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Eric Holder Says Snowden Performed 'Public Service' (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via CNN: Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says Edward Snowden performed a "public service" by triggering a debate over surveillance techniques, but still must pay a penalty for illegally leaking a trove of classified intelligence documents. "We can certainly argue about the way in which Snowden did what he did, but I think that he actually performed a public service by raising the debate that we engaged in and by the changes that we made," Holder told David Axelrod on "The Axe Files," a podcast produced by CNN and the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. "Now I would say that doing what he did -- and the way he did it -- was inappropriate and illegal," Holder added. "I think that he's got to make a decision. He's broken the law in my view. He needs to get lawyers, come on back, and decide, see what he wants to do: Go to trial, try to cut a deal. I think there has to be a consequence for what he has done." "But," Holder emphasized, "I think in deciding what an appropriate sentence should be, I think a judge could take into account the usefulness of having had that national debate." You can listen to the podcast with Eric Holder here.
Did Gandhi say that when he was sleeping with his grand-niece naked?
It's even worse than that. When Holder says: "I think a judge could take into account the usefulness of having had that national debate." then he's blatantly lying as if he wanted that, his people would not charge Snowden under the Espionage Act which expressly prohibits the judge from doing exactly that. If Holder wanted the debate, he could have easily arranged it by charging Snowden with some more reasonable charge involving mishandling classified documents or something, Snowden would have surrendered long ago, and the media circus... I mean... trial of the century would be in full swing right now.
Had he gone through channels, that public service would never have occurred.
Exactly, and that's not armchair theorizing. We have several clear examples of people who tried to go through channels and got slapped down hard for it. And by "slapped down" I mean "Home raided by armed agents, arrested, indicted, prosecuted on unsustainable charges and rendered unemployable". Hell, we know that a man whose job it was to work with whistleblowers under the law was forced out for trying to do his job in the face of illegal actions by his superiors.
What Snowden did was necessary and it was the only way it could be done.
And, sadly enough, it appears that it was insufficient.
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"I think a judge could take into account the usefulness of having had that national debate."
Under current laws, such an argument would not be allowed in front of a jury. Snowden have stated that he would return and face a jury of his peers if they were allowed to consider the utility of the public debate.
You'd be surprised. You think the director of the CIA has any actual power over that organisation ? He's a political appointee, and his job is basically to report to and from the president. He's never there for more than 8 years and rarely for more than 4. That's barely enough time to learn the structures of such an organisation, let alone actually manage the place. The real power lies in the hands of the guy who does the day-to-day stuff and tends to be there for the long haul, usually an internal promotion - the deputy director.
Same thing goes for all federal agencies. It's the deputy directors who actually run the things - the directors are there mostly to smile at the cameras. It's a surprisingly Adamsian system - where the purpose of the directors are not to wield power but to draw attention from it.
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