i want to address this to thomas drake. you have been in those official circles.what i wonder, in those circles -- let me get the background. you spent time in the air force and the navy, but one of the interesting experiences you had is you were in east germany so you became familiar with the horrors of the official propaganda system. the stasi and so forth. you understand the need of information for a free society been in the have not unlike snowden, you are a contractor but then you rose to a high official position. surely, living in washington, as you do, you are probably aware. we had lunch today. i remember when i was reporting for "the l.a. times and the development of a star wars system, i think it just goes to the point i was on tsa or a southwest airlines, a plane going from l.a. to san jose but and edward teller -- maybe not known to all of our students, but he was the father behind the instrumentals very in getting ronald reagan to support star wars. they were going to have an x-ray laser. he said, where you going and i said i am going to the stanford

participating in the discussion is daniel ellsberg and thomas drake. also hear from a former ethics advisor to the justice department who now advises snowden. from the university of southern california, this is two hours 10 minutes. [applause] flayed a leading role in defending snowden is a lawyer. i love having her here because i am all for models of people who don't sell out. and so much of what we teach is selling out. we test people so they will be able to make a lot of money, go on to great success and rarely asked the questions what are you going to use these skills for? excelledis who clearly in the american university system and is -- and has devoted andlife and went to yale really doing her like work that puts her at risk. without taking more time, one of you set the stage of why we are here. >> thank you, bob. thek you very much to annenberg school for communication and journalism in partnership with my organization, the government accountability project. the government accountability project is the nations leading whistleblower organization.

drake,case of thomas what got you in trouble and what is interesting about thomas drake is that it wasa very important story but it was boring from a kind of cops and robbers or national security thing. it really has to do, if i understand it correctly, with efficient c, wasted resources, and an important issue of privacy as well. but the nsa had developed a system with a very brilliant fellow who had developed a system for a thin thread that would allow you to go through information but in a selective way still preserving privacy. this was after 9/11, very important. before 9/11, it could have been used to good effect instead, they rejected that system and went for an enormously expensive system that has never worked and has a bludgeoning effect. this was really the thing that turned you into a whistleblower, isn't that true? >> in part, yes. you don't wake up one morning and decide to be a whistleblower. it is not a profession you would normally seek. i don't remember going to my high school counselor and saying, hey, i want to be a whistleblower. it just wasn't on the list. i grew u

that kind of thing but then one day i read about a guy named thomas drake who from everything i couldll in the article had gone through every conceivable internal channel to blow the whistle at nsa but he was getting indicted. he was indicted under the espionage act which is the most serious charge to be leveled against an american. right now i thought tom's case was a one-off. it wasn't. it has turned into a brutal war on whistleblowers and that includes espionage act, prosecutions more than any president before obama and more than all presidents combined against people who were not spies but were accused of mishandling allegedly classified information. this implicates journalists because you are in every single indictment in these cases. >> so let me introduce an old friend daniel ellsberg. when tom spoke he mentioned daniel ellsberg we had no way of knowing what was really going on in our name because it was all all -- but the pentagon decided to do a study of what this war was all about. and this study which daniel ellsberg revealed by tony rizzo to the people in government and th

but that has escalated astronomically because, in 2010, thomas drake to the right of me was indicted under the espionage act, one of the most serious charges that you can level against an american. and he became the second person in u.s. history to be indicted for espionage for non-spy related activity since daniel ellsberg to my left. the pentagon papers whistleblower who did much of the same thing as another client of mine, as snowden is doing today with the help of journalists like yourselves. you play a critical function. that's why journalists are considered the fourth branch, the fourth estate in our government. we, the whistleblowers, are considered to fit -- considered the fifth estate. we are considered pillars of our -- as they have been failing over the past decade since 9/11. the united asserts the state secret privilege to shut down these cases. when you have two important branches of government not functioning, you, the press, play a critical role even more. that is when we need whistleblowers even more. but since 9/11, the people who are out to expose government, incom

talk about government whistle blowing on a broader scale was former nsa official thomas drake who stood trial for one who was on illegal wiretapping on the news. he pointed out a pivotal part of it out. he added that many of the poll the constitution and the uniform code of military justice is your right to does it require you to follow any order. only lawful orders. can you actually have an obligation if you believe that the order is unlawful to question to question the order for one shocking discoveries are made with no other viable option a military member blows the whistle then find themselves on the wrong side of their commanders. then someone says military members must have a reliable justice system and we're so there are a whole host of issues that go. not only to the core of sorted the bigger picture of the keys. the weather service members in general have the opportunity for a fair trial in a expect when they put on the uniform and their accused of doing something wrong that this system will protect them. oversight and holland are also part of the team called the flight going t

so my question is to thomas drake. can you explain if you see a correlation between hactivists and whistleblowers? >> yeah. there's a direct correlation. you all live in the digital age. edward snowden's a product of the internet age. that's all he's known. it's a time if which i used to spend a lot of time in front of a computer. there is a clear confluence of being hactivists who are dedicated to making information free in the public interest and whistleblowers who are in the inside of these government institutions and corporations coming out and disclosing information in the public interest. one advantage that the hactivist has, they're very very much mass in their own domain of the technology. and it's one of the things that i have actually, i've laid down an extraordinary challenge to those in this space, that we need better encryption, we need better autopoising environments. we have got to protect because people are actually hot not just losing their jobs, people are being incarcerated, people are ending up in p

