Many members of the Obama administration have gotten a "free ride" since National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden released documents detailing highly classified information about U.S. surveillance programs domestically and abroad — but none more so than former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to political strategist Dick Morris, who appeared Monday on "America’s Forum" on
Newsmax TV.
"It's inconceivable that Hillary Clinton did not know all about this eavesdropping," he said. "For goodness sakes, she was secretary of state. She would have read the intercepts.
"She probably had to approve the wiretapping. We wouldn't go on tapping the phone of the chancellor of Germany without our secretary of state knowing it, without receiving the intercepts themselves."
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Clinton, the anticipated Democratic nominee for president in 2016, has "a lot of owning and explaining to do about what her role was in these intercepts," Morris said.
"The intercepts weren't concerning farm policy or labor policy, they were concerning foreign policy and she was the secretary of state with obviously the highest security clearance. And she would have seen all of this, and probably had to approve it and may have initiated it."
While Snowden’s leaks unquestionably violated the law, they also shed light on duplicitous spying tactics used by the government against Americans, according to Morris.
"The documents he turned over are going to unearth things that we don't want unearthed," said Morris. "That's why they're classified, that's why he's been convicted of being a spy, and it's why what he did is illegal."
"On the other hand, we have to remember with Snowden that this entire controversy about the NSA snooping on Americans, on the limits of eavesdropping, on our right to privacy — this entire controversy that has been prominent in the news for two or three years now was entirely because of Snowden's leaks.
"This man defied the whole rest of the government and told the truth about what was going on.
"To that we have to be
— even as we condemn him as a criminal and we condemn what he did in terms of endangering American lives and interests
— we have to commend him for doing what the other people in our democracy did not do, which is very simply to tell us the truth."
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