Edward Snowden Is A Patriot: Ex-NSA CIA, FBI and Justice Whistleblowers Meet Leaker in Moscow

In a Democracy Now special, we spend the hour with four former U.S. intelligence officials -- all whistleblowers themselves -- who have just returned from visiting National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden in Russia. They are former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, former FBI agent Coleen Rowley, former National Security Agency senior executive Thomas Drake, and former U.S. Justice Department ethics advisor Jesselyn Radack, now of the Government Accountability Project. On Wednesday, the group presented Snowden with an award from the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence. "In our visit, we told Edward Snowden that he had begun the debate by disclosing to American citizens what was going on -- this massive spying upon American citizens," Rowley says. "We were happy to tell him the debate has begun, but he is very concerned, and this is actually the reason he has sacrificed so much: he wants to see these laws, these secret interpretations of the law, I should say, fixed."