'NSA Leaker' Snowden On The Run

NSA  leaker faces big charges. He’s out of Hong Kong and on the run. We follow the trail and go deep on the issues and legal case around Edward Snowden.

Big-time NSA leaker Edward Snowden, on the run today, trailing a long list of warnings to Americans and the world about what the US government is watching, reading, tracking, surveilling. And the US Justice Department is hot on his tail, with charges of espionage.

He’s gone Hong Kong, Moscow… and then it’s Where’s Waldo? The speculation was Cuba, Caracas, Ecuador, Iceland, with giant issues swirling. We’ve got the man who defended the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case with us.

This hour On Point: The flight and case of Edward Snowden.
-- Tom Ashbrook

Mark Mazzetti, Pulitzer prize-winning reporter and national security correspondent for The New York Times. He's the author of "The Way Of The Knife: The CIA, A Secret Army, And A War At The Ends Of The Earth" — read an excerpt. (@MarkMazzettiNYT)

James Goodale, First Amendment lawyer and former chief legal counsel for The New York Times in all four of its cases that have reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1971, he argued for the paper’s right to publish the Pentagon Papers. He's the author of "Fighting For The Press: The Inside Story Of The Pentagon Papers And Other Battles" — read an excerpt.

William Banks, director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism and professor of law and international affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

The Washington Post: Snowden Flees Hong Kong — "Edward Snowden, the former government contractor who leaked top-secret documents about U.S. surveillance programs, fled Hong Kong for Moscow on Sunday with the assistance of the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks, landing at Sheremetyevo International Airport aboard an Aeroflot flight, according to Russian media reports and a WikiLeaks spokesman."

The National Journal: The Edward Snowden Drama Has Reached Peak Action Movie — "If the Edward Snowden saga is a Michael Bay movie that we are all just living in, on Sunday morning it would have passed over the believability abyss. That's when Snowden, the NSA leaker turned America's Most Wanted poster-boy, took a plane out of Hong Kong, en route to Russia, where he landed around 9:15 a.m. EST. Snowden is reportedly headed from there to Havana, Cuba on Monday. Originally, it looked like he was going from there to Caracas, Venezuela. Now, it appears he's off to Ecuador."

The Weekly Standard: Rand Paul Defends: 'Mr. Snowden Told the Truth in the Name of Privacy' — "'They're going to contrast the behavior of James Clapper, our national intelligence director, with Edward Snowden,' said Paul. 'Mr. Clapper lied in Congress in defiance of the law in the name of security. Mr. Snowden told the truth in the name of privacy.'"