je jeff toobin versus john cassidy, a fight to the finish. >> then we look at the middle east, turkey, egypt and much more. what to make of it all. >> and -- 50 years later, we'll talk about that speech and another one, one that jeffrey sachs says is the most important presidential speech of the modern era. >> and that is the most important topic on earth, peace. >> but first here's my take. so, the obama administration has now decided that syria's use of chemical weapons crosses a red line. as a result, the united states will supply the opposition with small arms and ammunition. this strikes me as a risky decision. too little to have a real impact and enough to commit the united states in a complex civil war. first let's be clear. this will not ease the humanitarian nightmare unfolding in syria. the opposition forces will now have some more arms and they will fight back, presumably killing more of the regime's soldiers and supporters. so levels of violence might well rise, not decline. what exactly is the objective of this policy shift? is it the defeat of assad? if so, can such a small shift in american support for the opposition really do that? the opposition forces are disorganized. joshua landers, the serious scholar at the university of oklahoma, estimates that there are 1,000 me liilitias that mak the rebel forces. they would need a lot more than small weapons and ammunition to succeed. they would need training, organization, centralization. if they did succeed, that would be a good outcome but it would almost certainly mean that the various opposition militias would then begin a massacre of the sect that the assad regime comes from. it's unclear what would happen to the christians and kurds who have tended to stay neutral in this conflict, but they too might feel the wrath of the newly empowered sunni militias. the allowites, christians and kurds make up a third of syrians so this could become a large many cornered struggle. remember with 180,000 troops in iraq, the united states could not stop massacres, ethnic cleansing and massive human rights violations. we are now planning to achieve lofty aims in syria with almost no means. the most likely scenario is that the small step up in american assistance will not make much difference. at that point pressure will build on the administration. john mccain will make speeches saying now america's credibility is on the line. having supported the opposition, we have to ensure that they succeed. the administration will face a choice between seeming ineffectual or plunging deeper into a complex and bloody civil war. now, it is possible that the administration can just stand pat and do the its that it is doing. that would be a clever, effect i've, brutal strategy to bleed america's enemies. contrary to much of the media contrary, the fact that iran and hezbollah are sending militias, arms and money into syria is not a sign of strength, it is a sign that they're worried that the regime might fall and are desperately seeking to shore it up. keeping them engaged and pouring resources into syria bleeds them. it weakens them substantially. but can the united states pursue such a cold-blooded strategy of real paul particular which would have huge human costs? bill clinton recently said that he favored some kind of american intervention in syria because sometimes it's just best to get caught trying as long as you don't overcommit. that suggests that supporters of intervention see it as some kind of symbolic policy, to show that we care. but this is like trying to get a little bit pregnant. the outcome is rarely what you want. let's get started. let's get right to it with michael hayden, a man who has run both the national security agency and the cia. general hayden, welcome. >> good morning, fareed. >> tell me what your reaction is to the revelations of edward snowden. >> well, i'm very disappointed that these legitimately secret things have been pushed into the public domain where they help our enemy and punish our friends. our friends overseas and our friends in corporate america. but in terms of what the agency is doing, frankly, fareed, i think it's what the nation expects the agency to be doing. to be defending the united states while still respecting american law and american values. >> so let's first try to understand what it is that the agency is doing. you know, we've heard so many characterizatio characterizations. so i want to ask you, is the nsa listening in on american -- on phone calls that americans make? >> no, it's not unless, of course, it's got a very specific individualized fisa warrant which has been the situation for more than three decades. in terms of the one program which i'll just call the meta data program, the one that the fisa ordered to verizon seemed to reveal, this is indeed about meta data. it's about fact of call. nsa is getting from the telecom providers records that they create for their own purposes. these are essentially billing records that the telecom providers are sharing with nsa. fareed, nsa puts them in a very large database. and then sits and waits until it has a predicate related to terrorism, an arguable proposition that a reasonable man would look at and say, yeah, this is correct to ask that database a question. let me give you a concrete example. we raid a safe house somewhere in yemen. we pick up a cell phone we've never seen before. there's pocket litter in the possession of the individual clearly indicating he's affiliated with al qaeda, he's a terrorist. we take that new phone number and we simply ask that database does this phone number show up in connection with any of the phone numbers, any of the phones events that we have gathered here? and if, for example, a phone number in the bronx kind of raises its hand and says, well yes, i've been in contact with that phone regularly for the past three months, we then get to ask the phone in the bronx who else do you call? and which point, fareed, we're done in terms of what this program authorizes. if we want to do anything more with that domestic u.s. number, we've got to go back to the court. >> so would it be fair to describe this, as i've seen somebody do, as the meta data program is collecting data in a way that is on the outside of an envelope. who you wrote to, what