1
1
R.K.: Wait are you saying that he never had possession of the data that he transferred to journalists?
C.R.: He, I don't know for how long, you know obviously he had possession for a short while but that the possession was transferred and so that again, it undercuts this idea that he's vulnerable somehow or someway because they can get this data out of him, these secrets out of him. They can't do that. And that's -
R.K.: So he never has the data?
C.R.: I'm sorry what?
R.K.: So he no longer has the data?
C.R.: No, he does no longer have the data. The actual hard data. At least that's what I understood.
R.K: Okay. Keep going. What else did you learn about him that you didn't know before you met him in Moscow?
C.R.: He of course, this is also part of this disinfo, I knew this but it is something that should be mentioned, he did not of course intend to ever stay or flee to Russia. Most of the news will say something like, "he fled to Russia" or something like that, and that's not true at all. He had a plane ticket and was actually booked to go to Latin America and the only reason he got stuck in Russia was because when he got to the Moscow Airport they revoked his passport and then he was in this transit zone in the airport for whatever it was, five weeks, six weeks, something like that, and a lot of people of course think this was all some kind of a pre-planned thing for him to go to Russia, but then why would he have stayed in the transit zone of the airport for five weeks?
R.K.: Okay...
C.R.: And that's something that people, again in the wider public, don't appreciate is that this was not planned. In essence it's turned out probably for the best, in a way because other countries might not be as secure as Russia. You know, if you think about other countries where the United States is allowed to get a freer hand to operate in and stuff, it wouldn't be as secure as Russia is, but it was not planned for him to be there.
R.K: And what else? What about his perspectives on any other aspects of the government or NSA?
C.R.: So this did not surprise me at all because he has said this publicly, but his emphasis and focus is not on himself. He was perfectly willing to risk his future, his freedom, and obviously he knew he was giving up his job, but he was perfectly prepared to risk those things.
What he is most focused on is that something come of this, that there actually be a reform in the United States where we can actually return to Constitutional Rights and Rule of Law and he constantly comes back to that and in our press we always get asked, "how was he?" and they want to talk about all this of a personal nature, and he is not that way.
He is doing that, there's a clip that's out there now publicly where he is talking about the fact that the massive intelligence gathering is not effective and doesn't work and how it's hurting the United States. It's hurting economically, but it's also hurting in other ways. It's completely counter-productive.
I think that actually dovetails with what I often say, because I think if people misunderstand and they think that it's just the Constitution, someone's lofty idea of law and ethics, then when you get those messages of, and this will be a great transition to what Diane Feinstein is very falsely saying in order to keep the NSA's dragnet surveillance going, as soon as they say, "well we'll have another 9/11 happen if we have to drop the NSA's programs" and no one's actually talking really specifically about dropping some of this, what they're talking about is reforming so it's consistent and actually works legally, I really should say pragmatically, works. But now they're just flooding these databases with non-relevant info, it can't possibly help to find these very unique cases of terrorism when you're flooding the databases.
There are ways perhaps, if there could be, that intelligence can be gathered under reasonable suspicion and with probable cause, so it actually is relevant, well then of course no one is against that. So, let me just transition now into what Diane Feinstein is saying -
