In the months since Edward Snowden revealed himself to be the whistleblower responsible for blowing the lid off the government’s widespread surveillance of Americans, there’s been considerable debate over whether the former National Security Agency contractor is a hero, a traitor or both, and he’s since been charged with espionage and theft of government property. In a new, revealing must-read interview with the Washington Post, however, Snowden offers some illuminating insight into his motivations, noting that his “mission’s already accomplished,” and highlighting his “selfish fear” that predated his data drop.
Snowden, who has been hiding out in Moscow since June, told journalist Barton Gellman that revealing the NSA spying tactics—and seeing the public’s subsequent condemnation of them—had already “validated” his actions. “For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished. I already won,” the 30-year-old told Gellman. “Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.”
Snowden may be a traitor in the eyes of the U.S. government, but to him, it’s that very government that deserves to stand certain trial. “The oath of allegiance is not an oath of secrecy,” he said. “That is an oath to the Constitution. That is the oath that I kept that [NSA Director] Keith Alexander and [Director of National Intelligence] James Clapper did not.”
Though national security officials have argued that extensive data mining is necessary in a post-9/11 world, Snowden believes that the government should focus their espionage efforts on specific individuals who post a threat. “I don’t care whether you’re the pope or Osama bin Laden,” he said. “As long as there’s an individualized, articulable, probable cause for targeting these people as legitimate foreign intelligence, that’s fine.” Instead, according to the documents he leaked, the NSA’s been siphoning a huge volume of data from the public arbitrarily: “I don’t think it’s imposing a ridiculous burden by asking for probable cause. Because, you have to understand, when you have access to the tools the NSA does, probable cause falls out of trees.”
The profile offers many more fascinating insights into Snowden’s moves, which have thus far forced him into hiding. For him, according to the interview, the information he was sitting on was more of a threat to national security than the whistleblowing itself. “I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA,” he said. “I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don’t realize it.”
Snowden insists it was only a matter of time before someone exposed the extent of the NSA’s spying. “It wasn’t that they put it on me as an individual — that I’m uniquely qualified, an angel descending from the heavens—as that they put it on someone, somewhere,” he said. “You have the capability, and you realize every other (person) sitting around the table has the same capability but they don’t do it. So somebody has to be the first.” Though initially, he was wracked by a “selfish fear” that “people won’t care, that they won’t want change.”
While some polls suggest that at least half of Americans are okay with the NSA monitoring their phone calls and emails, a federal judge recently ruled the NSA’s phone surveillance program is “almost certainly” unconstitutional and “almost-Orwellian.” President Obama has proven reluctant to condemn the NSA spying, and his Justice Department has been eager to vilify Snowden, but an independent report commissioned by Obama recommends reforming the NSA and the way in which it’s monitored. Some of the NSA’s powers “unduly sacrifice fundamental interests in individual liberty, personal privacy, and democratic governance,” the report warns.
Snowden’s future, meanwhile, is unclear; trapped in Moscow, he told the Post he tried to seek asylum in Latin America and had his passport voided by the United States. But he believes he is still a U.S. citizen. “There is no evidence at all for the claim that I have loyalties to Russia or China or any country other than the United States,” he said. “If I defected at all, I defected from the government to the public.”
