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Powell Aide: Snowden “Pure as a Driven Snow”
Snowden “more helpful than dangerous” says ex-Colin Powell Chief of Staff:
The leaks from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden about US worldwide surveillance have helped rather than harmed America, and the leaks haven’t endangered lives.
Lawrence “Larry” Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell in the last Bush administration, said that he believed Snowden’s assertions that he leaked out of concern for the US breaking both domestic and international law.
“I think Snowden has done a service. I wouldn’t have had the courage, and maybe not even the intellectual capacity, to do it the way he did it,” he told Salon magazine.
“There’s a logic to what he has done that is impressive. He really has refrained from anything that was truly dangerous, with regard to our security – regardless of what people say.“
Wilkerson, who played a key role in gathering intelligence to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, said that Snowden and the journalists working with him had been “circumspect” in what data they had released, and thinks the fugitive’s decision to go public was driven by “altruistic” reasons.
“Snowden seems to me to be pure as a driven snow,” he said. “You can be dangerous if you’re that way, but you can also be helpful. And I think he’s been more helpful than dangerous.”
Despite his apparent admiration for Snowden, Wilkerson said that the former NSA worker had made his bed and now would have to lie in it.
“I credit Snowden for having a great deal of courage, because he’s ruined himself forever,” he said. “I don’t think he has a future. He has a future so long as he can continue to co-exist with all the restraints and pressures around him. But I’m not sure that’s being long-lived. And I don’t see him ever being accepted back here.”
“Regardless of what people say?”
What people might that be?
Maybe people like Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper – the falsehood of whose testimony before Congress was outed by Snowden.
The director of National Intelligence apologized in June to the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee for lying during a hearing, according to a letter published on the DNI website on Tuesday.
Director James Clapper appeared before the committee in March, where Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked him specifically if NSA spies on millions of Americans. Clapper answered, “No.”
Since then, Edward Snowden reportedly leaked government documents that unveiled a secretive government program that did precisely what Wyden suggested in collecting meta data for cell phone and internet records of hundreds of millions of Americans.
Snowden is still on the run. Clapper still has his job. Isn’t it wonderful what a really sincere apology can do?
Published in Foreign Policy, Law, Military
Is motivation an element in treason?
Exactly, he’s essentially downloaded to Putin’s goons. People think this is a good thing?
I have held that opinion since this all broke out.
Relevant reading: http://quillette.com/2015/12/19/glenn-greenwald-fascisms-fellow-traveller/
Especially where he did more than focus attention on the meta-data program. Within the realm of what we can be told, it seems fairly settled that the information he stole went beyond what could be justified if privacy was his main concern. I don’t give him a pass in any event, but the “whistleblower” narrative takes a very narrow view of what he actually did.
Powell has definitely gone native and should be considered a liberal. Do people really think a traitor like Snowden is a hero?
Over the comprehensive reach into every form of communication, over the ability to automate much of the work, and the ability to use big data to discern patterns. Also over a legal apparatus that is approaching Beria’s “show me the man and I will find you the crime.”
When Gordon Crovitz reviewed Harvey Silverglate’s Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent for the WSJ, he wrote:
I don’t think that would be a good thing, but so far I haven’t been given reason to think he’s done so.
Can we agree that this has nothing to do with what I said (or, in fact, with your original comment)? I hope so.