CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: National Security Agency

Interview

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BLITZER: Lots going on. Jim Sciutto, thanks very much.

And the independent senator from Vermont is joining us right now, Senator Bernie Sanders.

Senator, thanks very much for coming in.

SANDERS: My pleasure.

BLITZER: You wrote a pretty strong letter to General Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA, and you asked if the NSA has or is spying on members of Congress right now. What prompted you to write this letter?

SANDERS: To be very honest with you, I was on a couple of TV shows here in the state of Vermont, and the journalists asked me, do you think that the NSA is spying on you? And my initial thought was, of course not.

But I thought about it, and I wasn't sure what the answer was. And being unsure about whether or not the NSA is spying on members of Congress made me think that it's imperative to get a flat, straight- out answer from these guys. What we do know, of course, is they have tapped the phones of foreign leaders around the world who are our allies.

I can remember back, as you can, Wolf, you know, 40 years ago , we had a president named Richard Nixon and he was prepared to do everything that he could to destroy his political opponents. And what I worry about is, if you have some other president like that or some rogue agent within the NSA, there's just an extraordinary amount of information and power that they can have over Congress, blackmail members of Congress, not a good situation.

BLITZER: I take it you have not yet received either a formal or informal reply from the NSA to your letter, is that right?

SANDERS: That is correct.

What did occur, apparently, is on Sunday night in response to media requests, the NSA issued a press release in which they said basically that members of Congress were being treated the same way the general public was, which means that information on us is also being compiled.

BLITZER: Well, what they say is that all these phone calls, they have the records of it, but they don't actually listen to the phone calls, they don't monitor the phone calls. If you were to get a phone call, for example, from some suspected terrorist in Somalia, then they might pay attention to what's going on, but people don't have to worry in general about the fact that they have collected this metadata, as it's called.

SANDERS: Well, you know, Wolf, that is suggesting that everybody at the NSA is and always will be wonderful, angelic, law-abiding human beings, but let me pose a different question. What happens if you have a rogue agent in the NSA?

What happens if you have a president, somebody like a Nixon, who has no scruples at all and wants to destroy his political opponents, wants to know what's going on in a political campaign, wants to hold a member of Congress, put him in a blackmail situation and leak information to a political opponent?

I think one doesn't have to be paranoid to be thinking that at some day in the future, that could happen. And I think when you have so much information being controlled by a secret agency, it is a real threat to American democracy.

BLITZER: But you have no reason to believe any of that, that worst- case scenario has already occurred?

SANDERS: That is correct. I have no reason to believe that. But I do worry about the potential of it happening some day, and if it does happen, obviously, it will be a real threat not only to our democracy, but to our political system as well.

BLITZER: What about Snowden? Do you think that he committed a crime or he was simply a well-intentioned whistle-blower?

SANDERS: Well, I think what you have to look at is -- I think there is no question that he committed a crime, obviously. He violated his oath and he leaked information.

On the other hand, what you have to weigh that against is the fact that he has gone a very long way in educating the people of our country and the people of the world about the power of private agency in terms of their surveillance over people of this country, over foreign leaders, and what they are doing.

So, I think you got to weigh the two. My own belief is that I think, I would hope that the United States government could kind of negotiate some plea bargain with him, some form of clemency. I think it wouldn't be a good idea or fair to him to have to spend his entire remaining life abroad, not being able to come back to his country.

So I would hope that there's a price that he has to pay, but I hope it is not a long prison sentence or exile from his country.

BLITZER: You wouldn't give him clemency, though, and let him off scot-free?

SANDERS: No.

BLITZER: All right, Senator, thanks very much for joining us.

SANDERS: Thank you.

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