1.
Goodman:
Today, Citizenfour.
2.
Poitras:
[reading Edward Snowden] “Laura, at this stage I can offer nothing more than my
word. I am a senior government employee in the intelligence community. I hope
you understand that contacting you is extremely high risk ... From now, know
that every border you cross, every purchase you make, every call you dial,
every cell phone tower you pass, friend you keep, ... site you visit [and]
subject line you type ... is in the hands of a system whose reach is unlimited
but whose safeguards are not. ... In the end if you publish the source
material, I will likely be immediately implicated. ... I ask only that you
ensure this information makes it home to the American public. ... Thank you,
and be careful. Citizen Four.”
3.
MacAskill:
Sorry, I don’t know anything about you.
4.
Snowden:
OK, I work for—
5.
MacAskill:
Sorry, I don’t know even your name.
6.
Snowden:
Oh, sorry, my name is Edward Snowden. I go by Ed. Edward Joseph Snowden is the
full name.
7.
Shaikh:
That’s the trailer to the new film, Citizenfour, directed by filmmaker
Laura Poitras about National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. The
new documentary offers an inside look at what transpired in a Hong Kong hotel
room over eight days in June 2013 when Snowden first met with Laura Poitras,
Glenn Greenwald and Guardian reporter Ewen MacAskill to leak a trove of
secret documents about how the United States had built a massive surveillance
apparatus to spy on Americans and people across the globe.
8.
Goodman:
Laura Poitras filmed over 20 hours in the hotel room, including this moment
when Snowden was questioned by _Guardian_’s Ewen MacAskill. By this point, the
first exposés based on Snowden’s leaks had been published, but his identity was
not yet known to the public.
9.
MacAskill:
What’s the next step? When do you think you’ll go public? Or—
10.
Snowden:
I think it’s pretty soon. I mean, with the reaction, this escalated more
quickly. I think pretty much as soon as they start trying to make this about
me, which should be any day now—
11.
MacAskill:
Yeah.
12.
Snowden:
—I’ll come out, just to go, “Hey, you know, this is—this is not a question of
somebody skulking around in the shadows. These are public issues. These are not
my issues. You know, these are everybody’s issues. And I’m not afraid of you.
You know, you’re not going to bully me into silence like you’ve done to
everybody else. And if nobody else is going to do it, I will. And hopefully,
when I’m gone, whatever you do to me, there will be somebody else who will do
the same thing. It will be the sort of Internet principle of the Hydra: You
know, you can stomp one person, but there’s going to be seven more of us.”
13.
MacAskill:
Yeah. Are you getting more nervous?
14.
Snowden:
Um, I mean, no. I think—I think the way I look at stress, particularly because
I sort of knew this was coming, you know, because I sort of volunteered to walk
into it, I’m already sort of familiar with the idea. I’m not worried about it.
When somebody like busts in the door, suddenly I’ll get nervous and it’ll
affect me. But until they do...
15.
Goodman:
An excerpt from Citizenfour, the new film by director Laura Poitras. Her
first film, My Country, My Country, focused on the Iraq War, was
nominated for an Academy Award in 2007. Her second, The Oath, was about
Guantánamo. Citizenfour is the third installment of her 9/11 trilogy.
The film opens in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., on
Friday. Her NSA reporting contributed to a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service
awarded to The Guardian and The Washington Post. We spoke to
Laura on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., and began by asking her about the name
of her film, Citizenfour.
16.
Poitras:
“Citizen Four” was the alias that Edward Snowden used
to contact me in January 2013. And we corresponded over the course of five
months, and he—when I didn’t know who he was. And it was only actually days
before traveling to Hong Kong that I actually had a name for the person that I
had been talking to.
17.
Goodman:
But why did he choose “Citizen Four”? What does it mean?
18.
Poitras:
Yeah, yeah, that’s a good question. Actually, I made a trip to Moscow not that
long ago, where I filmed part of the end of the film where he’s with his
longtime partner Lindsay Mills. And I asked him, you know, because I didn’t
actually ever know what it was, and he said, “Well, I’m not the first person who’s
going to come forward and reveal information that the public should know, and I
won’t be the last.” And so, that’s where it comes from.
19.
Shaikh:
One of the most striking things, Laura, about the film is that Snowden never
appears to have considered the possibility of leaking anonymously. Were you
struck by that?
20.
