DAVID GREGORY:
We’re back. Now to the debate over Edward Snowden. Attorney General Eric Holder now says he’d be willing to discuss a deal for him to return to the United States, but no clemency. So is Snowden willing to talk? I’m joined from Moscow now by one of Snowden’s legal advisors, Jesselyn Radack. She’s the national security and human rights director of the Government Accountability Project.
And with me here is the former head of U.S. Homeland Security as well, and former head of the criminal division of the Justice Department under President Bush, Michael Chertoff, who I’ll speak to in just a moment. Let me start with Miss Radack. Welcome to Meet the Press. We’ve got a bit of a delay on the satellite, so let me get right to it. I want to play a bit of Eric Holder’s interview on MSNBC and get your reaction to it. Listen.
ERIC HOLDER (ON TAPE):
The notion of clemency, a simple, you know, no harm/no foul. I think that would be going too far. But in the resolution of this matter, with an acceptance of responsibility, you know, we would always, you know, engage in those kinds of conversations.
DAVID GREGORY:
So, Miss Radack, what about Mr. Snowden? Does he want to enter into those conversations?
JESSELYN RADACK:
Sure. We’re always glad to entertain conversations, and we’re glad that Holder made that statement. It’s a little disheartening that he seemed to take clemency and amnesty off the table, which are two of the negotiating points. But, again, none of us have been contacted yet about restarting negotiations.
And also, I think that no harm/no foul is not apt. I mean, there has been plenty of suffering on the part of Edward Snowden. He’s been punished quite a bit already. And, while we are glad to dialogue and negotiate, he’s not going to come back and face an espionage prosecution.
DAVID GREGORY:
What’s the punishment that he’s endured?
JESSELYN RADACK:
He’s endured to basically give up his entire life and be rendered stateless by the United States government, revoking his passport while he was here in Russia. He has been granted political asylum by four different countries because they all found that he had a valid fear of political persecution, based on the very Espionage Act charges that he’s facing in the U.S.
DAVID GREGORY:
On this program, as you know, last week the head of the intelligence committee, Mike Rogers, suggested that he had help from the Russians, might even be a Russian spy. How does he respond to that? And does he think that’s part of some effort to smear him?
JESSELYN RADACK:
It’s obviously part of a smear effort. It shows to me that the government is getting really desperate. The evidence against N.S.A. continues to mount, most recently with the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board which echoed a federal judge and the White House’s own internal recommendations that the surveillance program is illegal and ineffective.
And so then, this spy allegation resurrected itself again and, unfortunately, Diane Feinstein and Mike Rogers had a platform to smear the whistleblower with baseless innuendo without a scintilla of evidence to back up their allegations.
Moreover, Mr. Snowden publicly chatted with the U.S. this week to deny being a spy. But if people don’t want to take my word for it, or Mr. Snowden’s word for it, you can ask the F.B.I. which decided and still believes that he acted alone.
DAVID GREGORY:
All right, Jesselyn Radack in Moscow for us today. Thank you very much for being here, I appreciate your time. Michael Chertoff, who’s here as well, former head of Homeland Security and also head of the criminal division under President Bush, which is particularly relevant here, so it’s good to see you. Welcome back.
MICHAEL CHERTOFF:
Good to be back.
DAVID GREGORY:
So how would you handle this question? You heard the attorney general. What do you do to get Edward Snowden back?
MICHAEL CHERTOFF:
Well, you know, we have done deals in the past with spies, but they’ve always been a deal where you take a very heavy prison sentence. When I was head of the criminal division, we made a deal with Robert Hanssen. He agreed to give us everything he had given the Russians, but what we did is we put him in prison for life instead of the death–
DAVID GREGORY:
Is it–
MICHAEL CHERTOFF:
–penalty.
DAVID GREGORY:
–irresponsible to call him a spy? Is there any evidence to back that up?
MICHAEL CHERTOFF:
You know, I think that legitimate questions have been raised. Now, I don’t know what the facts will show. But if you look at his behavior, the fact that he systematically went and collected information about a wide range of programs, techniques that are used to penetrate for intelligence collection, and then he goes to Russia of all places, it certainly raises legitimate questions.