the return address was, but nothing about what's inside the envelope? >> no, that's absolutely correct and that's almost a perfect analogy. it's the outside of the envelope. by the way, the supreme court ruled back in 1979 that that outside of the envelope information, the meta data, is not protected by the fourth amendment to the u.s. constitution. there is not a reasonable expectation of privacy when it comes to that information. >> do you feel as though when you were at nsa or watching when you were at cia looking at these things that there were areas where you wouldn't go, even though you felt as though it might be useful, because of privacy concerns? in other words, did the privacy war come up and you guys would say, well, we could try to find this kind of data but that would be too much? >> fareed, the first thing you have to understand, when it comes to privacy, what cia, nsa, all of the elements of the american intelligence community are concerned with is the privacy of u.s. persons, which i think you know is a group a bit larger than just american citizens. it includes everyone in the united states and u.s. citizens, no matter where they are in the world. those are the people whose privacy is protected by the american constitution. and that's the guiding light. that's the guide post for american intelligence collection. >> do you think that the fallout here, though, just in terms of the diplomatic fallout, political fallout, how bad is it? how should we think about it? >> there's going to be some fallout, some operational fallout. we will have reminded our enemies how good and comprehensive we are at this. we will have punished american business who have cooperated with under u.s. law at the direction of a u.s. court. this is bound to be bad news for them in terms of their international business. and then finally globally, a country or a source that might be thinking of cooperating with the united states should have almost no confidence in our discretion or in our ability to keep a secret. all that's harmful. >> what do you think should appear to edward snowden? >> look, this looks like a very troubled young man but he did a very bad thing. i would not call him a whistleblower. a whistleblower is someone who, a, points out wrongdoing and, b, follows the procedures laid out in law which gives a whistleblower protection. raise your hand, talk to your supervisor, talk to the inspector general, talk to the general counsel, talk to congress. he didn't do any of this. he fled the country with incredibly sensitive documents, gave them to two newspapers, who badly mangled the story so that we're now dealing domestically and abroad with the misperceptions created by the stories, and now, lord knows what will happen to him and whatever he took with him now that he's in hong kong. >> general michael hayden, thank you very much. up next, a debate. two new yorker writers debate the fate of edward snowden. one is in favor of him, the other opposed, when we come back. hourly associates. there's opportunity here. i can use walmart's education benefits to get a degree, maybe work in it, or be an engineer, helping walmart conserve energy. even today, when our store does well, i earn quarterly bonuses. when people look at me, i hope they see someone working their way up. vo: opportunity, that's the real walmart. but with advair, i'm breathing better. so now i can help make this a great block party. ♪ [ male announcer ] advair is clinically proven to help significantly improve lung function. unlike most copd medications, advair contains both an anti-inflammatory and a long-acting bronchodilator working together to help improve your lung function all day. advair won't replace fast-acting inhalers for sudden symptoms and should not be used more than twice a day. people with copd taking advair may have a higher chance of pneumonia. advair may increase your risk of osteoporosis and some eye problems. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition or high blood pressure before taking advair. ask your doctor if including advair could help improve your lung function. 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[ male announcer ] now get 50% off brake pads and shoes at meineke. so edward snowden, the former cia employee, who leaked u.s. intelligence secrets to the world. do you think he's a hero or a traitor or somewhere in between. we saw two smart columns on opposite sides of the issue in one magazine, the "new yorker." we assumed the magazine was too jen teal to have its writers duke it out in person so they'll do it here. john cassidy was pro-snowden and jeffrey toobin was against him. gentlemen, enguard. >> i wasn't making a personal argument, obviously i don't know edward snowden from adam, but i think the contribution is made in revealing something that the public deserves to know in terms of what the nsa is doing. we all know the nsa is a spy agency, but the sacale of this. the fact that they could get everybody's phone records on a routine basis for seven years without anybody knowing it. i think putting that out into the open was a public service and that's why i think to some extent he was a hero. obviously he took a big risk doing it. we don't know what's going to happen to him but he could well end up serving decades in jail for what he's done. i don't think we can dismiss his motives lightly. >> jeff. >> first of all, it's a crime what he did, but it's illegal. i guess it's the former prosecutor in me that's offended by that for starters. but is this a legitimate act of civil disobedience, and i think not. there are channels to protest what the nsa does, especially if you're an insider. and i know that the whistleblower laws are not that strong and i know that it's difficult to go to congress, but i'm sorry, to take it upon yourself, to undo the work of thousands of people who work in these programs who spent billions of taxpayer dollars because you don't like something, not that you think -- he doesn't even think it's illegal, he just doesn't think it's right. i think that's an offensive act. >> what about the point that jeff makes, which is, you know, you quote daniel elsburg as saying he revealed dangerous constitutional activity. that strikes me as wrong because in fact these programs were