EDWARD SNOWDEN DEBATE

Was Edward Snowden Justified? Two teams faced off on the motion "Snowden was justified" in his release of highly classified national security documents. The team that sways the most people by the end of the debate is declared the winner. AGAINST THE MOTION Andrew C. McCarthy, a contributing editor at National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is a former top federal prosecutor. A former chief assistant U.S. attorney, he is best known for leading the prosecution against Omar Abdel Rahman and 11 others for waging a terrorist war against the U.S., including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a plot to bomb New York City landmarks. Ambassador R. James Woolsey, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, chairs the board of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and is a venture partner with Lux Capital Management. Previously, he served in the U.S. government on five different occasions, where he held presidential appointments in two Republican and two Democratic administrations. FOR THE MOTION Daniel Ellsberg is a former U.S. military analyst who, in 1971, leaked the Pentagon Papers, which revealed how the U.S. public had been misled about the Vietnam War. After serving in the Marine Corps, he became in 1959 a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation and consultant to the White House and Defense Department, which he joined before transferring to the State Department to serve in Saigon. Ellsberg's trial on 12 felony counts was dismissed on grounds of governmental misconduct against him. Ben Wizner, legal adviser to Edward Snowden, directs the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, which is dedicated to protecting and expanding the freedoms of expression, association, and inquiry. He has litigated numerous cases involving post-9/11 civil liberties abuses, including challenges to airport security policies, government watch lists, extraordinary rendition and torture.