Poitras:
Yeah, I mean, I was actually very shocked. I was contacted in January, and we
had email correspondence for a long time. And for all of—for the first three
months, I assumed he would remain an anonymous source. He wouldn’t tell me any
details about his—you know, where he worked or where he lived. And I thought
that I was talking to somebody, at some point I’d receive documents, and then,
you know, he would disappear and I would never know who the person was. And
then, in April, he revealed to me—he said, “You know, you should know that I
actually intend to come forward and say that I’m the source of this
information,” and that he didn’t want to hide, and he didn’t want others to
take responsibility and that he didn’t—if there was a leak investigation, etc. And
so, he told me that, and that’s when I said, “Well, then, if that’s the case,
then I would really like to meet you and be able to film, so that I could
understand, you know, your motivations.” And his first response was that he
didn’t feel comfortable about that, because he didn’t want the story to be
about him, which is something he also—you see he echoes in the film when he’s
talking to Glenn in the very first interview. He says, “I’m not the story.” And
I said, “Well, people are going to—the media will make you the story and that
your motivations really do matter.” And then he agreed, and that’s how—sort of
what led to the face-to-face meeting in Hong Kong.
21.
Goodman:
Laura, how did he find you?
22.
Poitras:
You know, so, as Glenn Greenwald has written in his book, he had received
emails in December of 2012 asking to set up an encrypted way of talking, saying
he had some information that he thought Glenn would be interested in, but he
was very, very vague and didn’t say anything specific. And Glenn didn’t have—he
wasn’t using encryption at that point, encrypted email. And so, I then received
an anonymous email in January from someone I didn’t know, just asking me for my
public key. And a public key is what’s used for encryption. It’s called PGP
encryption. You have a key—you exchange keys, and then you’re able to
communicate securely. And so, I had a key. I had been using encryption for a
while, so it was an easy thing for me to do. And I just said, you know, “Here
you go, here’s my key,” you know, and “Who are you, and what do you want?” And
that’s—then we started this correspondence. And the first—then, the following
email was the one that you hear at the beginning of the film as we’re moving
through a tunnel, which he says, you know, “I’m a member of the intelligence
community. This is not going to be a waste of your time.” And he says other
details, like “Imagine your adversary is capable of one trillion guesses per
second.” And that was sort of the beginning of our correspondence in January.
23.
Shaikh:
Well, in fact, Snowden says to you, or writes, that “You ask[ed] why I [chose]
you. I didn’t. You [chose yourself],” he says to you in one of your chats.
24.
Poitras:
Right. So that was—so, after he—the first email that I respond is like, “OK,
well, then, why me? You need to help me understand this,” because I was being a
little bit cautious, not knowing—it could be potentially, you know, entrapment
or something. And then he said—he referenced the fact that I had been put on a
watchlist and stopped at the U.S. border many times. So he had, I think, read
about that. Glenn had written about the fact that I had been stopped at the
border. I had also published a short video about
another NSA whistleblower, William Binney, on the New York Times website
in August of 2012. And my guess is that he had seen both those things,
and he knew that I was somebody who was working on NSA-related things, and he
knew that also I had been targeted in some way, so that I had, I guess, maybe a
personal connection to the issue.
25.
Goodman:
Well, Laura, Edward Snowden wrote, “Your victimization by the NSA system means
that you are well aware of the threat that unrestricted, secret abilities pose
for democracies. This is a story that few but you can tell.” You talked about
being stopped at the border dozens and dozens of times. In fact, it’s how you
open Citizenfour. It’s what you told
us on Democracy Now! before. Talk about those experiences. How many
times have you been stopped crossing the border?
26.
Poitras:
I think it’s about 40 times. And it started in
2006, and it continued until 2012—actually,
until Glenn wrote about it. And then they stopped detaining me and
questioning me at the border. And, you know, in terms of what happens at the
border, I mean—you know, I had made a film about the Iraq War, so I had spent
some time in the war zone, and it happened about a year and a half after
finishing that film. And what I think—I mean, what I don’t think it is, I don’t
think the U.S. government is watching films, and, you know, they’re just some
thought police that says, “We don’t like this film, and we’re going to stop
this person.” But there is certainly—as we know, there
is this growth of the intelligence community, which has created this sort of
secret watchlist process. And people get put on it, and then, once you’re put
on it, there’s actually no way to know why you’re on it or how to get off of
it. And so, yeah, every time I would return to the United States, they
would—border agents would be sent to the plane, and I would be walked off into
an area where I’d be questioned. And many different things happened. You know,
each time was slightly different. Sometimes they would photocopy my notebook.
