Pres. Jimmy Carter: U.S. should provide military support to Ukraine

Former President Jimmy Carter, who served from 1977 to 1981, joined Consider This host Antonio Mora on March 25, 2014 to discuss his new book, "A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power," the situation in Ukraine, and national security.  

President Carter weighs in on how the U.S. and its allies should respond to the Russian annexation of Crimea. 

Antonio Mora: We're seeing this terrible controversy in Crimea. The Russians now have tens of thousands troops on the border with Ukraine. What should President Obama, the United States, and the European Union do to stand up to this kind of aggression by Vladimir Putin?

President Jimmy Carter: I don’t think there ever has been a possibility that Putin wouldn't take over Crimea. This was a foregone conclusion and nothing that the United States and Europe or anyone could have done would have prevented that. Because Russia has always considered Crimea to be a part of it and most of the Crimean people, as you probably know, agreed with that. They wanted to be a part of Russia. But I think that needs to be stopped, at this point. I don’t think we need equivocate about the prohibition against Putin moving military forces into other parts of eastern Ukraine. I had the same challenge to face when I was president.

Mora: You're referring to Afghanistan — 

Carter: During Christmas week of 1979, the Soviets moved a massive numbers of troops into Afghanistan. And they occupied Afghanistan and I had to stop them from going further. So I did everything I could. I withdrew my ambassador from Moscow. I declared a grain embargo against them. I agreed with Congress and the American Olympic Committee, not going to the [1980 Summer] Olympics. And I began to give weapons to the freedom fighters in Afghanistan, secretly, and we used all Russian-made weapons, so that they couldn't accuse us of doing it.

Mora: So should we support Ukraine militarily?

Carter: I think so, yes. I do believe we should. And I also announced to [Soviet leader Leonid] Brezhnev on public television and all that if he moved out of Afghanistan to any adjacent country, we would respond militarily and not spare any weapons that we had at our disposal. And he never did. And as you know, the freedom fighters were ultimately successful and under [Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev, they withdrew from Afghanistan. So I think we need to be very forceful now, making sure that Putin doesn’t go into eastern Ukraine militarily.

President Carter says the NSA and intelligence agencies have "exceeded the grant of freedom that Congress gave them"

Mora: You've been critical of Edward Snowden. You believe that he broke the law with some of the revelations that he made about the [National Security Agency]. But at the same time, you believe that it was important that this was brought to light. And you've said that you’re concerned that your emails are being looked at by the NSA and that when you’ve had sensitive topics that you do handwritten letters. The head of the NSA said today that they are not looking at your emails. What do you say to them?

Carter: Well, that’s a relief to know. I remember when the head of NSA, one of them said that they didn’t monitor, they didn’t record American telephone calls. And it turned out later that he didn’t tell Congress the truth. But you know, I haven’t really worried about it. I don’t have anything to conceal. But there are some times when I don’t want some of my private messages to be read. And there’s no doubt that NSA has actually recorded every telephone call and email message sent in the United States. They don’t actually read the text but they know what message has occurred. They know which transmission has taken place. And if they want to, later on they can get permission from a very acquiescent or dominated FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance] court to look at certain things. But when I was president, I had to face exactly the same problem, because I was concerned after Watergate and that sort of thing, that the intelligence [agencies] sometimes abused people. I know the FBI did abuse Martin Luther King Jr., and so forth. And so we got a law passed called the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] law in 1978 that absolutely prevented any American intelligence agency from spying on even one American communication unless they got a court order ahead of time certifying that it was a threat to American security. And that prevailed until after 9/11 and then that law was liberalized. And I think the law was changed quite a lot. And in my opinion, when Congress changed it, the intelligence communities in the House and Senate knew what was in the bill but the rest of the members of Congress didn’t have access to those secrets. And so the laws were passed and then I think the [NSA] and others have exceeded the grant of freedom that Congress gave them and exceeded their intrusion into the private affairs of Americans.