[Edward Snowden, Nsa Leaker:] I had access to, you know, the full rosters of everyone working at the NSA. The entire intelligence community and undercover assets all around the world. The locations of every station. We have what their missions are and so forth. But I sitting at my desk certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a federal judge, to even the president if I had a personal e-mail.
[Morgan:] Chilling words from the NSA leaker, Edward Snowden. Out with himself in a "Guardian" newspaper interview as the source of leaks that unleashed a storm of controversy in the country and around the world. He revealed massive NSA surveillance program, to collect phone record and intimate data on a scale that many people never imagined. Snowden is a former CIA employee and also worked for the computer consulting firm, Booz Allen Hamilton. Well, joining me now is James Woolsey. He's a former director of Central Intelligence and a former vice president and officer of Booz Allen Hamilton. He's currently chairman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracy. Welcome to you, Ambassador. What is your reaction to Edward Snowden's decision to leak this information?
[Amb. R. James Woolsey, Former Director Of Central Intelligence:] I think Mr. Snowden had no right to arrogate to himself the right to decide where to strike the balance between liberty and security. President Obama pointed out a couple of days ago that this balance has to be struck and that the court system, particularly the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, the executive branch, the president, the attorney general, and the Congress, with the reviews by the congressional committees involved, every few months. This has been a very precisely crafted system for making the decision about where to strike the balance between liberty and security. And Snowden arrogated that entire decision to himself. He decided that it was him who got to strike that balance, not the elected representatives that we vote for, not the president, not the courts. And I think for arrogance and improper behavior, the arrogating to yourself that kind of power when you're supposed to be taking care of your duties in the intelligence community is stunningly wrong and since he's confessed to the crime, I hope that when we are able to take him into custody, he's locked up for the rest of his life.
[Morgan:] What do you believe the consequences of his decision could be at their worst?
[Woolsey:] Well, the problem is, that once you start explaining to al Qaeda and Hezbollah how you are operating, they can avoid what you're doing, and you can't explain to the American people without explaining to Hezbollah and al Qaeda. Once you're sitting there blabbing about how these decisions are made, you have decided you're going to tell our enemies those who want to kill us, those who want to fly airplanes into buildings and all the rest how this all works. And you've decided that yourself if you're Snowden. So he could well be responsible in the future for many, many deaths. We don't know and we may never know for sure, because one doesn't know what goes into individual decisions by the terrorists. But Snowden has made it easier for them to kill Americans and others.
[Morgan:] Isn't the reality, that if you're in al Qaeda, of course, you imagine that the American intelligence agencies are probably trying to check your e-mail or your Internet traffic or your cell phones? I mean, I've watched dramas on TV for years, where this exact thing is done. It's not a trade secret. What is concerning many Americans is the sheer quantity of private data that appears to be being amassed by the government without anyone outside of a few select people in the judiciary, the executive, and Congress, knowing about it, and it may be a symptom of modern times. But you know, I feel uncomfortable that people I don't know know everything about my online activity. Why should they?
[Woolsey:] Well, they don't know everything about your online activity, because it's illegal
[Morgan:] But they could, right?
[Woolsey:] It's illegal for them to take some steps with respect to it such as to get into the substance of the of the intercept. What this is as far as Americans are concerned which is called metadata, it's whose calling whom and so forth. If you and I talk on the phone to one another every day, and then one day I call Ayman Zawahiri, al Qaeda in Pakistan, yes, somebody is going to say, you know, I wonder what has been going on between Woolsey and Piers, let's have a look at that. But routinely and systematically, there's no looking into the substance of your calls or mine. It doesn't work that way.
[Morgan:] Ambassador, just hold that for one moment. I want to bring in a man who says that Edward Snowden has done, and I quote, "a great service" to the American people by exposing the truth about what our government is doing in secret. Ron Paul is a former congressman and former presidential candidate. He's now chairman of the Campaign for Liberty. Ron Paul, thank you for joining me. You are a supporter of Edward Snowden and his actions, why?
[Ron Paul, Former U.s. Congressman:] Well, from what I hear and what he's done, I mean, he's done a great service because he's telling the truth and this is what we are starved for. The American people are starved for the truth. And when you have a dictatorship or an authoritarian government, truth becomes treasonous, and this is what they do. If you are a whistleblower or if you're trying to tell the American people that our country is destroying our rule of law and destroying our Constitution, they say they turn it on and say, you're committing treason. So this is this is a big problem. And to expect any changes without an announcement like this, things keep getting worse. They've gotten worse steadily for the past 10 years, so essentially there is no Fourth Amendment anymore. And for somebody to tell the American people the truth is a heroic effort, and he knows that it's very risky, he knows he's committing, you know, civil disobedience and he knows that he could get punished, but he believes very sincerely, I'm sure, I've never met the man. But he believes very seriously that what our government is doing to us is so serious that somebody has to speak out. And I think the large majority of the American people are sick and tired of hearing how many people are having surveillance on them whether it's their phones, their Internet, and e-mail and everything else. As a matter of fact, I think I think the president ought to send him a thank you letter because the president ran on transparency, we're getting a lot of transparency now so finally we're getting the president to fulfill his promise about transparency. So that's pretty exciting for me because I believe in transparency. But we have our government we have our government turned on its head. The government is supposed to be open and we're supposed to have our privacy, but we don't have any privacy and the government's totally secret. And then they combine this with what they do with the IRS? Maybe that's how they line up their targets in the IRS, they you know, they check on our phone calls and find out what kind of business deals we're doing.
