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R.K: Did he say anything about Chelsea / Bradley Manning?
C.R.: I think that, yeah he mentioned that example of Whistle Blowing and he mentioned Manning's name. I think he mentioned a few but he, he was just saying the same thing, that he's learned from these examples and that he can, he very much supports and understands the Whistle Blowing that's been needed, obviously since -
R.K.: Yeah
C.R.: He's followed in their footsteps.
R.K: Did you feel any, like there was any possibility that you would be at risk because you're aiding a man who the president and others have characterized as a terrorist?
C.R.: Well I will tell you we didn't have any problem returning home. We weren't pulled off for questioning or anything like that. We had talked about that a little bit because we thought it was possible. And the reason we thought it was possible is it's been happening.
There have been travelers, people traveling who were either, I would say, information activists or even writers, documentary makers, even journalists who actually have been pulled, when they've crossed in to the United Sates, they've been pulled in for questioning as Glen Greenwald [clears throat] sorry I'm losing my voice here, Glen Greenwald's partner was stopped for those nine hours in the UK, the same thing has happened in the United States. And maybe not for quite as long but it has happened and like laptops and phones have been searched and so since that has happened we kind of thought it might, there was a chance it would happen. We didn't even take laptops.
Of course, I don't have my own laptop, I sometimes borrow my husband's laptop when I travel and I thought, I'm not going to take my laptop because my husband will kill me if they were to keep it and I would lose his laptop and so my reason was just very selfish. I didn't want to jeopardize losing my husband's laptop and so I didn't take anything with me and so I was more or less incommunicado with my family and everything for the time I was there.
R.K.: Wow
C.R.:But you know, nothing happened. We actually just crossed in just as normal. You know, they stamped your Visa and that was it. We didn't get pulled aside or nothing.
R.K: Good, good. You know, I promised you we could talk about Diane Feinstein and let me try to summarize the article that you wrote just because we don't have that much more time. You wrote an article within the last week, criticizing Diane Feinstein because she said that 9/11 might not have happened if we had the NSA functions in place that we have now and your article says that she is full of it.
C.R.: Yes. *laughs*
R.K.: That there's no truth to what she is saying and on the contrary it is just about the opposite.
C.R.: Right. Right. Since that time she gave this very passionate speech on October 2nd in the Senate Judiciary, not long after senator Leahy had begun, he had opened the hearing by saying that reform was needed. So he opens it up saying reform is needed and later in the hearing Blumenthal, Senator Blumenthal took over as a substitute for Leahy and he was echoing that as well.
Now in between Diane Feinstein was not, she of course is head of the Intelligence Committee, but she has no official chairmanship of the Judiciary, but she interjects herself and they gave her time, they let her speak out of line, and she gave this passionate speech about if we were to curtail the NSA's intelligence gathering programs, we will be risking another 9/11 attack and also implying that 9/11 itself would not have happened had the NSA been doing it's massive data gathering so, and she was really passionate about this.
I'm afraid that it probably made some points with the other members of the Senate Judiciary. You could kind of see them all looking at her and kind of shaking their head in agreement and this is exactly what I just mentioned to you about using this fear mongering and this idea, well we could have another attack if we now reform these interpretations of the law, about relevancy, etcetera and she since has written an op-ed at the Wall Street Journal. I think the title of the Wall Street Journal is about two days ago and the title is "NSA Programs Protect Us" or something like that. It has the word "protection" or "they offer protection from 9/11" something like that is the problem
