The New York Times has said the U.S. should consider clemency for Edward Snowden for disclosure of classified documents. The Times says he did a service to all of us. I have trouble with the logic of that kind of claim, but consider the source.
The only countries that benefited from what Snowden did are Russia and China, and maybe Iran. What Snowden gave up was an intelligence bonanza that didn't cost a thing to collect. It is a gift, with substantial value, that does harm to the U.S.A., his home country.
The Times seem to think of this in terms of what was disclosed that the American public did not know. There are plenty of things that the American public doesn't know and shouldn't know about how we collect intelligence. If you ask the average person on the street to name one thing that Snowden gave up, they probably wouldn't have an answer. They may say, if they read the Times, that NSA is spying on the general public, intercepting their phone calls and storing them somewhere for later analysis. That isn't true, but people who don't know what has been disclosed are swayed by the simple explanation of how our government spies on its own people.
Anyone in law enforcement who has ever had a case of potential terrorism against the U.S. understands the limits of intelligence collection and the limits of sharing information between different agencies. We often wished there was some big pot of data that we could go back to and find out what some idiot who wanted to blow up a bridge in Manhattan was looking for on the Internet, or who he was talking to lately. It takes a court order to get that, and usually more than one. I was surprised we didn't have everything we ever wanted after seeing all the stuff Snowden gave over to people who shouldn't have it. IF it was accurate, and functioned like the slides shows said it did, we should never have had a question about what a person was going to do. We could have gone back to NSA and gotten everything we ever wanted.
We can be fortunate that slide presentations are merely representations of what someone with Powerpoint capability thinks can be done. These are usually people looking for money who wish this could be done and wish they had more money to do it. But, it is just a wish on both sides of the proposal. What they propose never works the way it is supposed to, is almost always over-inflated in its importance, and usually does far less than the slide manager's hope. Snowden was too young and inexperienced to know the difference between a wish and a real capability.
For that reason alone, the Times would hope we would give him some clemency. For what? For being so careful about stealing information; for collecting the NSA entrance requirements so he could work there, or for giving up what he considered to be the most sensitive programs he could find at his job there? Are these the kinds of things we give clemency for?
Show me a reason to give clemency that fits any of the circumstances of his conduct. He is a traitor who cannot come home because he gave up his county's secrets to our enemies. He knew what he was doing, planned it out, and thinks he can get away with it now, if enough people will write articles about it and get the government to think about giving him a break. That isn't the way espionage works. He spied on us, stole our secrets, and now wants forgiveness. The Time's sense of humor on all of this is matched only by the Israeli press who links Snowden to Jonathan Pollard, another spy who gave up secrets and went to jail. He wants clemency too, and the parallels are not lost on us. He can never go home and neither can Snowden. Amazon books:
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