Sometimes they would photocopy my credit cards. I had my computer confiscated
once, my camera confiscated once. And, you know, they were asking questions
about what I was doing, you know, why was I traveling the places I was
traveling. And when it first started, I was naive. I thought, well, this is
just clearly a mistake, and I answered questions. I said, “Well, I’m a
filmmaker. I was going to a film festival. I made a film about the Iraq War,”
thinking like, well, once I sort of explained all those things, that I would be
taken off the watchlist.
27.
Goodman:
They got mad when you started taking notes about their questions.
28.
Poitras:
Right, and then—right, and then things changed. And then I became a little bit
more, “OK, well, this doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon.” And then I started taking notes every time that I traveled,
writing down the names of the agents, writing down the questions, the times
that I was detained, and etc. And then they weren’t particularly happy about
that. And it did escalate in 2012, when I was returning via Newark airport,
when I was taking notes, and they threatened to handcuff me for taking notes.
You know, they made the argument that they thought that I was going to hurt
them, physically hurt them, with the pen, which, you know, was of course
absurd. And then, after that, I sort of went public. I hadn’t made a
secret of the fact that I was being stopped. But the work that I do, I often
go—I was going places and trying to stay under the radar, and, you know, going
public, it’s hard. You can’t dial something like that back, so—but it was just
so outrageous, you know, that border agents were ordering me to not take notes
or they were going to handcuff me, was so outrageous that I called Glenn, and
he ended up doing an article about that for Salon.com.
29.
Shaikh:
Laura, that’s part of the reason that you decided to take the material to
Berlin that you got of Edward Snowden and to do the editing there rather than
here in the U.S.?
30.
Poitras:
Right. Actually, it was before I was contacted by Snowden that I—you know, I
had been filming for a while, and I wanted to edit, and I just felt like that I
couldn’t assure that I was going to be able to keep my footage source material
secure crossing the border. And I was at that point filming with several people
who were all being targeted by the government, and that includes William
Binney, the NSA whistleblower; Thomas Drake, another NSA whistleblower; Jacob Appelbaum, who
works with the Tor Project and has been training activists on
countersurveillance; and also with Julian Assange. So, I was filming with
people that I knew that the government had an interest in, and I just felt like
it wasn’t safe for me to travel with the footage. So I had moved to Berlin to
edit. And that’s when I was actually in Berlin that I received the first email
from Edward Snowden.
31.
Goodman:
Let’s go back to the first video of Edward Snowden that the world saw back in
June of 2013. You shot this inside his Hong Kong hotel room. It was then
published on the Guardian website.
32.
Snowden:
NSA and the intelligence community, in general, is focused on getting
intelligence wherever it can, by any means possible, that it believes, on the
grounds of sort of a self-certification, that they serve the national interest.
Originally, we saw that focus very narrowly tailored as foreign intelligence
gathered overseas. Now, increasingly, we see that it’s happening domestically.
And to do that, they—the NSA specifically targets the communications of everyone.
It ingests them by default. It collects them in its system, and it filters
them, and it analyzes them, and it measures them, and it stores them for
periods of time, simply because that’s the easiest, most efficient and most
valuable way to achieve these ends. So while they may be intending to target
someone associated with a foreign government or someone that they suspect of
terrorism, they’re collecting your communications to do so. Any analyst at any
time can target anyone, any selector anywhere. Where those communications will
be picked up depends on the range of the sensor networks and the authorities
that that analyst is empowered with. Not all analysts have the ability to
target everything. But I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to
wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant to a federal judge, to even the
president, if I had a personal email.
33.
Goodman:
That was Edward Snowden, filmed by Laura Poitras, the first time the world saw
him. And, Laura, even the way you filmed him back then, I think, sent quite a
message. You have him—on one side, there is a window, you know, very bright,
and on the other side, a mirror that shows his back. It’s all about
transparency. That’s the message, I think, that comes through. You could see
him every which way.
34.
