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Press TV has conducted an interview with Richard Becker, from the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, about the US National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program.

- Has America been any safer given this surveillance as you like to call it, spying as it is called by others?

- That is a very interesting question because we should recall that the National Security Agency, the NSA is defined as a combat support agency under the Department of Defense. And I pointed out because the NSA’s purpose and the Pentagon’s purpose is not really defense.

The United States is not threatened by other countries. The United States is by far the most powerful military force on earth and it is in fact the United States that has not only threatened but invaded and intervened and blockaded and sanctioned so many other countries, really carried out war against so many countries and the real purpose of the National Security Agency and the military is to carry out these policies of coercion and war around the world and also carry out coercion against any opposition to the system from within the United States.

So while I agree very much that it is outrageous violations of the privacy of people in United States, it is unconstitutional, it is a violation of everything that people think about when they think about democratic rights but there is also the larger purpose which the NSA serves and that is to make war and United States has intervened scores of times around the world in the last fifty years including major wars that has carried out in a number of different countries.

The NSA has been an essential element. Intelligence gathering is an essential element in the military machine which really as a whole needs to be dismantled.

- Richard Becker and Frederick Peterson [the other guest of the program], I am going to have two questions that involve David Petraeus. First to you Richard Becker. Frederick Peterson talks about how this is taking a political turn. For example we can talk about David Petraeus how that scandal erupted. Is that an example of how it is taking a political turn or you can give us more examples or do you agree overall that this has indeed taken a political turn?

- Well it is always political and I would just want to say that I was not bashing America as Frederick Peterson referred to and America of course is not just the United States or I was not bashing the United States. I was bashing the policy and the practice of the US war machine.

You know the United States has commands now for every part of the world. No other country has that. Why? Because the US is the dominant empire in the world today not for the interests of the people of the United States but for the interests of the banking and oil and corporate interests who are served by the NSA. That is what the NSA is serving.

The ruling elite in the United States are against the interests of the people of the United States and against the interest of the people of the world. So it is very political and far more political than anything to do with the Petraeus scandal.

And Petraeus was a leading figure in the attempt to crush the opposition to the US occupation in Iraq and in Afghanistan and of course failed to do that but certainly he tried and certainly he was using intelligence provided by NSA and other intelligence agencies like the CIA.

- Richard Becker, go ahead. 

- Yes I mean this is ludicrous that poor General Petraeus, poor General Petraeus is the victim. Petraeus who carried out the surge, Petraeus who carried out the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He wrote the manual for carrying it out. He is part of the imperialist war machine, the colonialist, imperialist war machine. He is a war criminal like so many others who should have to answer for their crimes.

You know, what about those people who started the war against Iraq on completely false pretences and you know today they live in luxury. More than a million Iraqis died and Iraq was torn apart and Petraeus was part of that.

So I have no sympathy with General Petraeus. He was one of the people using the NSA material, using the CIA intelligence material to carry out an illegal, unjust, immoral war in Iraq and in Afghanistan and really we have to see this.

It is the policies of the United States. It is the interventions, it is the invasions and the wars that have created so much anger against the United States around the world. That is the issue to address. That is why this enormous war machine is maintained in order to ensure and to protect the position of the United States as the dominant power in the world.

[In response to Frederick Peterson]

- It should be abolished. The reality is that the NSA does not care what Frederick Peterson eats for breakfast. That is not what it exists for. They are collecting enormous amounts of data on people in United States and that is wrong.

But the purpose of the NSA as a combat support agency, as an integral part of the Department of Defense which it is wrongly called, it should be called the department of offense, the Department of War it used to be, their purpose is to ensure the position of the United States as the dominant world power, as the leading empire in the world today. That is what its purpose is.

So to say we should talk about the NSA, do not talk about the wars, do not talk about militarism, you are missing the point entirely if that is the position that you take.

- Richard, Becker, what do you think about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act?

- Well the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is supposed to be governing the use of the employment of intelligence, it is supposed to approve these operations and it approves them all. It approves virtually everything.

And in reality what we have seen thanks to Edward Snowden, thanks to WikiLeaks,..., thanks to them we know about some of these things because this has been pervasive spying that has been going on and of course it is illegal but we would not now about it except for these courageous individuals fighting to bring it forward.

And you know we today people like Robert Gates, the former secretary of defense calling Snowden a traitor. We have newspapers calling him a traitor but saying at the same time they welcome the debate. We would not be having the debate without them. It is not the FISA, FISA is not really protecting the people at all. It is these individuals who have bravely come forward and put themselves at risk.