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Carl Bernstein: Greenwald 'out of line'

Veteran investigative reporter Carl Bernstein publicly criticized The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald on Monday over a statement he made about the National Security Agency secrets that could leak "if anything should happen" to former security contractor Edward Snowden. 

"That statement by that reporter is out of line," Bernstein, who would not refer to Greenwald by his name, said on MSNBC's Morning Joe. 

In a subsequent email to POLITICO, Greenwald dismissed Bernstein, a member of the duo that exposed Nixon's Watergate scandal, as someone who "hasn't done any actual reporting for a couple decades now." 

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According to Reuters, Greenwald had told an Argentinian paper over the weekend that “Snowden has enough information to cause more damage to the U.S. government in a minute alone than anyone else has ever had in the history of the United States." 

"The U.S. government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happen to Snowden, because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare," Greenwald reportedly said. ( Greenwald has called Reuters' report "wildly distorted.") 

On Morning Joe, Bernstein called Greenwald's statement "awful" and "aggressive." 

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"With all my regard for The Guardian, which is considerable... that's an awful statement, and the tone in which he made it," the former Washington Post reporter said. " It's one thing to say that Mr. Snowden possesses some information that could be harmful, and that could be part of the calculation that everybody makes here.  It's another to make that kind of an aggressive, non-reportorial statement [that] a reporter has no business making." 

"There are, at the same time, precautions... that Snowden has taken in terms of secreting some information in various places that definitely would disclose more things -- some of which might or might not be inimical to the interests of the United States," he continued. " But that statement by that reporter is out of line." 

Greenwald returned fire on Bernstein in his email to POLITICO early on Monday. 

"I realize Carl Bernstein hasn't done any actual reporting for a couple decades now, but he should nonetheless take the time to read what he's opining on," he wrote. " The Reuters article he's referencing is a complete distortion of what I actually said in that interview.  The point I made is the opposite one: that Snowden has been as responsible as a whistleblower can be in ensuring that only information the public should know is revealed, but not gratuitously harmful information." 

UPDATE (8:51 a.m.): Bernstein, in a meeting, tells POLITICO he will be back shortly with "a specific response."  But in the meantime writes:

Re: 'no actual reporting for two decades," Mr. Greenwald might want to read my reportorial biography of Hillary Clinton -- published in 2008 in Britain as well as the U.S. and around the world -- as a starting point.  He also ought to take his beef to Reuters, if he feels he was misquoted by any of us who responded on Morning Joe to the specific quote attributed to him. 

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