Poitras:
Well, I mean, as a filmmaker, I was actually working with some constraints,
because we were in a hotel room, and there weren’t that many options. And so,
yeah, you know, people have tried to read into the symbolism of the mirror, and,
I mean, it wasn’t that planned. I mean, I just thought it was—it was a nice
shot, and I was able to get rid of other things that were in the room. And so,
it wasn’t all that, you know, intended to be symbolic.
35.
Goodman:
But talk about—and this is the power of your film, is it is as if we are, you
know, watching a thriller, and because it certainly was this, as all this
unfolded—first, the reports coming out, then people wondering who was behind
this, and interestingly, as you’ve said, Edward Snowden decides to name himself
because he doesn’t want it to be about him. He doesn’t want people speculating.
But explain the revelations that so rocked the world.
36.
Poitras:
Yeah, I mean, in terms of how the film happens, I mean, I come out of a—I make
films that are done in a style or tradition called cinéma vérité, or
direct cinema. And what happens when you do that is like you’re actually in the
moment when things are happening, as things are unfolding, and you document
them. And then, after that—and when you’re in the moment, all that kind of
uncertainty exists, because you don’t know what’s going to happen next. And so,
that’s what you sort of feel as the narrative, dramatic pull. So, you know, you
have these letters that come and then take us to Hong Kong, and then Hong Kong
unfolds day by day, beginning on a Monday and ending on the following Monday.
And I’m not doing many interviews, actually. I did—the only interview that I
did was the one that we released on the Guardian website. Everything
else was filmed in a, you know, as-it-happens style.
37.
Goodman:
And what happened after this, after he came forward? Explain what took place.
38.
Poitras:
I mean, after he came forward in terms of the repercussions of the reporting?
39.
Goodman:
Exactly, as he moved from his hotel room—
40.
Poitras:
Right.
41.
Goodman:
—then to your hotel room, and how he made it out of the country.
42.
Poitras:
Right, sure, OK. So, you know, it begins—so, we’re sort of beginning the
reporting, and then on the—you know, soon after, Glenn publishes the first
story, the Verizon story, and then we see that his partner starts to receive
emails. Somebody comes to their house looking for him. So it’s clear that the
government suspects him of being the source. And so we continue to report, and
we’re seeing the news breaking, and it’s clear that there’s also a bit of a—you
know, the government knows that he’s missing. So, we then release the video.
And the last time we see him in Hong Kong, he’s having a meeting with human
rights lawyers, and he leaves. And then, after that, the film then transitions
to where the reporting is happening. And so, I guess it’s also important to say
that because I’m really a participant in the film, I’m also one of the sort of
protagonists, and it’s told from a subjective point of view. So we go to
Berlin, where I’m based, and there’s—you know, we see myself and him chatting,
and Glenn, and we get the reverberations of these disclosures happening
globally.
43.
Goodman:
Award-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras, speaking about her new documentary, Citizenfour,
which features NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. You
can go to our website, democracynow.org, to see a video timeline
featuring all our coverage based on Snowden’s revelations. When we come
back from break, we continue our interview with Laura Poitras talking about the
new revelations the film contains—from a second whistleblower. And we’ll speak
with Jeremy Scahill about the guilty verdict in Blackwater. Stay with us. [break]
Nine Inch Nails. Oscar-winning composer Trent Reznor created the Citizenfour
soundtrack. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and
Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh, as we return to our
interview with the award-winning filmmaker, Laura Poitras, about her new
documentary, out this weekend, Citizenfour.
44.
Shaikh:
I asked Laura to describe another clip from the film, which shows an editorial
discussion in the newsroom of The Guardian newspaper about how to
publish the leaked materials NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden had given them.
45.
Poitras:
You have there, I think The Guardian might be working on the Tempora
story. So, when we’re in Hong Kong, Edward Snowden explains to Ewen MacAskill—and
Ewen MacAskill is an investigative journalist with The Guardian, who
joined Glenn on the trip. And so, when we were in Hong Kong, Edward Snowden
explains to him a program called Tempora, which he describes as, you know, one
of—I think he says “the most invasive” Internet collection programs, where the
U.K. is buffering the entire, full take of the Internet. And so he shares this
with Ewen, and he explains what it means. And so, after Hong Kong, Ewen then
passes this information along to his colleagues at The Guardian, and
they report on it. So, it’s about the GCHQ’s program, Tempora.
46.
Goodman:
So let’s go to that clip.
47.
PAUL
JOHNSON: All right. So, which ones do we want here then? This is
operational stuff, so we mustn’t say any of this.
