Snowden did US 'a great service' worth clemency – ex- GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul

Dr. Paul, you started a petition demanding clemency for the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. What made you do that and how successful is your initiative?

Of course, I’ve had the position a long time that Snowden has provided a great service to us because he was trying to tell the American people what was really going on within our own government. So I praised him although others wanted to condemn him and of course, charge him with treason and all sorts of things. But you know, since the beginning of the whole story breaking and us finding out what he had done, the sentiment has shifted. There is a lot of Americans now that are very sympathetic, probably the majority of Americans, yet the leadership and the Republican Party and the Democrat Party are very supportive of secrecy in government. There seems to be the inevitable contest between the people’s rights and government officials, who think they should run our lives. So because I thought there was a disconnect between that and the Ron Paul channel, we started this petition drive to make a point. The President probably is not going to say “Oh, okay, he has a bunch of signatures and he will change my mind” but in times public opinion can be very, very important. For instance, public opinion was important to restrain the President and his plans to bomb Syria. So I think public opinion ultimately is much more important than the politicians realize. So it is for this reason, on the channel we started this. And we want to rally, numbers do matter, the more names we have the better and who knows if there is enough pressure. Maybe we will force the politicians to rethink it and of course, if anybody wants to join us in this effort, the best way they can do and anybody can do this is to go to the ronpaulchannel.com and you click on “Take action”, it is really easy to sign up. So I think it would be helpful for as many people as possible to sign on.

Dr. Paul, you said that Snowden deserves a fair trial and a reasonable sentence. What is it in your opinion a fair trial and a reasonable sentence? Does it mean that you think that he is guilty to some extent?

Well, that is not exactly my quote. I think there’s a little bit of confusion on that quote. Because you know, if they are going to charge him with something, sure, he should have a fair trial and a fair hearing. But I think he is perfectly innocent so I don’t think a reasonable sentence is what I am looking for. I want him to have clemency, I want him to be exonerated, I want him still be an American citizen and be able to come home. So that is my goal, so I don’t work on the assumption, I think our government is in greater fault than he is because our government has lied to us and broken the Constitution, that is a much greater guilt than somebody who has technically broken a law, but the greater law is the Constitution so if he did this for the benefit of America, never selling the material, he didn’t do this to give it to another government that might do us harm. Nobody has ever, I guess a few people have charged him on that, but nobody had any evidence that that is the case, his case has been much more honorable, and that is the reason, I want him to have a fair hearing, I want him to be exonerated, but I don’t compromise on thinking that he is entitled to a fair sentence because I don’t believe that is what is necessary.

Well, the government is going to argue that they had to do that, that they had to have that high level of secrecy to defend the nation. It is the matter of national security, where everything goes. Would you agree with such an argument?

I don’t agree with it because there is a limit. The purpose of the government is to protect our liberty under our Constitution. It isn’t to protect the government. The secrecy is to protect the people’s privacy, so that they have it turned upside down. The only way that you could conceive a little bit of that if we were in armed conflicts that we were in WWII and there were military secrets. Yeah, I think that is a little bit different but just generally speaking, on normal operations for our government to be spying on us in not protecting our privacy and at the same time they want absolute privacy and secrecy of government. I apply the same thing because I worked real hard on monetary policy, which I can consider it very, very significant and it has a lot to do with the security of our country financially. So I don’t want the government to have this privilege or this ability to hide everything from the American people.

Dr. Paul, we know that everyone is spying on everyone, unfortunately or maybe fortunately, I don’t know. It is not for me to make any judgments. Why Snowden’s case, Snowden’s revelations aroused such a huge public uproar in the US and in Europe?

Because even though it is true, governments have been notorious on spying, they are always looking for the next enemy. There have been too many lies told, we have been told that our government doesn’t spy on American citizens, and lo and behold they lied to us, and they were and it was massive. We were at least led to believe that we only did this on potential enemies, not on our close allies and found out that, that wasn’t true. I think the whole system has been just so out of control. That is why the American people are pretty tolerant to allowing their government to do a lot more than they should but I think it reached breaking point and that’s why we are getting a lot of support on this issue of Snowden and giving him support. But our government and others argue the case if he had this information why doesn’t he bring it to the committees and go through the process. That’s where the fairness disappears because he has known what has happened in the past and a person like myself who has been there, let me tell you, the people who run our Security Committees would not give him a fair shake, they’ve already made up their mind. They call him a traitor, they have convicted him and they would have put him away for life if they had the chance. He doesn’t have a chance, that’s why clemency is so important.

How much damage was done to the US-EU relations by what happened?

Well, what happened prior to the release of this information it was horrible. The damage has been done to Americans and our whole system of government. The fact that we got information that this was happening it hasn’t hurt any individual, nobody was killed or murdered over this, they were meticulously trying to prevent it, but I think it has done a great deal of harm to our diplomatic relations with the various countries. Especially, when it has gone a little bit beyond the routine observations being made that there are governments that are actually monitoring some of the private memos of leaders of other countries. I think they have overstepped their bounds and I think that we have been knocked down a bit because of that and the only thing that keeps us up is our military power, not because the world sees us as a great moral leader. At one time I think America was but I think we’ve drifted from that. And I think we are seeing too often as pushing our way around economically and, of course, backing it up with the military and it is a type of foreign policy that I have not ever endorsed.

