Glenn Greenwald appeared on Anderson Cooper's CNN show Wednesday night to respond to charges made by GOP Rep. Peter King.
On Cooper's Tuesday show, King said that Greenwald should be prosecuted for publishing documents the reporter knew were classified. He doubled down on his comments during an appearance on Fox News, adding that Greenwald was threatening to release the names of covert CIA agents.
Cooper asked Greenwald about the accusations and said that the CNN host found no evidence that Greenwald ever threatened to release names.
"I was really staggered that a United States congressman, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, actually could go on national television and make up an accusation, literally fabricated out of whole cloth, namely that I have threatened to uncover the names of covert CIA agents as a way of arguing for my arrest and prosecution inside the United States for the crime of doing journalism," Greenwald told Cooper.
"It's bad enough to call for that. It's extraordinarily menacing that he did so based on a complete falsehood. The idea that I threatened that—I did not nor would I ever," he added.
When Cooper asked Greenwald if he thought King simply fabricated the fact or was confused, Greenwald said he had no idea. "The last thing I would try to do is read the mind of and what goes on internally in the swamp of Peter King's brain," Greenwald said. "He himself was a supporter of terrorism for several decades when it was done by the IRA. So I don't know if he simply decided to completely make that up or hallucinated."
The Guardian, the UK newspaper that employs Greenwald, told The Huffington Post's Michael Calderone on Wednesday that it was "disappointed" in King's comments. "This is especially troubling in light of comments from Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney General who stated: 'As long as I am attorney general, we will not prosecute any reporter for doing his or her job,'" The Guardian stated.
Cooper then asked Greenwald about Snowden's most recent interview with the South China Morning Post, in which he told the paper that the U.S. had been hacking computers in Hong Kong and China for years.
"Yeah [Snowden] was very clear about the fact that as the U.S. goes around the world threatening and warning people about the dangers of cyber attacks, the U.S. is one of the most prolific—if not the most prolific—perpetrators of offensive cyber warfare," Greenwald said.
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