Things got heated on this Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher, when Maher and two of his guests, the IAVA's Paul Rieckhoff and The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald got into it over the NSA spying and whether or not whistleblower Edward Snowden actually did some damage to national security or not.
Here's more on the dust between Greenwald and Rieckhoff::
Things got heated Friday on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” after Glenn Greenwald called Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America founder Paul Rieckhoff’s questioning of Edward Snowden’s asylum in Russia “total bulls—-.”
“There’s a larger debate here if Snowden did release these documents and we find out it does serves a purpose. But at the same time he’s still hiding in Russia. I mean, it would be a different story if he came back, and made his case, and faced the music,” Rieckhoff said.
“That is total bulls—-!” Greenwald interjected.
“I don’t think that’s total bulls—- at all,” the IAVA founder repeated, before the two continued a tense debate on the issue.
Glenn Greenwald Explodes On Bill Maher's Show: 'That Is Total Bull----':
Maher brought up Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism czar and member of a five-person panel to look into the NSA following the Snowden leaks, who called what he did "treason" back in December. But it was Rieckhoff's words that got Greenwald fired up. [...]
The shouting match continued. Later, after Maher read quotes from Richard Clarke, who said Snowden's leaks "helped the terrorists and people like Putin," the exchange heated up, as Greenwald pointed out that governments have always said things like that about whistleblowers of the past.
"You have such certainty, how do you know that the information he revealed did not cost American lives?" Rieckhoff asked.
"What American lives? Is there a single piece of evidence?" Greenwald said. "This is propaganda. Where are the dead Americans?"
Maher later made the point that any deaths would remain secret, however, saying, "If they were in the CIA we wouldn't know their names, there would just be a star on the wall."
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