That type of foreign policy, the advocates of such foreign policy, those who support such foreign policy, they would say that they are doing it to protect the weak, to eradicate unfairness in the world. That was an official and that is still an official position of the US, let’s say on Syria. Can you comment on that?

That is the excuse but that is exactly the same words they used to endorse socialism and communism that weak have to be taken care of. And the 20th century has proved that radical socialism doesn’t help the weak at all, it just enhances the powerful, the powerful just have the control of the government, which makes things worse. So this idea that we are going to apply that to foreign policy, we are going into Syria to protect the weak. Therefore, then we have to get involved and we end up supporting the Al-Qaeda. We don’t have a moral responsibility and authority to do this, we don’t do it for the right purposes, we get in there for the wrong reasons. And even if what we did worked out, it wouldn’t be right. We don’t have the right to pick up and choose dictators around the world. Just look at what’s happened in Egypt, we supported the military dictator for decades gave him billions of dollars, and finally we supported an overthrow. And then we say, you have to be democrats and have the elections so they do, and we don’t like who gets elected. So we helped him to get thrown out and we go back to the military. We shouldn’t be doing any of this; it is all done in the name of helping the weak and the poor and equity but the arguments are identical to the arguments in the economic system. That is the reason that we need government. We do need government to make sure nobody cheats and steals and using force and takes some from one to give to the other. But that is a lot different than using the force of the government gun, to either tell other countries what to do or possibly to redistribute wealth within our own country.

The topic number one today is dramatic events in Ukraine. What would be your suggestion? What the US, the EU with other world countries should do regarding the situation in Ukraine? Just sit back and watch? Or interfere and if interfere, in what way?

They should let the Ukrainians deal with this problem. There was somebody I have just heard on the radio from the Ukraine and he sounded very reasonable because he said something that I would, could have easily said. He said we should be able to work this out. There should be no violence. And neither Russia nor the US should be involved. There should be the principle of self-determination, we have talked about this for hundred years but as soon as people have determination that one side doesn’t like them, then they get involved. I think setting examples is much better than us assuming that we can tell people what to do. Self-determination and understanding that small units of government are better than big units of government. A reasonable country this is East meeting West, and they speak different languages and this divides Europe from the far East, from Russia, this would be a perfect time to try what we tried at one time. That we brought 13 countries together in a loose knit body and call it a confederation. And had a few stalls originally but everybody was a self reliant, essentially considering an individual country and, of course, that goal was lost but there is no reason why reasonable people on both sides couldn’t sit down and say the Eastern part have different rules and goals than the Western part. Why don’t we just have a couple of things what we can do together? We will be a confederation, we will be friends, we will trade and we will run one half, and you will run the other half and you will have as much independence as we used to think we had among our states. That would be a solution if they would accept two things: non-violence and also the principle of self-determination. That would solve the problem. And there is a lot of people who believe in this. It is just that those people who have power are not likely to give it up within the Ukraine, and there is not many people from the foreign countries supporting the Eastern Ukrainians and the ones who support the western Ukrainians outsiders, they don’t want to give it up either, they want influence, they want economic advantages. Their own government has already been caught discussing who is going to run Ukraine? Which leader are we going to put in charge? This is pretty bad. This kind of intervention is wrong but it is wrong on both sides. If the world would come around of thinking about non-intervention, non-violence, reasonable talk in smaller governments people could live a lot more peaceably and a lot happier.

One of the examples of these talks is the Iran nuclear issue. How do you evaluate the talks that are under way right now? Do you support the talks with Teheran direct conversation; do you see any flaws in that?

Generally, because I think their motivations are wrong but I am a strong proponent of diplomacy, I think talking is a lot more important than letting the bombs fly. And frequently I use example even at the heights of the Cold War Kennedy at least talked to Khrushev and we didn’t at least let two countries go into the nuclear war. So we should talk but if there is such strong motivations that they only want their goals. When they had negotiations in Syria, our position was well, one thing you have to agree before we start talking is that Assad has to go. And we are ready to get rid of the dictator and if its preliminary and this is what I’m afraid of motivation is all about. But I think that the danger of the Iranians to us, the US, in national security is zero. They are not going to come over and start lobbying bombs on us.

Especially if you will be able to deploy an anti-missile shield in Europe.

Well, even that. I think that is just aggravation.

I was being sarcastic, sorry.

Yeah, we don’t need that to be safe.

Dr. Paul, thank you very much and the last question. I know you said that you won’t but will we see you 2015 during the campaign?

You might see me but I won’t be a candidate. I will be still out working with Ron Paul channel in order to get people to think about the issues that was my main goal always in political life, was to get people to think why liberty is important, why minding our own business in foreign policy is important, why free markets can provide more prosperity for everybody. That’s what I will keep working on.

Is there a person that can actually take your place in the future, maybe being a candidate?

Nobody is indispensable; believe me so I’m sure there will be plenty.

Dr. Paul, thank you very much for your time.