48.
JULIAN
BORGER: So, redact that.
49.
PAUL
JOHNSON: Go near the top. What about the Alexander quote? Is that
something—
50.
JULIAN
BORGER: Yeah, that’s in TARMAC. “Why can’t we collect all the signals
all the time? Sounds like a good summer homework project for Menwith.” Keith
Alexander, the head of the NSA, on a visit to U.K. This one.
51.
PAUL
JOHNSON: Yeah. It’s a secret document in that secret document. We’ve got
a stick here that should just have three single slides on it. If it’s got more
than three single slides, we have to be extremely careful.
52.
NICK
HOPKINS: Yeah?
53.
PAUL
JOHNSON: Yeah, that’s it. This is really dangerous stuff for us, Guardian
[inaudible]. If we make mistakes, [inaudible] very angry. We kept it all under
lock and key. And no one knows. No, I’m not saying that. They will come in and
snap the front door down if we elaborate on that. And he said, “The prime
minister is desperately concerned about this.” And they kept saying, “This is
from the very top.”
54.
Goodman:
The clip ends with an on-air screen chat between our guest, Laura Poitras, and
Snowden. He types, “How are things over there?”
55.
Shaikh:
And Poitras responds, “I’m at the Guardian. They’re publishing TEMPORA today.
[T]hey are very nervous—worried about an injunction.”
56.
Goodman:
Snowden says, “The NSA love that program.”
57.
Shaikh:
Poitras asks, “Why?”
58.
Goodman:
Snowden answers, “Because they aren’t allowed to do it in the US. The UK lets
us query it all day long.”
59.
Shaikh:
And Poitras writes back, “They are getting cold feet about publishing names of
the telecoms collaborating.”
60.
Goodman:
Snowden says, “Do they know the companies?”
61.
Shaikh:
And Poitras replies, “Yes, I believe so.”
62.
Goodman:
The conversation between Edward Snowden and Laura Poitras. Of course, they’re
communicating cryptically. Explain Tempora to us, Laura Poitras.
63.
Poitras:
Well, I mean, so, Tempora is what’s called a full-take Internet buffer, where
the GCHQ collects all the information coming across the Internet, and what they
do as a buffer is they slow everything down so that they can look at everything
and take things out of it. So, it’s, you know, full-take everything. And what
you see in this chat is the fact that Edward Snowden is saying that the NSA is
not able to do this, so they actually query the U.K.’s buffer to find—to search
for selectors and those kinds of things. So, you know, it’s described as very
invasive and full-take. So this is—I mean, I think that’s the most important
thing to underline in terms of the information that he’s come forward with, is
the sort of the scale of it and that these—you know, the NSA and the “Five Eyes”
are interested in taking as much information as they can, a sort of bulk
dragnet approach to collection of signals intelligence, rather than sort of
targeted, you know, so you have this sort of suspicionless gathering of our
communications.
64.
Shaikh:
In your film, you show a congressional hearing. It’s
2012 before Snowden’s revelations, and Democratic Congressmember Hank Johnson
is questioning then-NSA Director Keith Alexander about the agency’s ability to conduct
domestic surveillance.
65.
Johnson:
Does the NSA routinely intercept American citizens’ emails?
66.
Alexander:
No.
67.
Johnson:
Does the NSA intercept Americans’ cellphone conversations?
68.
Alexander:
No.
69.
Johnson:
Google searches?
70.
Alexander:
No.
71.
Johnson:
Text messages?
72.
Alexander:
No.
73.
Johnson:
Amazon.com orders?
74.
Alexander:
No.
75.
Johnson:
Bank records?
76.
Alexander:
No.
77.
Johnson:
What judicial consent is required for NSA to intercept communications and
information involving American citizens?
78.
Alexander:
Within the United States, that would be the FBI lead. If it was a foreign actor
in the United States, the FBI would still have to lead and could work that with
NSA or other intelligence agencies as authorized. But to conduct that kind of
collection in the United States, it would have to go through a court order, and
the court would have to authorize it. We’re not authorized to do it, nor do we
do it.
79.
Shaikh:
That was then-NSA Director Keith Alexander responding to questions from
Democratic Congressmember Hank Johnson in 2012. Laura Poitras, in light of what
Snowden revealed, your response to what Keith Alexander stated so emphatically?
80.
