Mark Colvin reported this story on Wednesday, July 30, 2014 18:14:00

MARK COLVIN: While Julian Assange himself is still stuck in a room in Ecuador's embassy in London, the NSA (National Security Agency) whistleblower Edward Snowden is in Moscow, where he got stuck on his way from Hong Kong more than a year ago.



His visa runs out tomorrow, though Russia is expected to renew it.



Yesterday the German justice minister suggested Snowden was too young to spend his life being hunted. He advised him to return to the United States and face the charges against him.



Thomas Drake is a former senior executive of the US National Security Agency who was prosecuted as a whistleblower on multiple felony charges but eventually walked free on a misdemeanour.



Jesselyn Radack is his lawyer and a member of Edward Snowden's legal team.



They are in the country as guests of the Wheeler Centre and they joined me from our Melbourne studio.



I started by asking what would have happened if, instead of fleeing, Edward Snowden had given a press conference in Washington.



JESSELYN RADACK: I think if he had not gone to Hong Kong and just held a press conference, he would have been arrested and I think he would have been placed in solitary confinement and no one would have heard anything from him about who he is, why he decided to make the disclosures that he did, what he was trying to achieve and the vast amounts of testimony and public speaking he has done around these issues of mass surveillance.



I think they would have put the lid on the story very tightly as soon as they could so there could be no reverberations from what he disclosed.



MARK COLVIN: Why are you so sure of that? Is it because of the case of Chelsea Manning?



JESSELYN RADACK: Because of the case of Chelsea Manning, the case of John Kiriakou, the case of Tom Drake, the case of Jeff Sterling, the case of Stephen Kim.



I mean, there have been... this has been the pattern in all of these Espionage Act prosecutions: is to get the information off the street as soon as possible and shut up the whistleblower as soon as practicable and whatever means was necessary to do that including, in Manning's case, nine months of solitary confinement and behaviour that even the court martial found to be torture.



MARK COLVIN: Tom Drake, What do you think the treatment of Edward Snowden would have been like if he had been arrested under those circumstances?



THOMAS DRAKE: I think it would have been draconian. It would have been extraordinary isolation. They would have considered him, as they did with me, even more of an enemy of the state and they would have been certain to have detained him in a manner that would have been very difficult even for legal representation to gain access to him.



MARK COLVIN: So how do you answer the critics who say that by going to Moscow he effectively labelled himself as some kind of traitor?



JESSELYN RADACK: You know, I would answer that by saying: he didn't voluntarily go to Moscow. The US is the reason that he is in Moscow. He was ticketed to fly to Latin America and had to go through the transit zone in Moscow during a layover and at that point the US revoked his passport, effectively stranding him there. So Moscow was not of his choosing.



MARK COLVIN: Tom Drake, if you were sitting in a hotel room in Moscow with Edward Snowden now, what would you say to him about how he handles his own future?



THOMAS DRAKE: I don't want to put words in his mouth but, you know, but clearly he would look forward to a time where he could return to his home country, but that's just simply not possible now. And what's most critical is his own safety.



It clearly was very challenging for him to consider any place in the world that he wouldn't be in the long reach of American justice and so he's ironically enough - and certainly those ironies of history are not lost on me - at this time he is still safer in Russia than he is anywhere else.



MARK COLVIN: I've seen reports that the United States has put out feelers, suggested some kind of plea bargaining situation or suggested some way whereby he could come back and face the justice system, which they say would be a fair justice system. If you were advising him, if he were negotiating in that way, what would you tell him?



THOMAS DRAKE: Stay away from American justice. I mean, the fact remains because he's been charged with espionage - I was indicted under espionage - there is no public interest defence. He would not even have an opportunity to explain in a court room before a jury "of his peers" what his intentions were. That would not even be permitted given the nature of the Espionage Act charges.



And the government knows that, it's just really a meme of theirs "face the music or man up and come back and make your defence in the court room". There is no public interest defence that would be available to him



MARK COLVIN: And Jesselyn Radack, what is his future now? Is he stuck in Moscow for the duration?



JESSELYN RADACK: I think for the time being he is, I look at this more as a long distance run than a spring and I know ultimately he would love to be able to come home or seek refuge in a country of his choice.



But for now he is in the safest place that he can be and Russia has indicated that it intends to plan on having him, allowing him to continue to stay.



MARK COLVIN: At some point all the information that is going to come will have come out through Glen greenwood or The Washington Post or The Guardian, do you think at that stage the pressure will ease up?



JESSELYN RADACK: It's hard to know. I mean I think over the passage of time, the more that people see that his revelations were correct, that people at the most junior levels at NSA had access to extraordinary amounts of intelligence about hundreds and millions of innocent people, I think the more that message 'think thin', that the government has been invading people's privacy on such a massive scale, I think that will start to shape public opinion and that's as important as the revelations themselves sinking in, people appreciating what this means for their own individual sovereignty.



MARK COLVIN: Thomas Drake, former NSA executive and whistleblower and, before him, lawyer Jesselyn Radack.



The full interview will be available on our website from this evening.