Below is my column that ran this week in Al Jazerra on the one-year anniversary of the Snowden scandal. It is hard to believe that it has only been one year given the number of investigations, promised reforms, and articles. I previously wrote a piece explaining why a pardon or commutation would not be inconsistent with prior cases, but that still seems unlikely. While I disagree with Snowden’s release of classified information that could harm the country, I do believe that his case is more nuanced than his critics have suggested. What is fascinating is that, after a year, we appear no closer to a consensus on what Snowden represents.
Edward Snowden: Whistleblower or traitor?
Jonathan Turley
It is hard to imagine that just one year ago, Edward Snowden famously walked away. He was a low-level employee of Dell contractor at a nondescript National Security Agency site. A non-entity by design. Just one of hundreds of thousands of people working in the burgeoning national security complex in the United States – the ultimate faceless cog. Now, one year later, he is a household name but the world remains divided on who Edward Snowden is. Is he a whistleblower or a traitor? It turns out that question is often answered not by how people view Snowden but how they view their government.
Snowden the whistleblower
For many around the world, and a growing number of Americans, Snowden is a hero and whistleblower who put his own freedom at stake to reveal shocking abuses by the US intelligence agencies. Much of what Snowden has done certainly looks like a whistleblower. First, he does not appear to have sought money for his disclosures. Indeed, he appears to have thought more about what he was taking than where he was taking it.
Secondly, and most importantly, is the breathtaking disclosures that he made. Consider a few of the more important disclosures:
Secret orders under which the NSA was seizing phone and text records of virtually every citizen in the United States. The scope and lack of protection in the program was described by a federal judge as “almost Orwellian”.Surveillance of world leaders, including some of our closest allies like German Chancellor Angela Merkel. At least 122 world leaders were intercepted by the United States.The forced cooperation of US telecommunication companies to turn over data on every US citizen under programmes like PRISM.Programmes like XKeyscore to search “nearly everything a user does on the Internet” through data it intercepts across the world.The tapping of fiber optic cables by British spy agency, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in conjunction with the NSA.The interception of millions of calls in foreign countries, including every single call in places like Afghanistan.
What is most striking is that in the wake of these disclosures, the Obama Administration first denied the allegations. National Intelligence Director James R Clapper Jr not only denied the existence of the programme before the Senate but he later explained that his testimony was “the least untrue”statement that he could make. Of course, that would still make it untrue, but he has never been investigated, let alone prosecuted.
While President Barack Obama would later insist that Snowden did not influence the various reforms implemented after his disclosure, few people believe that claim. There is no question that Snowden succeeded in forcing multiple task force investigations and a series of changes, including the claimed cessation of some aspects of these programmes.
Snowden the traitor
What so many people around the world admire about Snowden is precisely what makes him such a hated figure within government. He broke the rules and worse yet, embarrassed some of the most powerful leaders in Washington. He obviously broke the law in removing and disclosing classified information – material potentially harmful to the security of the United States.
The anger over Snowden clearly goes beyond the act itself however. For many of Washington’s elite, Snowden is as baffling as some alien from another planet. These are people who spent their lives playing by the rules in a system controlled by a duopoly of power. With two parties controlling the system, there is little that happens in Washington that is not predictable and often controlled. The reactions of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and current Secretary of State John Kerry are particularly illustrative.
Clinton came off as a classic passive aggressive – expressing utter bewilderment over Snowden: “I was puzzled because we have all these protections for whistleblowers. If he were concerned and wanted to be part of the American debate, he could have been.”
Really, how? I represented the prior whistleblower who first revealed aspects of this programme years before Snowden. As I have testified in Congress, the whistleblower system referred to by Clinton is a colossal joke.
Firstly, there are exceptions under the whistleblower laws for national security information so Snowden could not use those protections. Secondly, the House and Senate oversight committees are viewed as the place that whistleblowers go to get arrested. There is a revolving door of staff going back and forth to the intelligence agencies. The only “debate” Snowden would have been part of would have been how best to terminate him in the shortest period of time.
Then there is Secretary of State John Kerry who recently offered his own brand of macho advice to the kid: “Man up and come back to the United States.”
Kerry appears ready to give him an “attaboy” on his way to solitary confinement to cut off virtually any contact with the outside world. I have great faith and love for our legal system, but national security law has become increasingly draconian and outcome determinative due to various changes in the last decade. This administration has continued the use of secret legal opinions and secret evidence in cases. The agencies continue to classify information to prevent the disclosure of potentially embarrassing or conflicting material.
Obama has refused to close tribunal proceedings and reserves the right to determine whether people go to real courts or the widely ridiculed tribunal proceedings. Even with a federal trial, Snowden would be placed under Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) to cut off any outside contact and impose limitations on even his cleared counsel in speaking with him. At trial, federal judges are increasingly barring arguments from defendants as “immaterial” even when those arguments are the real reason for their actions.
So there you have it: hero or traitor. Take your pick. What is clear is that Snowden pulled back the curtain on new reality of living within a fishbowl of constant surveillance. People clearly don’t like it, even if they don’t like Snowden. They are left however with the same sense of frustration and isolation when it comes to their government. Snowden stepped outside of a system that many Americans now view as impenetrable and unchanging. Whatever he may be, Snowden remains fascinating precisely because he proved to be the malfunctioning cog, the one who walked away.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and has handled national security cases in federal court.
Al Jazeera: June 9, 2014
Dredd ~
Thank you for posting that Souter video. Enlightening and frightening.
So much for a principled stance.
Dredd – you clearly have an active fantasy life.