Poitras:
I mean, actually, what I would say is, at the beginning of the film what we’re
doing, in the sort of first act before we go to Hong Kong, is sort of set the
stage for what’s happening and the denials that were being made by the
government. I think actually the most revealing one is the one of James
Clapper, where he’s being questioned by Ron Wyden, who—Senator Ron Wyden, who actually
knows about the metadata collection program, but he doesn’t want to say it.
81.
Goodman:
Let’s go to Democratic Senator Ron Wyden questioning
Director of Intelligence James Clapper during a 2013 Senate hearing. Of course,
this is before Snowden’s revelations about the NSA’s surveillance program.
82.
Wyden:
Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of
millions of Americans?
83.
Clapper:
No, sir.
84.
Wyden:
It does not.
85.
Clapper:
Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps,
collect, but not wittingly.
86.
Goodman:
So, there you have James Clapper, who—well, Laura, explain what he was forced
to say after the Snowden revelations.
87.
Poitras:
Sure. I mean, this was an important moment, I think, both for Snowden, when he
was watching it, but looking at the government, because the situation, what’s
happening there, is that Ron Wyden actually sits on the Intelligence Committee,
and he knew very well that the NSA was collecting the metadata records, the
sort of call records under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act under a,
quote-unquote, “secret interpretation of the law.” So Ron Wyden knows this. So,
he’s trying to question James Clapper, and James Clapper clearly lies, because
he knows also that they’re collecting the phone records. And then it
actually—you know, fast-forward to Hong Kong. It’s the first story that Glenn
reveals, which is the Verizon order, which is the FISA court—again, the secret
court—order that collects the call records of U.S. citizens and gathers them.
So this is an example of, you know, the government clearly lying in Congress.
And also, I mean, I find it—I mean, one of the things that I think
this—hopefully, think people think about when watching this film, and here’s a
case where Ron Wyden himself actually knew that this was happening, and he was
against it, and yet he didn’t come forward. And then, a whistleblower then, you
know, is the one who comes forward to say that the public has a right to know
about this. And Wyden and Udall, on one hand, I think that they’ve been trying
to push the intelligence agencies to be more transparent; on the other hand,
they actually—they have a lot of protection. I mean, they actually could say
much more. They have immunity. They could come forward and tell the population.
If they think that the people should know what the government is doing, they
actually are empowered to do so.
88.
Shaikh:
And, Laura Poitras, what kind of message do you think your film or would you
want this film to convey to future whistleblowers?
89.
Poitras:
I don’t know if it’s so much—I mean, the film begins with William Binney, NSA
whistleblower, who worked for three decades in the NSA and knew about the
domestic spying and Stellar Wind. And then you see what happens. The FBI shows
up at his home with guns, and then Edward Snowden makes different choices. He
has documents, unlike Binney, who didn’t have documents, and leaves the country
and seeks political asylum. I mean, I don’t know if it’s so much a message for
whistleblowers. I mean, I think it’s a question for us as—you know, why is it
that people have to make these sacrifices for the public to know what our
government is doing? I think that that’s the real question.
90.
Goodman:
Let’s go for a moment to William Binney, who actually you brought to our
studios when you did this Whitney event with both Jacob Appelbaum, who you feature in the film,
and Bill Binney, who spent nearly 40 years at the National Security Agency but
retired a month after September 11, 2001, after the attacks, because of his
concerns about unchecked domestic surveillance, for a time largely responsible
for automating the agency’s worldwide eavesdropping network. In 2012, he gave
his first-ever television interview
on the show that you were also on, Laura, to Democracy Now!
91.
Binney:
After 9/11, all the wraps came off for NSA, and they decided to—between the
White House and NSA and CIA, they decided to eliminate the protections on U.S.
citizens and collect on domestically. So they started collecting from a
commercial—the one commercial company that I know of that participated provided
over 300—probably, on the average, about 320 million records of communication
of a U.S. citizen to a U.S. citizen inside this country.
92.
Goodman:
What company?
93.
Binney:
AT&T. It was long-distance communications. So they were providing billing
data. At that point, I knew I could not stay, because it was a direct violation
of the constitutional rights of everybody in the country. Plus it violated the
pen register law and Stored Communications Act, the Electronic Privacy Act, the
intelligence acts of 1947 and 1978. I mean, it was just this whole series
of—plus all the laws covering federal communications governing telecoms. I
mean, all those laws were being violated, including the Constitution. And that
was a decision made that wasn’t going to be reversed, so I could not stay
there. I had to leave.
