Enter The Media Martyr

A reader writes:

With this dramatic reveal of the identity of Greenwald’s source, Edward Snowden, it was also revealed that Snowden has been working with the firm Booz Allen since March. So, this off-hand tweet from Greenwald struck me as particularly odd: “@TheStalwart The reality is that Laura Poitras and I have been working with him since February, long before anyone spoke to Bart Gellman”

If Greenwald has been working with his source since February, a month before Edward Snowden began working for Booz Allen, why is that not included in the Guardian story? That seems like a bit of a sticking point.

Another:

Here are the problems I have with Ed Snowden and his choice to leak NSA information to news organizations.

The DoD and classified programs have a variation of the Ethics Hotlines that most corporations have to support employees who have concerns about bad behavior. Snowden could have worked his concerns with this hotline. Barring that, he could have worked his concerns with the members of Congress briefed on the program. He could have even gone to a member of Congress who wasn’t briefed and gotten him or her involved. There were numerous responsible ways to deal with the conflicts he was wrestling with. Instead, he chose to go to the Guardian and the WaPo and data-dump our capabilities to the world. I heard his interview on television and he seems to be painting himself both as a (quite paranoid) martyr and as a latter-day Assange. For somebody who was entrusted with the nation’s most delicate secrets, such behavior is appalling.

Edward Snowden is not a hero. He was a weak man who took an oath to protect the nation’s secrets, found something he felt was contrary to our ideals, and decided to resolve the issue in an irresponsible manner by making the biggest, loudest bang he could. He failed the country he claims to want to save.