Leahy rejected the argument that surveillance makes Americans safer. | John Shinkle/POLITICO Leahy: NSA 'can't keep our secrets'

Sen. Patrick Leahy said Monday that the NSA shouldn’t be trusted with Americans’ secrets when it can’t even keep them safe from “a 29-year-old subcontractor.”

“I got the response when we criticized them, ‘Well we’re going to be careful. We’re going to protect these records.’ Baloney. This is the same NSA that couldn’t protect their greatest secret from a 29-year-old subcontractor who stole them all, marched them off to Russia and has been letting them out about every other day,” Leahy said on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” on Monday. “They can’t keep our secrets and shouldn’t all have them.”


The Vermont Democrat has been pushing for reforms to curtail the NSA’s surveillance powers after NSA leaker Edward Snowden revealed many of its programs to the public. He said what has been allowed for the NSA wouldn’t fly with the public if it weren’t abstract.

“You can imagine what it would be like if the local police department said, ‘We’re just going to break into your house, steal everything out of your files and out of your records because someday we may need it.’ Everybody would be in an uproar. But they could do the same thing electronically,” Leahy said.

Leahy also rejected the argument that the surveillance makes Americans safer, saying the administration has been unable to demonstrate specific terrorist attacks that were prevented by it. He called the NSA itself the greatest threat.

“Could it make us safer if we have a person follow every single American, every single minute of the day? Possibly. But do we want that? No,” Leahy said. “I mean we’ll always face threats to this country, but the greatest threat should not be from our own government prying into every single one of our secrets with no accountability whatsoever.”is made us safer.”

Leahy dismissed calls for clemency for Snowden, saying he was more concerned that no one else at NSA had been punished for the leak.

“He broke the law; he stole classified material,” Leahy said. “Who has been fired at the NSA for being so sloppy, so negligent to allow a 29-year-old to walk away with highly classified material? Nobody has to my knowledge.”

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