94.
Goodman:
That was NSA whistleblower Bill Binney, who went on to describe what happened
in 2007, years after he left the NSA, when his home was raided.
95.
Binney:
They came busting in.
96.
Goodman:
Who’s “they”?
97.
Binney:
The FBI. About 12 of them, I think, 10 to 12. They came in with the guns drawn,
on my house.
98.
Goodman:
Where were you?
99.
Binney:
I was in the shower. I was taking a shower, so my son answered the door. And
they of course pushed him out of the way at gunpoint and came running upstairs
and found me in the shower, and came in and pointed the gun at me while I was,
you know—
100.
Goodman:
Pointed a gun at your head?
101.
Binney:
Oh, yeah. Yes. Wanted to make sure I saw it and that I was duly intimidated, I
guess.
102.
Goodman:
That again was Bill Binney describing what happened. And, Laura, he is featured
in your film not only before the Snowden revelations, but after. And this is a
powerful part of your film: what Snowden empowered others to do afterward. Soon
you see Bill Binney—Bill Binney, who’s a diabetic amputee—in his wheelchair
rolling in to testify, as well as others, as the world, country by country,
comes to realize what is taking place.
103.
Poitras:
Right. I mean, that’s one of the things. I mean, when I
started filming with Bill and also Tom Drake and Kirk Wiebe and Ed Loomis, I
mean, this was the first time that people from the NSA were coming forward,
right? And so, I thought, wow, the world should be paying more attention to them.
And, you know, people were. I mean, you featured him, and he started doing more
interviews. But it didn’t seem to shake things up. And I just
remember thinking like, he should be filling auditoriums to talk about what he
knows. And then, you know, after Snowden comes forward, where he
actually has evidence and documentation, you see Bill has been traveling around
the world to talk about the dangers of what the NSA and other intelligence
communities are doing and the threat that he feels that it poses to
democracies. And so, he—right now in Germany, there’s
an inquiry investigating what NSA spying is happening, so it’s an ongoing
inquiry, and they invited him to testify. And so, that’s part of the
latter part of the film.
104.
Goodman:
Laura, I know you have to go. You end with Jeremy Scahill and possibly a second
whistleblower. Jeremy will pick it up from where you describe what’s happening
now.
105.
Poitras:
I felt strongly that this is not a film that was over, that there were things
that—you know, that although Snowden had taken these risks to come forward with
this information, that things were still ongoing. And I wanted a sense of that
the film is not—doesn’t have a sense of closure. And at the end of the film, we
sort of return to the theme of both the war on journalists that we’ve seen, the
targeting of journalists and how difficult it is to do investigative journalism
when you have intelligence agencies that are able to collect so much
information about us and who we talk to—and there’s a scene with William Binney
and Jeremy Scahill talking about those risks—and then the film sort of moves on
to look at other people who are also coming forward, other whistleblowers who
are also under threat as we continue reporting. And, I
mean, for me, it kind of comes full circle, because this whistleblower, who was
taken enormous risks, has revealed something that, for me, is quite valuable or
important, because it talks about the watchlist, and it talks about the fact
that there are 1.2 million people on U.S. watchlists. And this is
something that, you know, when I first started being stopped at the border, I
would ask the government, “Well, why am I on this list?” And the government’s
response to it was: “We won’t even confirm or deny there is a list.” And so, now we actually, thanks to the risks and sacrifice of
a whistleblower, we actually know that the government has a watchlist. There
are documents that support it, which now then opens the possibility for legal
challenges, which we’ve already seen come forward, where people—now the courts
can intervene and say, “What is this process? What is this watchlist process?
And is it legal?” And so, that’s now where things are.
106.
Goodman:
It even shocks Edward Snowden, the information, as Glenn reveals it to him, as
he’s now living in Russia, and you reveal—with his girlfriend, who he had left
in Hawaii, not daring to tell her what he was doing because he didn’t want to
jeopardize her for having the knowledge.
107.
Poitras:
Right. I mean, you see—I mean, it’s a really powerful scene between Snowden and
Glenn and me, as well. We sort of come together in a different hotel room, you
know, later, after the Hong Kong revelations. So, that’s—yeah, I don’t want to
say too much about the film, though, the ending of the film.
108.
