Coleen Rowley Discusses Trip To Moscow — Transcript

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1. 0:00Snowden was accompanied by Sarah
2. 0:03Harrison the Wikileaks
3. 0:06journalist and in fact when we had our
4. 0:08little presentation that night it was a
5. 0:10small group of us it was Snowden uh
6. 0:13Sarah Harrison the U uh attorney for uh
7. 0:17Snowden was there with his translator
8. 0:20and he gave a lot lengthy speeches and
9. 0:22then it was us for what we talked about
10. 0:25was this whole situation and how how
11. 0:28really precarious it is for the United
12. 0:30States we're just sitting on the fence
13. 0:33post here we can go either way can we
14. 0:35reain this in at this point this this uh
15. 0:38pursuit of Empire that involves this
16. 0:40orwellian spy you know machine can we
17. 0:42reain this in can we get back to
18. 0:44somewhat of a normal or are we going to
19. 0:46continue into this 1984 world I mean I
20. 0:49don't think anybody knows right now in
21. 0:51fact I was the first awarde back in
22. 0:532003 of the Sam Adams award it was
23. 0:56founded by Ray McGovern who whose
24. 0:59colleague CIA colleague was Sam Adams
25. 1:02the CIA analyst that in the book The War
26. 1:05of numbers who found out that the
27. 1:07generals were lying about the Vietnamese
28. 1:09uh enemy troop strength we were
29. 1:11concerned in flying over and in coming
30. 1:14back that they would maybe seize our
31. 1:16laptops because and or telephones
32. 1:19because they have done that with others
33. 1:21uh at a border you don't have an
34. 1:23expectation of privacy and they can
35. 1:24seize everything so none of us took
36. 1:28laptops or telephones which made it a
37. 1:29little more difficult once we got there
38. 1:31Edward Snowden by the way within a day
39. 1:34or two Time Magazine will be coming out
40. 1:37with its person of the year and their
41. 1:39sole criteria of Time Magazine is
42. 1:42supposed to be
43. 1:44newsworthiness impact on the news they
44. 1:47gave Awards to uh Hitler
45. 1:50twice uh Gaddafi once um I think there's
46. 1:54all kinds of people that in the past
47. 1:56when they were adhering to their
48. 1:58criteria of newsworthy
49. 2:00they didn't care good bad you don't have
50. 2:02to be an angel whatever um they did this
51. 2:05Snowden there is no doubt that he has
52. 2:07created the most news this year and very
53. 2:10very important news chance of him
54. 2:12getting it is pretty small in fact
55. 2:14Barbara Walters wanted to give Snowden
56. 2:17her award for ABC's most important
57. 2:20person of the year and she was told she
58. 2:22couldn't and and she argued back well
59. 2:25what if he gets Time Magazine and ABC
60. 2:27doesn't give him the award and they said
61. 2:29I ain't given him the award we had a
62. 2:32humanitarian uh human rights
63. 2:34organization that had invited us and
64. 2:37they had a branch in New York City but
65. 2:39then their main uh the main uh
66. 2:43organization was in Moscow and they had
67. 2:45invited us um it was a nice hotel and we
68. 2:48were only about 15 minutes from Red
69. 2:50Square but the traffic is real bad in
70. 2:53Moscow um cars are parked everywhere and
71. 2:56our cabs that took us back from Red
72. 2:58Square was only a 15minute walk got lost
73. 3:02so it's an unusual place a lot of
74. 3:04Americanized uh fast food McDonald's
75. 3:07that type of thing no one can know where
76. 3:09he's staying because of security so we
77. 3:11had a third undisclosed location that we
78. 3:14met him at Greenwald and petress have
79. 3:17charge of the documents and the reason
80. 3:19for that is because he did not want to
81. 3:21himself be susceptible he's in Russia he
82. 3:24was in you know Hong Kong for a while
83. 3:26and so by giving those documents to a
84. 3:28trusted journalist uh that makes them
85. 3:31safer um and also just from the
86. 3:33standpoint of publishing it's you
87. 3:35couldn't you wouldn't be able to do this
88. 3:37any other way so he no longer has that
89. 3:40access himself to the documents these
90. 3:43secret programs in the NSA are
91. 3:44completely unlawful uh Snowden saw this
92. 3:48he realized that there was no way that
93. 3:51um this was going to change there had
94. 3:53been a lot of um
95. 3:55leaking about the programs before this
96. 3:59there were books written our government
97. 4:01leaders are actually targeting us as if
98. 4:04we are the enemies if you're a
99. 4:07journalist you would not have an ability
100. 4:09unless you go through encryption like
101. 4:11Glen Greenwald you would not have an
102. 4:13ability to publish anything that would
103. 4:15be honest or truthful might as well have
104. 4:17complete censorship and send it to the
105. 4:19government ahead of time like I have to
106. 4:21do if I if I write I'm supposed to send
107. 4:23everything to the government ahead of
108. 4:24time and you know Greenwald by being a
109. 4:27publisher of these this information the
110. 4:29same as Wikileaks was the publisher um
111. 4:32they are now being considered as
112. 4:35potentially as uh you know enemy
113. 4:38Greenwald is afraid to come into the
114. 4:40United States he cannot get an official
115. 4:42to tell him whether it's safe for him to
116. 4:43even come in and the whole point is to
117. 4:45intimidate people to go along with this
118. 4:48walk through the scanners nude even
119. 4:49though they don't work either uh go
120. 4:52along with massive spying and collecting
121. 4:54of information on every individual along
122. 4:56with excessive government secrecy where
123. 4:58they can up Wars lie about wars uh
124. 5:02torture people have black sight it's all
125. 5:04about this being normalized till the
126. 5:06point where you get into your your
127. 5:08Winston in 1984 the only way we can get
128. 5:11back our the power of the people is for
129. 5:14people to be brave right now we've got
130. 5:16to do stuff we have got to take action
131. 5:19ourselves and we are right on the line
132. 5:21of losing it if we don't we don't fight
133. 5:24back just
134. 5:26[Music]