authorized by law, reauthorized by law. the congress put in place what they regarded as constitutional safeguards. courts then oversee the process. so this has all been done by a democratically elected government under congressional supervision. how is it unconstitutional? >> i didn't make the argument that it's constitutional. i accept most of this is actually legal and i think that's the great scandal. my argument here is that in a sort of broader context, we go back to after 9/11, several things happened to the u.s. you know, we had some positive things, we all came together, a sort of wave of patriotism. that's all good. but we then took several steps in foreign policy invading iraq, in national security, renditions, kwagone tone mow, de attacks and domestic surveillance. as president obama said about a month ago in his speech on drone attacks and the war on terror, it's time to reassess whether we went too far in certain areas. i think we did. i see snowden's leaks as part of that process. maybe it went too far on domestic surveillance and it's time to scale it back. as you say, the people in the know, the lawyers, the people who follow capitol hill hearings closely know that we did set up these courts and everything is done boy the book but that's part of the scandal, isn't it? aren't they a bit of a joke? even google when it gets an order to hand over your e-mail accounts, they can't disclose the fact they even received an order, there's a gag order. that doesn't seem to me to be very democratic. >> i guess the scandal is a little mysterious to me. when i sent john an e-mail from i g-mail account to set up a golf date as i have done in my life, google reads that e-mail and tries to sell me golf clubs in an ad. that's what's done on the internet now. why is what's -- what the government is doing here so different from that and so -- you know, so damaging that it has to be thrown out in public? >> so you're saying that in any case a lot of this mass data is ing are gated and sold to walmart, to stores. >> and the phone company knows all the numbers that i call. why is that so different from what was going on here? >> sure, when we do a deal with google to provide internet service, we know they're going to use their privacy -- stwing upon our privacy in some ways, with golf club ads, whatever, based upon our usage of the internet. but i don't think we knew that the government was going to write down or record somewhere every call we've made and be able to go back and check it out at any point in the future. it seems there's an enormous scale for abuse here. once this database is in place, the law enforcement agencies at some point would love to see that data. >> so that policy debate is i think a perfectly interesting and rich one. but there is this question of when you can take the law into your own hands. you write a lot about business. how would you feel if some american businesses were to start saying we believe that the current tax structure is prohibitive and violates the clause of the fifth amendment so we're just not going to -- we're going to violate the law. you would say that's criminal behavior, right? or that's a violation of the law. that's essentially what this guy said. he said i don't agree with these laws so i'm going to break them. >> he violated the law willingly, obviously. i haven't made the argument that he should be completely pardoned. some people have made that argument online. i don't think any nsa or cia employee should be able to say whatever he wants to the public. but you've got to balance that against what sort of contribution he's made to the public good. in my estimation, because he's part of this big public debate we need post-9/11 or post post-9/11 i think on balance it was a public service but i think it would be better if he came back -- >> and i certainly think that this policy debate is important. but when you consider that he has gone to, of all places, hong kong, which is controlled by china, which is our leading adversary when it comes to intelligence matter, who could easily take the stuff he has and use it for their own purposes and, believe me, they are not in favor of free speech and free access to the internet, so i think he is a very -- he's not a great symbol for the people who care about this debate. but the debate is still worth having. >> all right. so we are going to have to leave it at that. i will leave it to the audience to decide who won. up next, gps, why china wants to build a canal in nicaragua and why the u.s. better get ready for it. vo: i've always thought the best part about this country is that we get to create our future. you get to take ownership of the choices you make. the person you become. i've been around long enough to recognize the people who are out there owning it. the ones getting involved and staying engaged. they're not sitting by as their life unfolds. and they're not afraid to question the path they're on. because the one question they never want to ask is "how did i end up here?" i started schwab for those people. people who want to take ownership of their investments, like they do in every other aspect of their lives. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ now for our "what in the world" segment. we know that china does infrastructure better than anyone in the world. their trains, their roads, their airports action their subways have been built at amazing speed on a grand scale with great foresight. well, the next great chinese stwra stwrurkt project is a canal. but this canal will link the atlantic ocean to the pacific ocean. sound familiar? yes. we have one of those already in panama. but a chinese company wants to help build another one. the hk nicaragua canal development investment company, limited, will help finance a nick rock juan canal at a total cost of about $40 billion. gee graphically a canal there might make sense, it's just 12 miles from the pacific to lake nick rock wau and from the lake the liver flows to the caribbean and thus to the atlantic. for nicaragua as a nation the canal makes sense. the proponents claim the canal will more than double the nation's gdp which last year was just $3300. but why build the canal when we already have one just a few hundred miles away? well, here's one reason. t