Who benefited from this? How did he know where to go? How did he know to go to Hawaii to find a place there was vulnerability? How did he know where to look? All of these I think are things which, as Chairman Rogers said, we’re going to explore.
DAVID GREGORY:
He’s been punished enough is essentially what his legal advisor is saying. I mean, there’s a lot of sympathy for Snowden and there’s a lot of hatred for Snowden. That will be viewed different ways.
MICHAEL CHERTOFF:
Well, I think that’s preposterous. He is the one who fled; he left at the point at which he announced what he had done. So he took himself out of the country, he exiled himself. He then went to Russia. He is now regaling the world with interviews and other kinds of public relations things. As far as I can tell, I haven’t seen any evidence he’s incarcerated. And they keep saying, “Well, we’re going to give him asylum as long as he wants.” So this is not a person who’s being punished. He has a spotlight, and he’s using it.
DAVID GREGORY:
Is there any reason for him to come back to the U.S. and think that, A) he can get a fair trial, or that there’s the potential for a reduced sentence that makes sense?
MICHAEL CHERTOFF:
Well, I think he can certainly get a fair trial. Now, the question is, is he going to get a trial in which he gets convicted, and I think there’s a high likelihood he will. If he decides he wants to come back, if he decides he wants to tell the U.S. government everything that he stole, which is important, he might be able to bargain for some kind of a reduced sentence. But, again, going back to the Hanssen case, I don’t think we’re talking about amnesty. We’d be talking about maybe life in prison, maybe 30 years, maybe 25 years, but not something that would be a slap on the wrist.
DAVID GREGORY:
The Sochi Olympics. You know this well. Look, at a time when the Russian leader is seeking to embarrass the United States with Edward Snowden, there’s a real question about whether the Russians can secure these games. If you’re head of Homeland Security right now in the United States, what are you worried about? What are you thinking about? What do you want to know?
MICHAEL CHERTOFF:
Well, what I’d like to do is have a letter of cooperation with the Russians that allow us to give them the benefit of our intelligence and our capabilities, but also have visibility to what they’re doing. That’s what we did in 2008 with the Chinese in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics.
DAVID GREGORY:
Do we have that here? Do you think we have that cooperation?
MICHAEL CHERTOFF:
Well, according to what has been reported, there is some cooperation but perhaps not quite as much as we would like. I don’t know that they’ve fully invited us in or accepted our offer to give them a lot of assistance. Now, we have warships offshore in case there needs to be an evacuation. I would hope there is a plan in place with the Russians if, God forbid, we needed to do it, to be able to take people out.
DAVID GREGORY:
When you talk about counter-terror, you talk about making targets “hard,” hard to attack. This is a pretty hard target, is it not?
MICHAEL CHERTOFF:
Well, the core event probably is a pretty hard target. They’ve got a lot of troops there and they’ve got a lot of capability. But, as we saw today in Maryland, you have soft targets at the periphery, restaurants, hotels. And depending on how far you want to extend the perimeter out, you can even talk about Moscow as being a target.
DAVID GREGORY:
Back home and that mall shooting. Does there have to be a national effort to harden these soft targets, schools, malls, places where these attackers know they can really get a lot of coverage and a lot of acclaim for these kinds of attacks?
MICHAEL CHERTOFF:
I think there has to be planning and preparation, and part of what that means is training people about what to do when there is an event. Now, one of the things that happened here and also happened I think in other occasions is there was a swift response. And that mitigates the damage. That’s very important.
In schools, for example, people have to know how to shelter in place. Teachers have to have clear instructions about how to protect kids. You can’t make it a fortress, but you can do things that will minimize the threat and mitigate the amount of damage.
DAVID GREGORY:
All right, Mike Chertoff, thank you, as always, for your perspective on a wide range of matters here this morning. When we come back, switch gears a little bit as we’re still talking about the Olympics, tennis legend Billie Jean King, our Harry Smith has a revealing profile. The triumphs, her tough times, and the statement that she is making as she heads to the Sochi Winter Olympics.