Former vice-president tells Fox he is 'suspicious because he went to China' as senior figures discuss surveillance leaks
Senior officials from the current and previous US administrations lined up on Sunday to defend the government sweep of phone and internet records and condemn the whistleblower who revealed the secret surveillance programmes.
The White House chief of staff, Denis McDonough, said President Barack Obama was of the mind that the no violations of privacy had taken place in regards to the data collections, the existence of which have been the subject of a series of Guardian reports.
Dick Cheney, vice-president under George W Bush and a key figure in the post-September 11 revamping of US national security, also defended the system. He told Fox News Sunday that it was needed to "gather intelligence on your enemies and stop the attack before it is launched". He went on to condemn the man behind the series of explosive leaks regarding. Having described Edward Snowden as a "traitor", Cheney went on to cast aspersions over the 29-year-old's decision to travel to Hong Kong, suggesting that he could be a spy for China.
"I'm suspicious because he went to China. That's not a place where you would ordinarily want to go if you are interested in freedom, liberty and so forth," Cheney said, adding: "It raises questions whether or not he had that kind of connection before he did this." Cheney suggested that Snowden could still be in possession of confidential data and that the Chinese would "probably be willing to provide immunity for him or sanctuary for him in exchange for what he presumably knows or doesn't know".
McDonough refused to speculate over Snowden's motives, but disputed claims that the former contract worker for the National Security Agency made to the Guardian concerning being able wiretap anyone, including the president.
"That's incorrect," the White House's most senior staffer told CBS's Face the Nation. He added that Obama did not believe that the surveillance system amounted to a government overreach. "We have to find the right balance of protecting our privacy – which is sacrosanct in the president's views – and protecting the country from the very real risk and threats that it faces."
McDonough's comments come a day after US intelligence chiefs wrote to Congress defending the legality and usefullness of the surveillance programmes that were first revealed by the Guardian and the Washington Post. The briefing document claimed that the monitoring of metadata had helped prevent potential terror attacks in the US and in more than 20 countries around the world. Some have complained that this claim is unproven.
Meanwhile, sceptics in Congress have complained that the surveillance programme does not come with sufficient checks to protect innocent individuals. Senator Mark Udall, a leading critic of the secret programme, said that collection of data does not have to be "all or nothing". He intends to put forward a bill that would limit the scope of what is allowed under the Patriot Act.
Udall told NBC's Meet the Press: "We owe it to the American people to have a debate in the open about the extent of this programme – you have a law that has been interpreted secretly by a secret court that then issues secret orders to generate a secret programme."
Udall added that the way the system operated at present wasn't "an American approach" to the problem of balancing privacy with threat reduction. Reported by guardian.co.uk 3 minutes ago.
Senior officials from the current and previous US administrations lined up on Sunday to defend the government sweep of phone and internet records and condemn the whistleblower who revealed the secret surveillance programmes.
The White House chief of staff, Denis McDonough, said President Barack Obama was of the mind that the no violations of privacy had taken place in regards to the data collections, the existence of which have been the subject of a series of Guardian reports.
Dick Cheney, vice-president under George W Bush and a key figure in the post-September 11 revamping of US national security, also defended the system. He told Fox News Sunday that it was needed to "gather intelligence on your enemies and stop the attack before it is launched". He went on to condemn the man behind the series of explosive leaks regarding. Having described Edward Snowden as a "traitor", Cheney went on to cast aspersions over the 29-year-old's decision to travel to Hong Kong, suggesting that he could be a spy for China.
"I'm suspicious because he went to China. That's not a place where you would ordinarily want to go if you are interested in freedom, liberty and so forth," Cheney said, adding: "It raises questions whether or not he had that kind of connection before he did this." Cheney suggested that Snowden could still be in possession of confidential data and that the Chinese would "probably be willing to provide immunity for him or sanctuary for him in exchange for what he presumably knows or doesn't know".
McDonough refused to speculate over Snowden's motives, but disputed claims that the former contract worker for the National Security Agency made to the Guardian concerning being able wiretap anyone, including the president.
"That's incorrect," the White House's most senior staffer told CBS's Face the Nation. He added that Obama did not believe that the surveillance system amounted to a government overreach. "We have to find the right balance of protecting our privacy – which is sacrosanct in the president's views – and protecting the country from the very real risk and threats that it faces."
McDonough's comments come a day after US intelligence chiefs wrote to Congress defending the legality and usefullness of the surveillance programmes that were first revealed by the Guardian and the Washington Post. The briefing document claimed that the monitoring of metadata had helped prevent potential terror attacks in the US and in more than 20 countries around the world. Some have complained that this claim is unproven.
Meanwhile, sceptics in Congress have complained that the surveillance programme does not come with sufficient checks to protect innocent individuals. Senator Mark Udall, a leading critic of the secret programme, said that collection of data does not have to be "all or nothing". He intends to put forward a bill that would limit the scope of what is allowed under the Patriot Act.
Udall told NBC's Meet the Press: "We owe it to the American people to have a debate in the open about the extent of this programme – you have a law that has been interpreted secretly by a secret court that then issues secret orders to generate a secret programme."
Udall added that the way the system operated at present wasn't "an American approach" to the problem of balancing privacy with threat reduction. Reported by guardian.co.uk 3 minutes ago.