TPM Reader JO says he buys Ellsberg’s argument about the different country we’re living in today …
Ellsberg says “The country I stayed in was a different America, a long time ago” and you ask what that means.
Ellsberg points out that Snowden would get the full Manning treatment. I buy that. If Snowden had been sitting in any Holiday Inn in the USA instead of in Hong Kong, do you have any doubt that he would now be under the control of federal authorities, and unable to move or communicate?
Ellsberg was subject to harm from illegal activities. Snowden is subject to harm from judgements and activities that the government is declaring to be legal. This sort of gets at the heart of the issues raised by Snowden’s leaks. Activity that is (in the eyes of ordinary Amercians like me) blatantly unconstitutional, is made legal by secret legal reasoning. Cheney would approve. Why should Snowden subject himself to such a broken legal system? He knows better than pretty much anyone how broken it is.
If I understand your position, you have a problem with Snowden because he’s a punk who took it on himself to decide what the government should and should not hold secret; and that we’ve got to have some faith in the government to act in our interest. I’ve got enormous respect for you and for TPM, but I really think that by focusing so much on Snowden himself, you’re missing the point of this story.
I’m older than you, but less in touch with politics and history. But yes, I do remember the 70s as the glory days, in some ways. Nixon was forced out of office for legitimate reasons. The system worked, and in a bipartisan way. Today, Cheney and Obama shred the constitution with secret laws, and no one in either party does anything about it. The Republicans obstruct Obama on every stupid issue just to be contrary. But on the one issue where they would actually have a legitimate beef with him — nothing.
Here’s a lightly edited version of what I wrote in reply …
I’m not sure that’s quite my position on Snowden. Or at least it’s a caricature of it. There’s a decent argument that the 70s were the glory days *because of how things ended up*. But the other part of that equation was just how out of control and enmeshed in extra-legal activities the Nixon administration was. We’ve had other leakers recently Kirakau, Drake, etc. They’ve mainly been out on bail. It just does not seem credible to me that someone in Snowden’s position would have been released on bail really at any time in the last 60 years.
