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In an editorial last Thursday, the Los Angeles Times gave Edward Snowden credit for disclosures that forced spying on American phone records into the open. But the paper said that Snowden should return home to the U.S. from Russia to stand trial for espionage, and without actually saying that President Obama should not grant Snowden a pardon, the editors write that there are "serious arguments against a pardon."
One is that, in a society of laws, someone who engages in civil disobedience in a higher cause should be prepared to accept the consequences. A stronger objection, in our view, is that Snowden didn't limit his disclosures to information about violations of Americans' privacy. He divulged other sensitive information about traditional foreign intelligence activities, including a document showing that the NSA had intercepted the communications of then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev during a Group of 20 summit in London in 2009. A government contractor who discloses details of U.S. spying on another country is not most Americans' idea of a whistleblower.
A pardon for Snowden now would be premature. But if he were to return to this country to face the charges against him, the fact that he revealed the existence of a program that has now been repudiated by all three branches of government would constitute a strong argument for leniency. Snowden should come home and make that case.
This drew a vocal, seething response from Snowden's top journalistic collaborator, Glenn Greenwald. Writing at The Intercept, he says in the two years since the Guardian published his first pieces based on Snowden's leaks, many U.S. journalists have become the kind of tools "of which most governments could only dream: let’s try to get journalists themselves to take the lead in demonizing whistleblowers and arguing that sources should be imprisoned!." By this he means the LA Times editorial board.
Sample:
I hadn’t intended to use the two-year anniversary to write about these media issues – until I read the editorial this week from the Los Angeles Times demanding that Snowden return to the U.S. and be prosecuted for his transparency crimes. Isn’t it extraordinary that people who want to be regarded as journalists would write an editorial calling for the criminal prosecution of a key source? Principles aside: just on grounds of self-interest, wouldn’t you think they’d want to avoid telling future sources that the Los Angeles Times believes leaking is criminal and those who do it belong in prison…
[Regarding the "accept the consequences argument:] I see this argument often and it’s hard to overstate how foul it is. To begin with, if someone really believes that, they should be demanding the imprisonment of every person who ever leaks information deemed “classified,” since it’s an argument that demands the prosecution of anyone who breaks the law, or at least “consequences” for them. That would mean dragging virtually all of Washington, which leaks constantly and daily, into a criminal court – to say nothing of their other crimes such as torture. But of course such high-minded media lectures about the “rule of law” are applied only to those who are averse to Washington’s halls of power, not to those who run them.More important, Snowden was “prepared to accept the consequences.” When he decided to blow the whistle, he knew that there was a very high risk that he’d end up in a U.S. prison for decades – we thought that’d be the most likely outcome – and yet he did it anyway. He knowingly took that risk. And even now, he has given up his family, his home, his career, and his ability to travel freely – hardly someone free of “consequences.”
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Fourth, and most revealingly, the LA Times itself constantly publishes illegal leaks, though the ones it publishes usually come from top government officials. Indeed, for years it employed a national security report, Ken Dilanian, whose specializes in stenographically disseminating the pro-government claims which government officials want him to convey (and, totally unsurprisingly, Dilanian himself became one of the leading journalistic opponents of the Snowden disclosures, and, now with AP, this week was bemoaning that Snowden made Americans aware of so much about what their government has been doing to the internet).
Do you think the LA Times editors would ever demand the imprisonment of high-level DC leakers by sanctimoniously arguing that “in a society of laws, someone who engages in civil disobedience in a higher cause should be prepared to accept the consequences”? Have the LA Times editors called for the criminal prosecution of Leon Panetta, and John Brennan, and the endless number of senior officials who leak not (as Snowden did) to inform the public but in order to propagandize them?
Greenwald points out that decisions to publish Snowden's disclosures were always made by journalists. The Guardian and the Washington Post were the first to publish and shared a Pulitzer Prize for public service. New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet, the former LA Times editor, said he has become "much, much, much more skeptical of the government's entreaties not to publish" since the Snowden disclosures did not have the catastrophic impacts that officials warned would occur. Snowden himself had an op-ed in the NYT last week.
Marc Cooper, the longtime former writer for the LA Weekly and The Nation who just retired from the USC Annenberg School of Journalism, jumped in on Facebook. "It sometimes make me cringe to be known as a 'journalist,'" Cooper posted. "That journalists should call for this prosecution is stomach turning. If only the useless LA Times edit board could show 1/10th the courage of Snowden on ANY issue it would be a friggin miracle!"
