NSA Leaker - Hero Or Traitor?

The rage in some quarters over the revelation that the National Security Agency, CIA and other U.S. government organizations have been spying on American citizens continues unabated.  What's interesting is that some both on the far right and far left are in an uproar.  Meanwhile, the "America, love it or leave it" crowd is accusing NSA leaker, Edward Snowden, is a traitor.  It's the same mindset that kept America in the disaster in Vietnam for far too long and the one that has kept the fool's errand in Afghanistan going for over a decade.  The New York Times takes the position in a main page editorial that Snowden is not a traitor.  Here are some column highlights:

For several top lawmakers in Washington, Edward Snowden committed the ultimate political crime when he revealed to the world just how broadly and easily the government is collecting phone and Internet records. “He’s a traitor,” said John Boehner, the House speaker. “It’s an act of treason,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee.

Among prosecutors and defense lawyers, there’s a name for that kind of hyperbole: overcharging. Whatever his crimes — and he clearly committed some — Mr. Snowden did not commit treason, though the people who have long kept the secrets he revealed are now fulminating with rage. 

If Mr. Snowden had really wanted to harm his country, he could have sold the classified documents he stole to a foreign power, say Russia or China or Iran or North Korea. But even that would not constitute treason, which only applies in cases of aiding an enemy with whom the United States is at war.

In the landmark 1945 case Cramer v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that one had to provide aid and comfort and also “adhere” to an enemy to be guilty of treason. 

“A citizen may take actions which do aid and comfort the enemy,” the court said, “making a speech critical of the government or opposing its measures, profiteering, striking in defense plants or essential work, and the hundred other things which impair our cohesion and diminish our strength — but if there is no adherence to the enemy in this, if there is no intent to betray, there is no treason.” 

Clearly, Mr. Snowden did not join a terror cell, or express any hostility toward the United States, when he turned over documents to The Guardian and The Washington Post. (He was also not nearly as reckless as Bradley Manning, . . . .

Mr. Snowden’s goal was to expose and thus stop the intelligence community from what he considered unwarranted intrusions into the lives of ordinary Americans. “My sole motive,” he told The Guardian, “is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.” While that principle is the right one, he should brace himself for the charges and possible punishment that may come in its wake. Most likely, he will be charged with disclosure of classified information under the Espionage Act, which carries a possible 10-year jail term for each count. 

Of course, prosecuting Snowden requires that he be taken into custody and may also involve some challenges as noted in The American Conservative under a headline of "Obama Shouldn’t Prosecute Snowden, He Should Hire Him":

I think the Obama administration will have a very difficult time prosecuting Edward Snowden. They can go after Bradley Manning because they have him, in uniform and in prison, and thus shut off from normal communication. Americans are unable to perceive how normal, probably likeable, and how similar to most of us he probably is. But Snowden comes across like everyone’s ideal of a really smart, techie, individualist kid. No high school degree, yet speaks as eloquently as an assistant Harvard professor. Smart enough to rise rapidly in the world without credentials, reminding us vividly computers really are a new frontier, the one field outside of sports and music where classic American Horatio Alger tropes have any continued relevance. If Obama wanted to do something smart, he should thank Snowden and offer him a job as a White House technology advisor.

The situation has indeed made some strange bedfellows when both Boehner and Feinstein are condemning him  and the ACLU and others on the far right are praising him.  It will be an interesting spectacle to watch play out.