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Foreign intelligence signal gathering. that's what they do. small part of that is anti-terrorism. if you look at the leaks, most have to do with legitimate intelligence gathering by the u.s. government. to sound parochial, i hate to be overly parochial, i think snowden worked for the u.s. government, he should face prosecution like anybody else should. i think the idea of giving clemency in advance before knowing what he released, understanding the full scope of the impact of what he's done, it is like saying in some sense that he committed six murders, one in self-defense. >> murder? >> i'm n...

Rights and free speech and praised the record on human repo records. you think of edward snowden now and the calls for some kind of clemency or some kind of leniency, how do you balance it? >> i think i would be under presumption of inconsistency or lack of candor if i didn't say obviously i support clemency. he was our source. so i can't not. let's get that out of the way. on a personal level, when you look at the totality of what snowden has leaked, it speaks to something that i think the american domestic political establishment often wants to sort of rule out of discussion, which is the qu...

Clemency, lean genesee, michael, is the idea of he went to work for the contractor for three months. and he's -- he claimed he tried to signal some of his concerns to higher ups. that hasn't, as far as i know, been substantiated yet. there is a suspicion that this -- maybe this would feel different to some people if this had been a career guy, who had been there for 30 years and after 30 years of seeing this and understanding the bureaucracy, raised these concerns, nothing else i can do with it. it is a guy that comes there for three months and has appearance of a guy who went there under fals...

Inside the bureaucracy, inside the intelligence community, there is enormous anger about this. because there is a sense that this is undermining legitimate u.s. intelligence gathering activities, and i think that sense of anger and frustration has a big effect on what the president will do in terms of clemency. >> if we can sit here and agree, i think there is consensus there won't be any clemency coming from the obama administration, what happens? what happens? he's in russia. indefinitely. he's talked about maybe wanting to go brazil or something. can he get from russia to brazil? does he co...

>> fred kaplan who writes about national security for slate, he wrote on friday, basically why edward snowden won't get and shouldn't get any kind of clemency. one thing he said was he looked at -- said among other things, snowden leaked information about the nsa's interception, about nsa e-mail intercepts for intelligence and what is going on inside iran, and he concluded, he said these operations have nothing to do with domestic surveillance or spying on allies, not illegal, improper or immoral. exposing such operations has nothing to do with whistle blowing. sensor w i imagine you have a di...