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Obama Task Force Member: Snowden Is A Criminal

Stone, Geof228px-Picture_of_Edward_SnowdenIn a previous column, I criticized the work of the White House Task Force on the NSA surveillance program as stacked with Obama loyalists with a majority of surveillance hawks. Later, one of the five members came out to say that the reforms were not significant and that he believes the program should be actually expanded not limited. Now, the only member without prior positions in the Administration and national security ties, University of Chicago Law School Professor Geoffrey Stone, has declared that the NSA is not a rogue agency and that Edward Snowden is a criminal.


I have great respect for Professor Stone as an academic but his comments reaffirmed criticism of the make-up of the panel as selected by the White House to offer “reforms” while protecting the underlying program.

Stone insists that NSA is not “some kind of a rogue agency” and that it should not be required to justify the program on the basis of whether it has thwarted any attack or conspiracy. Rather, like some many in the Obama and Bush Administration, Stone measured the program against the most extreme possible attack to argue that it is ipso facto necessary: “It is a mistake to ask, at least arguably a mistake to ask if any particular program . . . thwarted terrorist attacks, because we are not dealing with little things. It is possible that we are talking about a nuclear, a chemical, biological attack where tens of thousands of people’s lives could be at risk. If you thwart one every 20 years, you are doing pretty good. So the fact that hasn’t happened does not prove the program was worthless.” Well that would be an argument that would allow virtually any program with sweeping warrantless searches.

He reserved his harshest words for Snowden, dismissing the “positive consequences” of his disclosure while noting that he is still a criminal. Stone insisted

“we have a very strong legal principle in our system, that you don’t get to commit a crime because you have a good justification for doing so. . . .

Therefore, any kind of a notion that someone is not a criminal when they do this opens the door to other people saying, ‘Well, gee, I can do this and be a hero and I won’t even go to jail for it.’ I think you just don’t want that. . . . Basically, my view is I think Snowden is a criminal.”

What is missing is the fact that most whistleblowers released confidential or classified information. The government routinely classifies embarrassing or abusive programs to prevent the public from seeing the information. By Stone’s measure, historical figures like Daniel Ellsberg would be a simple criminal. The whole concept of a whistleblower is that they release information that would not have been made public. The Pentagon Papers are virtually indistinguishable on that basis from Snowden’s disclosures. Moreover, you have a federal judge who has declared the underlying program unconstitutional — even though Stone and his task force colleagues accepted the program as demonstrably legal. Also, as noted in the previous column,, this ignores the Administration refusing to investigate let alone prosecute Clapper for perjury, CIA officials for torture, or intelligence officials for admitted destruction of evidence on torture. It is simply all part of America’s Animal Farm. Finally, you have the White House and the Congress admitting abuses disclosed by Snowden and promising reforms. This is why I recently wrote a column on the relatively strong basis for a pardon for Snowden.

Stone’s comments shows the continued refusal of Administration allies to acknowledge that the standard applied to Snowden would have led to the incarceration of celebrated figures like Ellsberg and others who helped end abuses in history.

98 thoughts on “Obama Task Force Member: Snowden Is A Criminal”

  1. Traitors are taking over our government. All branches. These people are the enemy of the US Constitution.
    We are reaching the point where an economic Revolution is probably needed or we will lose our freedom completely and you might as well throw out the Bill of Rights and Constitution.

  3. Glenn starts speaking at approx. the 5 minute mark. in the recently posted clip.

  5. Would someone grab my post from about 5 mins. ago? It was a link to Thomas Drake’s twitter. One thing he said was a quote from MLK jr about the necessity to not cooperate with evil. That is what Snowden was doing, refusing to cooperate with evil.

  8. People who warn the citizens that evil is happening are often traitors. Many incarnations ago I was a human living in Boston. I was a loyal British citizen. Some guy named Paul Revere went dashing around the countryside warning that “The British are coming!” Well, at the time we all thought that our Redcoats were a little lame and perhaps incapable of coming, but all that aside, Revere was a traitor. So, this Snowden guy must be a traitor too because the English are upset with him.

  9. Rosalie:

    “Therefore, as well as I can decline your meaning , “the whole country has been founded on a crime from the British point of view … There’s a misunderstanding of British culture ; British cities welcomed people of different skin color and cultures until the small island of Britain was swamped with asylum requests.”

    *************************

    Sorry for my vagueness here. I was referencing the rules of power I coined in commenting on a previous post that has been discussed here. The rules are IMHO:

    1. Power begets other power.
    2. Power is always pragmatic.
    3. Power avoids exhaustive hypotheses.
    4. Power protects other power.

    I was attempting to point out that all tyrants view eruptions of freedom as “crimes” and was comparing the subject of this post with Geo. III. Rule No. 4 seems to be at play here. No criticism of GB was intended. In fact, the British are more welcoming of other cultures and peoples than the folks of these United States. Time will tell if this trait is good policy.

  10. Isn’t university of Chicago the same law school where our first black president taught constitutional law ? We already know how much he knows constitutional law or respects it , so why would another law professor from the same school be any different ?

  11. Stone’s body language , facial expressions tone and inflections of voice are as suggestive of a personality disorder as is his dysfunctional opinion

  13. For a law professor to call someone “a criminal” when that person has not been tried and convicted is over the top. Or from the bottom. I recall a Saturday Night Live skit 30 years ago when they ridiculed some guy named Geoffrey by simply chanting his name with some ridicule in the articulation.
    This guy needs to get a job in the janitorial department at the university.
    GEOFFREY!
    Friggin nitwit. Or in pig latin: itwitNay.

  14. Snowden should never leave Russia because if he does someone in a 3-letter agency will find a way to assassinate him. They have done so to many others for far less. That’s the kind of self-righteous A**holes they are. Your tax dollars at work.

  15. I dont care anyone.
    Stone is a traitor.
    Anyone against the Bill of Rights are the traitors.

  17. Edward Snowden may or may not be a criminal, but Geoffrey Stone has been a hack for decades.

  18. Professor Stone…. take a big healthy bite of some Shit…. Chew well & swallow! Do not wash it down with anything. I’m ashamed to call you an American!

  19. “In ruling, the judge noted the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and how the phone data-collection system could have helped investigators connect the dots before the attacks occurred.” (ap’s link @11:56am “NSA Phone Surveillance Is Legal, New York Judge Rules”)

    Oh, please! Those nincompoops had all the data and dots they needed to thwart 9/11… what they lacked was the brain power to actually draw the lines from point A to point B to point C.

    Obviously this judge has fallen for the excuse, “we wouldn’t have been so dumb if only we’d had more dots to connect.”

    Well they had lots and lots of dots to connect and still managed to miss the Boston Marthon bombers and that plot was in our own back yard, right under their noses.

    Idiot.

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