Glenn Greenwald, a reporter with The Guardian who broke the Edward Snowden NSA surveillance story, fended off a question about whether he should be charged with aiding and abetting a criminal Sunday on Meet the Press.
Host David Gregory asked the polemic reporter, “Why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?” for his interactions with Snowden.
“I think it’s pretty extraordinary that anybody who would call themselves a journalist would publicly muse about whether or not other journalists should be charged with felonies. the assumption in your question, David, is completely without evidence, the idea that I’ve aided and abetted him in any way. The scandal that arose in Washington before our stories began was about the fact that the Obama administration is trying to criminalize investigative journalism by going through the e-mails and records of AP reporters, accusing a Fox journalist of the theory you just embraced, bag co-conspirator in felonies for working with sources. if you want to embrace that theory, it means every investigative journalist in the United States who receives classified information is a criminal, and it’s precisely those theories and that climate that has become so menacing in the United States. that’s why Jean Mayer said investigative reporting has come to a standstill, as a result of the theories that you just referenced.”
Watch the exchange with host David Gregory below:
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