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Feinstein had given firm support for the NSA's phone call tracking program just last month while criticizing Snowden for being a runaway whistle-blower who could have instead turned his documents to Congress.

"What keeps me up at night, candidly, is another attack against the United States. And I see enough of the threat stream to know that is possible," Feinstein said at a Pacific Council on International Policy dinner in Century City.

"But the way we prevent another attack - and this is tricky - is intelligence," she said. "You have to know what's going to happen, because it's too late otherwise."

"There are all kinds of things that are going on. And for some reason, the fear of our government for a bona fide reason, which is to prevent a terrorist attack, raising this kind of concern, when there are only 22 people in our country who have access to this database and every one of them is vetted,"