[Morgan:] Well, let me
[Paul:] So we can audit them and do all these kinds of things. It's just totally out of control.
[Morgan:] It may be, but the reality is that a new Pew Research Center tracking millions of Americans June 6th and the 9th said the following, is it acceptable for the NSA to track calls of millions of Americans to investigate terrorism? Acceptable 56 percent, not acceptable 41 percent. So the significant majority of Americans appear to be in favor of this. Going back to you, Ambassador Woolsey, if I may, I just want to read the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, to remind people. "The right of the people to be secure in their person's houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated and no warrant shall issue. But upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized." Now I just don't see how you can say that what is going on here in complete secrecy from 99 percent of the people it's being done to, lives up to the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It's palpably a breach, isn't it?
[Woolsey:] Well, it depends on whether or not you want to preserve your country's ability to operate in a world of terrorism in which a lot of terrorist are very technically sophisticated.
[Morgan:] Well, yes, but that
[Woolsey:] If you want to defend the country, you're going to have to defend it.
[Morgan:] Right. Right. I understand that. And there's been a lot of sympathy for that from many Americans. But that wasn't the question. The question is where
[Woolsey:] It is the question.
[Morgan:] Well, it's not
[Woolsey:] It is the question. The balance that balance between security and liberty is the question.
[Morgan:] I understand it. I understand that is your answer, but the question I was putting to you was whether what is going on given the absolute secrecy with which it has been going on, until Edward Snowden revealed this, whether it is actually allowable under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Where is the where is probable cause
[Woolsey:] Given the fact
[Morgan:] 99.9 percent of the information being effectively seized here?
[Woolsey:] Given the fact that this system was put together by the people's elected representatives that it's been upheld by the courts. That it's monitored by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court. That it's monitored by attorney general and officials in the executive branch every 90 days. It was one of these 90-day reports that was leaked. And that it is systematically supported by people of like the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Feinstein. I think you would have to say that the government on this subject has done a reasonable job of balancing these two very important interests. If you try to look at liberty without considering security at all, you're putting on blinders. You it really you can't answer the question.
[Morgan:] OK.
[Woolsey:] Just as you couldn't answer it if you just talked about security and not about liberty. They both have to be considered and you apparently Piers, not to want to consider security?
[Morgan:] No, no, I absolutely do want to consider it. I was putting a question to you because I was intrigued by what your answer would be because I've been fighting, as you're probably aware, a lengthy gun control campaign where the absolute letter of the Second Amendment is deemed sacrosanct to so many Americans. And yet it seems to me that many of the same Americans that feel so strongly about the wording of that amendment are quite happy for their rights under the Fourth Amendment to be written over. And that's what I find an interesting contradiction.
[Woolsey:] Well
[Morgan:] But let me just go to Ron Paul I'm going to get to Ron Paul to put a different question to him. Ron Paul, if you had been president, which you could have been, you ran for office this time, and you could have won. If you had been president, are you in all seriousness telling me that you would have stopped all of this tracking of data in the way that the NSA has been doing it?
[Paul:] An awful lot of it, but it wouldn't be stopped. You would still have your you would you would still have your transparency. I mean, you'd still have your intelligence gathering, but it would be done under the law. You would have probable cause and you would have courts. This idea that you can go to the FISA court and get a warrant, that's ridiculous. That's like the monitoring of the president saying, oh, well, we're going to pick and choose who we're going to assassinate, American citizen or not. But we have monitors, we're going to study this. That's the rule of law? What he's doing is repealing the Magna Carta. You can't just do this kind of thing. And this one is only repealing the principles of liberty, but it's destroying the Constitution. So my question should be, to all of you who defend this nonsense is, what should the penalty be for the people who destroy the Constitution? They're always worrying about how they're going to destroy the American citizens who tell the truth to let us know what's going on. But we ask the question, what is the penalty for the people who deliberately destroy the Constitution and rationalize and say, we have to do it for security. Well, you know what Franklin said about that, you end up losing you lose your security and you lose your freedoms, too. So I think we've embarked on a very, very dangerous course. The American people are with us on this, it's totally out of control, and I would say if you're if you're confused about what we should do, just read the Constitution. What's wrong with that?
[Morgan:] Well, I just
[Paul:] You know, that's if you don't like it, get people get people to get people to repeal it and change the Constitution, but not just to deny it. I mean, we go to war without a declaration. We totally ignore the Constitution. That is what our problem is today. We have no rule of law, and people say, well, just let secret courts do this, and the governments to know everything. And the American people are to have no privacy. I mean you're that reflects an intimidation, people are insecure, and think that
[Morgan:] OK.
[Paul:] we need more authoritarianism. You're justifying dictatorship, is what you're doing.
[Morgan:] Ron Paul, I have to I have to leave you there in full flow. It's a fascinating debate. I want to thank you, Ron Paul and Ambassador Woolsey both, for joining me. It's a it's a very contentious issue. The American public as the polls just are split. Before we go to the break, quick show of hands, who here thinks of what Edward Snowden, the leaker, did was right? A few hands. And who thinks absolutely what he did was wrong? Just by my quick look around, I'd say slightly in favor of those who think what he did was wrong, which would be in keeping with the poll results earlier. But it's a great debate. When we come back, I'm going to talk to people or two men actually who know what may be going on behind closed doors at the White House tonight. Plus whistleblower