Granting Edward Snowden clemency, as many have urged, would send a terrible message to other potential whistle-blowers. Yes, he may have sparked an important national privacy debate, but he did so through reprehensible actions that harmed national security.
If thats a harsh verdict, I have earned the right to it. In terms of sheer media hype, I was the Snowden of my day, a disaffected ex-spy who, in the late 1970s and early 80s, rocked the security community by publishing a memoir about intelligence failures Id witnessed as a CIA officer during the last years of the Vietnam War. I did so only after the agency backhanded my repeated requests for an in-house review of our mistakes and refused to help me or anyone else rescue Vietnamese allies abandoned during the evacuation of Saigon.
Government prosecutors never accused me of betraying classified secrets. But in 1980, the Supreme Court decided that I had irreparably harmed national security by publishing my book without official approval, in violation of CIA nondisclosure agreements. This, the court said, harmed the governments ability to prevent serious leaks.
The ruling left me destitute, stigmatized and gagged for life, required to clear with the CIA all my spy-related writings, including this one, with the threat of jail time if I screw up. The First Amendment also took a hit with the rulings in my case. Now, all intelligence alumni, Snowden included, can be severely punished for merely speaking out about their work, regardless of whether what they say contains any classified information.
Yet, for all that I suffered personally, I never ran or tried to hide. And when the time came to face the music, I never bargained for mercy. I simply took my lumps, accepting them as the price we pay in a democracy for the right to speak out.
Snowden has violated these precepts. He argues lamely that he decided not to raise his privacy concerns through official channels because of harsh treatment hed received from a superior in 2009 for hacking into his own encrypted personnel files. He says he was turned off by the legal system because whistle-blowing cases have not gone well for defendants.
I could have told him that. Honest whistle-blowing is a blood sport, the only reward for which is knowing you tried to do the right thing.
Snowden also insists defensively that he doesnt want to hurt vital intelligence programs. Yet even his favored media outlets have withheld, out of concern for national security, some of the stolen documents he considered appropriate for release.
He claims his only concern is for privacy. But many of his leaks, like those exposing National Security Agency operations against Chinese targets, and those involving critics and allies in Europe and Latin America, have nothing to do with 4th Amendment protections for American citizens and everything to do with ingratiating himself with potential benefactors, from Beijing to Moscow.
Had he read though his stolen documents, moreover, he would have realized that Russia and China are as aggressive as anyone on the planet in attacking our digital firewalls. If he were to cripple the NSA, which seems to be his real purpose, he would simply be sabotaging our defenses against governments that abhor our constitutional values, including privacy rights.
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Frank Snepp: Clemency for Snowden's weasel ways sends wrong message