. >> you can see the entire program, which also includes thomas drake. it also includes a former ethics official who now advises edward snowden. easterntomorrow at 2:15 on c-span. president obama is in south korea today. he had been in japan since tuesday. writinghington post" about his meeting. north korea is already the most isolated country in the world, by far. its people suffer terribly because of the decisions leaders have made. we are not going to find a magic bullet that solves this problem overnight. will talk with leaders in the philippines and malaysia. he will be the first president to visit that nation since lyndon johnson in 1966. he will return to washington on tuesday. thank you, mr. speaker. >> the death of trayvon martin is an american tragedy. often, violent acts resulted ,n the murder of trayvon martin they are repeated in the streets of our nation. allplaud the young people across the land who are making a about hoodies and the natihoodlums in this on. racial profiling has to stop, mr. speaker. just because someone wears a hoodie doe

8:00 p.m., three prominent whistle blowers, daniel heburg, who broke the pentagon paper story, thomas drake, a former national security agency senior executive who was prosecuted as a spy, and a former justice department ethics whistleblower all talk about challenges they face exposing wrongdoing. here's a brief portion of tonight's program. >> snoweden -- snowden, i believe, looked at these examples, looked at chelsea manning, look at aage and realized he had to be out of the country if he was going to put out this amount of information and be able to tell what had he done, why he had done, to comment as he has been doing, to speak now. i was personally, 40 years ago, able to speak -- i was out on bail, on bond, throughout my trial, and i was able to speak to demonstrations, lecture. there isn't a chance in the world that snowden would have been allowed to do that as he knew from looking at chelsea manning. he would be in an isolation cell for the rest of his life. no journalist to this day, 3 1/2 years, almost four years now after this stuff came out, no journalist has spoken to chelsea m

>> i was going to say, thomas drake wasn't 29, someone came forward and jane wrote -- >> age doesn'tatter. i happened to pick that one. >> but it is -- >> president obama's, right, i understand that i understand it is a complicated matter but i think, again, if we go back to the snowden case, please tell me what the damage has been to the public wheel? what has been -- >> but i told you. we are seeing our adversaries saying, gee, if we communicate this way, we're going to be intercepted. if they stop communicating that way, we don't know where they have gone. so we can't, you know, we don't know what we're missing. but that is happening david. >> have any lives been endangered or harmed? >> i mean, i don't know that know the answer to that. i'm a lawyer. i'm not the, i'm not the operational guy. i know of instances where there have been concerns about lives being endangered. i know that there was one where we did, in fact talk to the media organization in question and they did in fact pull something back where lives would have been endangered. i can't say, but i don't think, that is

whistleblower thomas drake my own government unchained itself from the constitution a silent coup against the constitution placing itself. granting itself authority to engage in emergency powers emergency powers and we've been operating in that mode ever since truth be told and a series of decisions are made as a result of the failure of nine eleven we have to remember nine eleven was fundamentally a failure but do you is because the government is too big to fail. it was used as an excuse to engage in a whole series of activities and operations there were total violation. what we actually stood for since nine eleven the people who are out to expose government incompetence ineptitude and things that embarrass a government get hammered the pressure to run scared of being called. traitors and should consult a week. says that they're not doing their duty of upholding the constitution i would say we need more snowden's more chilled semen. or more words like iraq just like edward snowden ellsberg and drake expose huge government secrets and were charged with violating yes be an object throughou

and we've seen that with edward snowden we've seen that with thomas drake we've also seen that with bear brown and jeremy hammond so you know it's needs to be documented and the this was the most secretive trial in american history and they did not want transcripts coming from the us they really didn't want images coming from the courtroom either but that's our right and that's that's why i was there to cover it yeah that's what that is something that really struck me in this the military justice system is very different from the civilian system were you surprised with how secretive things were was it was that hard to follow was a hard to get your hands on on information such as these transcripts. well these transcripts are on the fischel transcripts the official transcripts are still yet to be released along with many of the court filings also there were many days and many long hours of the trial that were in closed session that were open to the public or the press and so there's a lot that this book won't ever be able to tell because there was was held and de facto secrecy. and that's

official thomas drake who stood trial for blowing the whistle on illegal wiretapping fraud and abuse he pointed out a pivotal part of an oath he had private manning both talk to uphold the constitution through the uniform code of military justice you see article thirty two doesn't require you to follow any order only lawful orders. and you actually have an obligation if you believe that the order is unlawful to question to question the order so when shocking discoveries are made with no other viable option a military member blows the whistle then finds themselves on the wrong side of their commanders vincent ward says military members must have a reliable justice system that works so there are a whole host of issues that go not only to the core of sort of the the bigger picture of the keys but whether service members in general have the opportunity for a fair trial can they expect when they put on the uniform and they're each used to doing something wrong that the system will protect them over skype nancy hollander also part of the team called the flag and misuse of the espionage the

awarded today edward snowden's family was on hand so is his attorney just rate act whistleblower thomas drake who won this award back in two thousand and eleven was there a member of congress alan grayson was there also ralph nader a former presidential candidate was there i spoke with him about a few issues after the ceremony also snowden and laura portress themselves appeared live video link to address the conference snowden talked about his motivations for releasing these documents and he kept reiterating the point that he wanted to return these documents to the american people that was the main message you want to get across is these documents don't belong to the n.s.a. they belong to the american people and it was necessary that the american people see these documents so that we can have the sort of debate over the n.s.a. as capabilities laura poitras talked about her first interactions with snowden about beefing up her encrypted knowledge to handle these these documents interesting thing there was hardly any other the mainstream media at the events this was something that ralph nader br