NBC "Meet the Press" - Transcript: Edward Snowden and the NSA

Interview

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DAVID GREGORY
Joining me this morning Barton Gellman of the Washington Post who has been writing extensively about Edward Snowden and the N-S-A. Special correspondent for NBC News Ted Koppel. And the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Republican Congressman Michael McCaul.

DAVID GREGORY:
Bart Gellman, let me start with you. Has Edward Snowden won? Has he accomplished what he set out to do, which is to not only get a debate going, but force change in these programs?

BART GELLMAN:
He has accomplished far more than anyone in his position could reasonably hope to have accomplished. I mean, he told me that his greatest fear was that he would come out and do this and the whole story would be, you know, rolling around for a day and it would be gone. Now you have President Obama being forced to say that he welcomes the debate, which he welcomed sort of like the CEO who gets a really angry letter and he writes back and says, you know, "Thank you for your interest in our surveillance, you know, programs." But it's top of the agenda now for two months.
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DAVID GREGORY:
Uh-huh (AFFIRM). The president spoke out about Snowden during his press conference on Friday and he said the following:

[TAPE]

OBAMA:
No, I don't think Mr. Snowden was a patriot. As I said in my opening remarks, I called for a thorough review of our surveillance operations before Mr. Snowden made these leaks.

I actually think we would have gotten to the same place, and we would have done so without putting at risk our national security.

DAVID GREGORY:
Chairman McCaul, do you believe that? That this administration really did welcome the debate? That he would have reviewed these surveillance programs, were it not for Edward Snowden?

REP. MIKE MCCAUL:
I see no evidence of that. I think Snowden came out, leaked this information, and the White House has been backtracking ever since. I think when the story initially broke, the president went undercover. He just finally came out last Friday, trying to come up with ways to salvage the program by window dressing. You know, forming a website, for instance, an outside group.

And the problem, fundamentally, is he's failed to explain these programs, which are lawful, which have saved lives, which have stopped terrorist plots. He has not adequately explained them or defended them. And now he's in a bit of a mess, and I'll tell you why. Because on the heels of the I.R.S. scandal, where people don't trust this government, this administration with their tax records, they sure don't trust this administration with their phone records. And I think that's the dilemma the president's in right now.

DAVID GREGORY:
There is a bigger role here, Ted Koppel, in terms of public concerns about government: size of government, intrusiveness of government. But isn't the trump card on national security, what I've talked to intelligence officials about: "Look, if you back away from these programs, people can die. Some of these plots that we can stop with them will get through the filter."

TED KOPPEL:
Look, you've got a couple of problems here. Problem number one was that you've got the almost infinite technical capability these days of finding information by intruding into people's privacy. Once you have that capability, it becomes very difficult to keep it in check. That's what the president is talking about.

He's saying, "Trust us. We're not going to violate your constitutional rights. We're only going to dig just so far." It's unrealistic because, as you say, when lives are at stake, when security is at stake, which politician, which national leader is going to say, "Yeah, we have the capability of getting that information, but let's not do it"?

DAVID GREGORY:
Right. And that, to me, Chairman McCaul, raises another question, and that's the issue of speed. The reason why the F.I.S.A. court was set up, and Bart you can jump in on this as well, is that if you identify a threat, you've got data to run that against to determine if there's a plot against the United States. You need a warrant and you need it fast. Government's got to act fast to apprehend those people who might be responsible. Introducing privacy advocates and others who might dissent in this process, is that realistic? Do you think Congress, your colleagues, are going to vote to make that happen?

REP. MIKE MCCAUL:
Look, I'm in a unique position to talk about this. I actually applied for F.I.S.A. warrants as a counterterrorism prosecutor, and I think the idea of having a public defender -- you know, really what it is is a search warrant to the F.I.S.A. court, which you wouldn't have in a normal criminal case -- would slow down the efficacy and efficiency of our counterterrorism investigation. So I don't think that's the right way to go.

I will tell you again, when I was doing this, we would run the numbers through the private phone carriers. We never really imagined that all this data would be warehoused under the N.S.A. And I think that's what's giving the American people a lot of pause right now, and I think that's what needs to be explained to the American people. And Congress will be reviewing this issue, and Section 215 of the Patriot Act, to see if this has expanded beyond the original intents of the law.

DAVID GREGORY:
What actually changes, Bart? Do you think there's much room here to fundamentally change these programs because all the N.S.A. says is, "Look, maybe we could change who controls this meta data, which is in this virtual vault, and who has access to it, and how it's kept," which may be, you know, not enough for those who think there's a problem.

BART GELLMAN:
Well, Congress may decide not to allow the N.S.A., via the F.B.I., to collect every single call record of every single American for this purpose. That's not what the president's argument sounded like in his news conference. He sounded like he wanted to, as you say, just put a little more oversight on it, internal, within the executive branch. And to sort of be slightly more transparent about how it happens.
His Justice Department put out a long white paper defending exactly the way it works now. And honestly, they put a lot of, you know, good, smart minds to work on it. But I think sort of nine out of ten civil procedure professors would have given that a less-than-A grade.

DAVID GREGORY:
Ted Koppel, let's widen this out a little bit. This is against the backdrop of an ongoing war on terror, an ongoing threat, and it is reflective of a psychology of fear that you wrote about in the Wall Street Journal this week. Put a portion of what you wrote on the screen.

"America's chronic overreaction to terrorism" was the headline. You wrote, "We have created an economy of fear, an industry of fear, a national psychology of fear. Al Qaeda could have never achieved that on its own; we have inflicted it on ourselves."

