NSA Spying on Google and Yahoo!; Snowden Starts New Job in Russia; Group Says Syria Can No Longer Make Chemical Weapons; NSA Director Says Story of NSA Spying on French, Spanish Phone Calls False
MALVEAUX: We don't have time to list all the countries, companies, private individuals who are angry still at the National Security Agency over spying allegations. Of course that would take a long time.</s>HOLMES: Yes, be here all day if we did that. Well, you can add Internet giants Google and Yahoo! to the list. Both of those companies accusing the NSA of secretly breaking into their databases and collecting information about their millions and millions of users. Elise Labott is watching this today. You know, the NSA, though, they came out and they said, no, no, didn't do it, didn't happen. Google and Yahoo! are saying, oh, yes, it did.</s>ELISE LABOTT, CNN FOREIGN AFFAIRS REPORTER: Well, what their - what the NSA is saying is, whatever it does working with Google and Yahoo! are within the bounds of this FISA court, this intelligence court. And, actually, these companies are mandated to give them the information. And so they don't need to access their databases illegally. But this program that's been talked about, this -- it's called MUSCULAR, and it's operated between -- jointly between the U.K. counterpart and the NSA is somewhat outside of the bounds of this domestic court. And so the question is, look, they've said in the past that they're sifting through all these foreign e-mails for key words that might trip them up. So they must be listing to something. So the question is, it's all about, I think, the parsing of words and how they're doing this.</s>MALVEAUX: And what are they actually collecting? They're collecting things that people are looking for, are searching for, through Google or Yahoo!?</s>LABOTT: Well, this is metadata, again, right?</s>HOLMES: Yes.</s>LABOTT: They're not accessing the actual e-mails, but they're kind of sifting through, mining data so that they can have data points. So if you have a phone call that causes some concern, and then if you have an e-mail that causes some concern, this is supposedly supposed to help them connect the dots and foil anything that might be in the works.</s>HOLMES: Yes, yes, connecting known phone numbers with who's been calling them and vice versa.</s>LABOTT: Exactly. Exactly.</s>HOLMES: All right. Good to see you, Elise. Thanks so much.</s>MALVEAUX: Oh, we've got one more question.</s>HOLMES: Oh, you have one more?</s>LABOTT: One more.</s>MALVEAUX: The pope. The pope.</s>HOLMES: Oh, oh, sorry, yes, the pope.</s>MALVEAUX: There are reports the pope -</s>MALVEAUX: They've also - they've also been spying on the pope? Tell us about that.</s>HOLMES: Yes, what's that?</s>LABOTT: Well, there was a story in an Italian magazine that between 2012 and 2014 -- '13, the NSA was spying on 46 or so million phone calls of the Vatican along the lines of some of the claims that we've heard before. Vatican said, don't know about it, don't care. The NSA said, in a very carefully worded statement obtained by our Evan Perez, "the NSA does not target the Vatican. The magazine claims that the NSA targeted the Vatican are not true." Now, you look at these statements. That's a very carefully worded statement.</s>HOLMES: It is.</s>LABOTT: The question is, did the NSA target some specific individual in the Vatican, like the pope, which this magazine claimed, or did some other agency was looking at this type of thing? It's a very carefully worded statement. That does not say that the U.S. is not spying on the Vatican. So I think this is part of the problem that the administration is having, getting in front, proactively trying to quash this story, trying to manage it, when you have these leaks every day, something different. So they really need a better strategy to kind of get in front of this, I think, be a little bit more transparent, because these leaks are coming.</s>MALVEAUX: Right.</s>HOLMES: And it's pretty hard to protect the system of intelligence gathering -</s>LABOTT: Exactly.</s>HOLMES: -- when that's happening, the drip, drip. Yeah. Elise --</s>MALVEAUX: Good to see you in person.</s>HOLMES: Yeah.</s>LABOTT: Good to see you.</s>HOLMES: Come down more.</s>MALVEAUX: Come back.</s>LABOTT: I will.</s>MALVEAUX: Imagine what they're saying on the phone with the pope? I'd like to be in on those calls.</s>HOLMES: I don't know I'd want to know.</s>MALVEAUX: All right, we're also learning today that the NSA troublemaker now has a new job. Of course, we're talking about Edward Snowden, the former government contractor who is wanted for leaking classified NSA documents.</s>HOLMES: Yeah, got to make a living, apparently. Russia's official news agency, reporting that Snowden starts tomorrow doing computer maintenance. Guess what? For one of Russia's largest Web sites. They didn't say which Web site. Russia gave asylum, of course, to Edward Snowden back in August.</s>MALVEAUX: We're also following Syria. It can no longer produce chemical weapons. That, at least, is according to an international group that is overseeing the effort to eliminate the country's chemical weapons' arsenal.</s>HOLMES: Yeah, the next step, of course, is for Syria to destroy its existing weapons and stockpiles. What it's done now, these inspectors, is sew up the raw materials, if you like. Here's Fred Pleitgen.</s>FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN BERLIN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Fred Pleitgen in Berlin, Germany, and the organization that's been tasked with monitoring the destruction of Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons' program says that Syria has destroyed all of its production, mixing, as well as filling capabilities. It says that the organization visited some 21 sites of 23 that were declared by the Syrian government. Two sites, apparently, were too dangerous to visit because of the ongoing civil war situation in Syria. The next big task is going to be destroying all of the chemical weapons that Bashar al-Assad still has. That's more than a thousand metric tons of mustard gas, sarin, as well as VX. Back to you.</s>MALVEAUX: And following this, a single e-mail, that is all that it might take to end this Marine's career. He exposed an insider threat, and his e-mail might have saved lives, but his actions could also get him discharged. So will the punishment fit the crime?