“I was puzzled because we have all these protections for whistleblowers. If he were concerned and wanted to be part of the American debate, he could have been.” – Hillary Clinton
I guess she missed Frontline last week.
Kirk Wiebe: “We tried for several years to do it within the system and look what they did to us. Clearly Edward Snowden saw that and said that’s obviously not an option, obviously not an option. And just to be a little more formal, there are no whistleblower protections for any employee of the intelligence community.”
William Binney: “I looked at it as there’s still another whistleblower out there. I mean I looked at it as he saw what happened to us and realized that you couldn’t come out and say these things and have people believe you because they wouldn’t. What they would do, NSA would call you a disgruntled employee or they would call you mentally disturbed or something like that. So I couldn’t blame him for taking some material.”
William Binney: “They attempted to indict us three separate times on false charges. They falsified evidence and tried to get an indictment.”
Kirk Wiebe: “What they charged him with was the Espionage Act, and he could have done 30 years-plus in prison if he would’ve been found guilty for the possession of classified documents. In the end, of course, what they discovered was the documents were not classified. They were unclassified documents that then had been reclassified, and the government had used a sort of argument that, well, they should’ve been classified, even if they weren’t. It’s astonishing that in this day and age, that’s the way that those resources were put together on someone like Drake, where those documents were not classified, and eventually, the government had to give up the cases. It was falling apart. And Drake, he was allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor right before trial and given a $25 fine and probation. But, of course, his life had been basically destroyed. He now finds himself working at the Genius Bar at an Apple store in a mall in Maryland. But that’s an object lesson to every potential whistleblower out there that this is what the government can do if you decide to step forward and raise a ruckus. This is Tom Drake, who had tried to go through channels all the way along”
I watched a three hour Frontline (two parts) that pretty much puts things into perspective. Snowden turned over the information to the press and is letting them decide what is or is not harmful to national security:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/united-states-of-secrets/
Make no mistake though; that drip, drip, drip is going to continue for a long, long time. This story is far from over.
J. Brian Harris, Ph.D., P.E., just to let you know: just post the link and the youtube video comes up.
Annie, Thanks, Too bad the court decided the election. Highly doubt we would have ever been in this fix had Gore prevailed.
SWM – you evidently missed the part where the press did the vote recount and Bush won.
SWM, good find! So will some of the righties here change their opinion on Snowden, now that Al Gore thinks he’s a hero too? Strange bedfellows.
saucymugwump,
Dredd wrote “You would not know a spy if you saw one.”
I never said I was a spy or worked with them, just that I know what his job was from his many published comments. Sysadmins are never spies, especially a mouse like Snowden.
But thanks for the insight on why children like you admire Snowden. You think that what you see on TV is real: if Angelina Jolie is a computer whiz, spy, and butt-kicker in a movie, then it must be true.
==========================
You are the disturbed child.
You assume he was saying his work in Hawaii made him a child.
He was an active spy for years before becoming a “sysadmin” in Hawaii.
His life was in danger constantly when he was doing espionage for an ungrateful rogue goverment enabled by “politically aware” children like yourself.
Annie – you make a good point. With Gore in Snowden’s corner, I am going to go back to I Don’t Know.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/06/10/al-gore-nsa-law-breaking-worse-than-edward-snowdens
Dredd wrote “You would not know a spy if you saw one.”
I never said I was a spy or worked with them, just that I know what his job was from his many published comments. Sysadmins are never spies, especially a mouse like Snowden.
But thanks for the insight on why children like you admire Snowden. You think that what you see on TV is real: if Angelina Jolie is a computer whiz, spy, and butt-kicker in a movie, then it must be true.
Perhaps Professor Turley can somehow effect the positioning of Snowden squarely in front of the Supreme Court. It would be inordinately edifying to observe the SCOTUS as it “interprets,” infers and politicizes the literal, verbatim Constitution in relation to its ideological obligations and the demands of its political benefactors. They could haul old “Insurrectionist Ben” (Bernanke) up there to assure the SCOTUS that the “Constitution has evolved.”
The SCOTUS must wriggle its way out of this one,
_______________________________________________________________
Snowden vs. The United States of America
The 4th Amendment:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
saucymugwump,
You would not know a spy if you saw one.
Paul C. Schulte
————–
Paying attention to detail.
You owe me a new keyboard.
=======================
I learned it from Maverick.
Paul C. Schulte wrote “I cannot speak to whether he was ‘trained as a spy’ or not”
I never worked for the NSA, but I had a clearance and therefore understand the different types of them. And I worked in software engineering and IT, so I understand exactly what his job was by reading his many comments. And therefore I can say with certainty that he is a lying sack with respect to his claims of having been a spy. He’s like a little boy who loves the spotlight so much he blurts out anything to keep the light on him.
Paul C. Schulte
Dredd – was unaware there was a contest. How did you get in charge of it?
============
Paying attention to detail.
You owe me a new keyboard.
Max-1 (Too Big To Comply? NSA Says It’s Too Large, Complex to Comply With Court Order),
“We know with pretty reliable evidence that 2/3 of the people in the United States do not know that we have three separate branches of government.” – Justice Souter
That makes the NSA of the 66% it would seem.
Sounds like a coup.
Dredd – was unaware there was a contest. How did you get in charge of it?
Dredd,
The “too big” mentality of incompetence…
… Maybe Obama is too big to Impeach?
Paul C. Schulte
I started out thinking Snowden was a traitor, then moved to the I Don’t Know column, now I am in the whistleblower camp.
…
===========================
Quite consistent on a variety of subjects around here.
Congrats, you just won the “desert sands when the wind blows emulation” contest.