Things got feisty on Morning Joe today, as Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian clashed with Mika Brzezinski over the leak of the NSA phone surveillance program by Greenwald's informant, Edward Snowden. H/t NB reader Jeff M.
When Brzezinski alleged that wiretapping or the review by the NSA of emails required an additional judicial review and warrant, Greenwald accused Mika of using "White House talking points" that were "completely misleading and false." Mika denied it. Greenwald upped the animosity by telling Mika she would have known better if she had paid even "remote attention" to the issues over the last ten years. View the video after the jump.
Watch the sparks fly.
GLENN GREENWALD: What the NSA is, we are putting trillions of dollars into developing extremely sophisticated technology, the idea, the objective of this, is to enable the NSA to monitor every single conversation and every single form of human behavior anywhere in the world. And if that is something we want our government to be doing we should have an open debate about that. Not have it done in secret.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: This is an incredibly important question that affects all of us. We have to put it in perspective. I want to bring Richard Haass in. But quickly, I just want an answer, yes or no, isn't it the case that reviewing of e-mails or any wiretapping cannot take place without an additional warrant from a judge and a review? It's not like there's haphazard probing into all of our personal e-mails. Can we put this into context so we understand exactly what's going on?
GREENWALD: Yeah, I'll put it into context for you. The White House talking points that you're using are completely misleading and false. The whole point of what the Bush administration did, when it disregarded and violated the FISA law and when the Congress on a bipartisan basis enacted a new surveillance law in 2008, was to enable the NSA to read e-mails between people in the united states and people outside of the United States and people outside of the United States without having first to go to a FISA court and get a warrant. The only time individual warrants are needed is when two people are both inside the United States and are both American citizens. But under that law, the U.S. Government and the NSA have the power and exercise the power to listen in on telephone conversations and read e-mails, involving all kinds of American citizens. And the Senate has been repeatedly asking for the numbers of how many Americans they're doing that to and the NSA keeps saying, and it's false, they can't provide those numbers. So those talking points that you're reading from are completely false as anybody who has paid even remote attention to the surveillance debate know over the last ten years.
BRZEZINSKI: I'm not reading talking points.
