Debate: Was Snowden Justified? Former NSA Lawyer Stewart Baker vs. Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg

Former National Security Agency lawyer Stewart Baker and Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg join us for a debate on Edward Snowden's disclosure of the NSA's massive spying apparatus in the United States and across the globe.






Snowden's leaks to The Guardian and other media outlets have generated a series of exposés on NSA surveillance activities -- from its collection of American's phone records, text messages and email, to its monitoring of the internal communications of individual heads of state. Partly as a consequence of the government's response to Snowden's leaks, the United States plunged 13 spots in an annual survey of press freedom by the independent organization, Reporters Without Borders. Snowden now lives in Russia and faces possible espionage charges if he returns to the United States. Baker, a former NSA general counsel and assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security, is a partner at the law firm Steptoe & Johnson and author of "Skating on Stilts: Why We Aren't Stopping Tomorrow's Terrorism." Ellsberg is a former Pentagon and RAND Corporation analyst and perhaps the country's most famous whistleblower. Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, exposing the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, prompting Henry Kissinger to call him "the most dangerous man in America."