Goodman:
Laura, there is a lot of Oscar buzz out there. What else are you hoping will
happen with this film, as it opens first in four cities and then around the
country?
109.
Poitras:
I mean, honestly, I’m in a position as a filmmaker—there are people that allow
me to document and who put their lives on the line. And so, I hope that the
film shows the risk that these people take and that, you know, people should
stand up for them and that this is information that the public should know. And
it’s people who are having to take personal sacrifice to share information that
the public should know.
110.
Goodman:
Award-winning journalist Laura Poitras, director of the new documentary, Citizenfour,
about surveillance and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. It opens Friday in New
York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Her NSA reporting
contributed to a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service awarded to The Guardian
and The Washington Post. Along with Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill,
she is co-founder of The Intercept. Jeremy
joins us now here in studio, featured at the end of Citizenfour,
when it’s revealed a second whistleblower has followed in Snowden’s steps to
leak information about the national security state. On two issues, Jeremy,
you’ve got this second source. Talk about him and what he’s revealing about
watchlists and drone strikes.
111.
Scahill:
Well, you said “him.” I didn’t. You know, I just want to make clear from the
onset that our absolute top priority is protecting our sources. And so, you
know, any information that’s being revealed that comes from this source is
being revealed in a manner that’s consistent with protecting the source. What you see in the film is that we have a source who
provided us with a 166-page document, that was not a public document, from the
entire intelligence community that outlined the rulebooks for placing people on
a variety of watchlists. This document and others like it had been long sought
after by the American Civil Liberties Union and other legal organizations and
lawyers who represent clients who have been unjustly placed on the no-fly list.
We saw an immediate impact from what this extremely principled and brave
whistleblower did, in that it’s already been used in court cases. A federal
judge has declared the aspects of the watchlisting program that disallow people
from knowing their status on the watchlist to be unconstitutional. A coalition
of civil liberties groups are now in a major political battle with the Obama
Justice Department over releasing this information, asserting that it basically
represents a parallel secret legal system consisting of rules that the American
people and visitors to the United States are not allowed to know. And
so, how do you fight against charges that you’re facing in a secret process
when no one tells you that you’ve sort of been labeled a known or suspected
terrorist? There were a number of other documents that we published, that were
classified as secret, that revealed that there are over a million people on
these watchlists, that dead people can be placed on the watchlists, that family
members of people that are suspected of having communications with suspected
terrorists can be placed on the watchlist. So, what this individual did, this
whistleblower, was done at great personal risk, but also has had an immediate
impact on an issue that affects well over a million people, including many,
many American citizens. What it also revealed is that
the city of Dearborn, Michigan, population 96,000, which has the largest
percentage of Arab Americans per capita and Muslim Americans per capita, is the
number two city in the United States—the top five all consist of huge
cities—New York City, Chicago, San Diego, Houston—but it is. his small
city outside of Detroit, Michigan, is the number two place where the U.S.
intelligence community says there are known or suspected terrorists residing. It is abundantly
clear that that is—it is religious and ethnic profiling at its core. And
the only reason we know that is because of a whistleblower taking great
personal risk to reveal this to the American public and to the world.
112.
Goodman:
And Rammstein—how do drone strikes fit into what this source has revealed?
113.
Scahill:
Well, I mean, I’m not going to say much beyond what you see in the film, and I
don’t want to spoil too much about it. When this film was shown, and the German
government was asked about it—basically, what you see in the film is Glenn
Greenwald describing a document that I obtained, that has not yet been
published, that indicates that drone strikes are coordinated through the U.S.
military base at Rammstein in Germany. And the German government spokesperson
denied that any U.S. bases in Germany play any role in the extrajudicial
killing operations around the world. It’s interesting that they use that,
because maybe they think that they are judicial, which of course, you know,
most legal experts say that that’s not true. The only
thing I’ll say about that is that either the German government is lying about
the role that this U.S. military base is playing in the drone program, or
they’re not in the know and the United States is not telling Germany the role
that it’s playing.
114.
Goodman:
Jeremy, we have to break. When we come back, we’re going to talk about the
stunning Blackwater verdicts that came down yesterday. Jeremy Scahill,
co-founder of TheIntercept.org,
author of the best-selling book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful
Mercenary Army. His most recent book is Dirty Wars: The World is a
Battlefield; it’s just been released in paperback. We’ll be back with him
in a minute.
