposed to be invo

daniel elsburg praised him. michael moore and glenn beck having praise would him as a hero. i read this morning that on twitter, those who brand him as a hero outnumber those who brand him as a traitor by 30 to 1. >> twitter has spoken. >> twitter has spoken. any comments on the social media >> peter: you get in a conversation with people watching and listening. dule says he is a criminal. he didn't expose a crime. he exposed a legal surveillance program. he should be punished. one of our other viewers says what's legal about secretly spying on law-abiding citizens? we are tweetingat bp show. >> bill: i must say, rebecca i am looking forward to the briefing today at the write house and the fact that the president does have a couple of opportunities where he might say something would we expect that? >> i mean, you never know. you know, it's one of those things. on friday when these stories were swirling around knowing there was nothing on the schedule, nothing said he should way in and yet he did. he seemed egard to way in. he took a healthcare event and repurposed it essenti

>> daniel elsburg has a great article in "the washington post." sure president obama would have sought -- >> stephanie: film do you do like this guy? if you want to leak a lot of classified information -- >> no. look, he makes the point that we need whistle-blowers. by any standard, that's what manning should have done so the american public could see what we're doing over there. for them to charge him is an outrageous sensibility going after the man who exposes the war crime instead of any of the ones who did it. >> stephanie: is this a war crime? >> i'm talking about bradley manning. >> we're talking about snowden. >> stephanie: that's what i'm saying. i think you made the cogent point. if this is -- we bitched about during the bush administration. >> if we have a warrant it's fine. president obama when he was candidate obama, he campaigned on the fact that we need to be doing this with a warrant. and so if we find out it hasn't been done with a warrant -- >> stephanie: i understand it is tough stuff. my friend and i were talking yesterday. you