TED KOPPEL:
Look, fundamentally there are two sets of questions that apply in the war against terrorism. The one set of questions deals with the, "Where is it going to happen? What's going to happen? When is it going to happen?" The other set of questions deals with, "What is it that our enemy, the terrorists, are trying to achieve?" What are they trying to induce us to do?

Take a look at what's been happening over the last week. With a conference call, Al Qaeda has effectively shut down 20 U.S. embassies around north Africa and the Middle East. We just had the president of Yemen here for a meeting with President Obama. He goes back feeling wonderful about his new relationship with the president; next thing the president does is says, in effect, "Sorry, but we don't trust you Yemenis to protect our embassies." So, in effect, we shut down our embassy. We had an emergency evacuation.

What does that do to our relationship in the rest of north Africa? What does that do in our relationship in the Middle East, with all of these governments? The terrorists have achieved more with one phone call than we have achieved with all our response.

DAVID GREGORY:
Chairman McCaul?

REP. MIKE MCCAUL:
You know, well, listen. I think the threat's real. And what I call the narrative of the president, saying that Al Qaeda's on its heels; the struggles over, "Let's go back to a pre-9/11 mentality" -- I think is a very dangerous narrative. I get the same threat briefings that the president of the United States does, and I'm not seeing his rhetoric meeting reality. And the fact of the matter is, there is a spider web. You know, we were just focused on Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq; core Al Qaeda versus non Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda everywhere: distinction without a difference. It's all Al Qaeda.

(OVERTALK)

DAVID GREGORY:
But can I interrupt you, Chairman.

REP. MIKE MCCAUL:
And it's spreading. It's getting worse, not better. And I think the American people need to know that. And I believe it's very deceptive for this president to give a narrative that is pretty much over when, in fact, what I see is a spider web throughout northern Africa into Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan. This threat is getting worse, not better.

DAVID GREGORY:
But the interruption there was that your assertion about a pre-9/11 attitude, where do you see that demonstrated by the president? The most recent example, you had 19 embassies that were closed in the face of a threat, that's what Ted Koppel is criticizing in terms of overreaction. Which is the lack of vigilance that you see that says we're in a different place mentally?

REP. MIKE MCCAUL:
Well, I think it's the hypocrisy that he wants this rhetoric that the war is going to be over. He wants to sculpt a legacy where he is the peacemaker ending Bush's wars when, at the same time, he's ramping up drone strikes. Now, I favor drone strikes, but drone strikes are not going to kill an ideology.

And I think this is a war of ideology. It's going to be a long-term struggle that we all have to be very adult about. And it's going to be around for quite some time, and the threat, again, is not getting less. It's getting worse, and we need to deal with it in a responsible way and not put our head--

DAVID GREGORY:
Ted--

REP. MIKE MCCAUL:
--in the sand. And I think impacting the moderate Muslim community is an effective tool that we have wholly failed to engage in.

DAVID GREGORY:
Ted Koppel, let me come back to this idea. I mean, I think what the president would argue is that there's been a more targeted approach to dealing with terrorists, killing Osama bin Laden. And even this question of Al Qaeda's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and he was written about in Mark Bowden's book The Finish: The Killing of Osama bin Laden.

There was a meeting the president attended where he wanted more vigilance in this fight. As Tom Donilon would tell me, Obama said, "Here's the deal: I want this hunt for Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to come to the front of the line. I worry that the trail has gone cold. This has to be our top priority, and it needs leadership in the tops of our organizations. You need to ensure that we have expended every effort to take down the top leadership of Al Qaeda, especially these two individuals." In light of your criticism about overreaction, there is still a very specific threat and a very specific operator who is atop these organizations.

TED KOPPEL:
And there will continue to be a specific threat, and there will continue to be terrorism, as there has been for as long as human history exists. Terrorism is simply the weapon by which the weak engage the strong. And what they do is they cause the strong - in this case, us - to overreact.

We are the ones who went into Iraq and spent about $1.5 trillion doing it, losing, what, 4,500 young men and women, God knows how many tens of thousands of injured. We are the ones who have created a bureaucracy. What is T.S.A.? T.S.A. has about 57,000 people operating in T.S.A. Can you imagine a day, David, when we will ever again be without that bureaucracy?

DAVID GREGORY:
Right.

TED KOPPEL:
All imposed upon ourselves.

DAVID GREGORY:
Chairman McCaul, final word on this debate.

REP. MIKE MCCAUL:
I would just say there is a rhetoric, and a reality. And this administration has a rhetoric that's winding down, that's pre-9/11. It's a dangerous rhetoric. I think it's not good for the country. I think we have to-- you know, you can't wish this threat away, as much as we hate Al Qaeda and terrorism.

But the fact of the matter is, the threat briefings I get, it's real. It exists. There's a large plot brewing in the Middle East right now, which is why they have closed these embassies. And it also could directly impact the homeland.
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And how irresponsible would that be for us to do nothing? And with all due respect to Mr. Koppel, but I get these briefings, and I would be derelict in my responsibility if, in light of these threat briefings that I get, to do absolutely nothing and just say that this whole thing's over and to deny it.

DAVID GREGORY:
All right, we're--

REP. MIKE MCCAUL:
It is a real thing.

DAVID GREGORY:
We're going to leave it there. Chairman McCaul, thank you very much. Barton Gellman, thank you as well. Ted, you'll be back a little later on to talk about the future of journalism -- a great voice in that debate. We are back in one minute with an in-depth look on another issue, another crisis -- sexual assault in the military. The President vowed, this week, to use his power to attack the problem.

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