Where's the Treason, John?

John Bolton to Newsmax: Snowden Traitor Who 'Committed Act of War Against United States':

Edward Snowden is a "traitor" who has "committed an act of war against the United States," former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton said in an exclusive interview with Newsmax. The self-confessed leaker of top-secret documents detailing the National Security Agency's phone- and Internet-surveillance programs is a "deceitful and dishonest man" who violated oaths he undertook to keep secret classified information about a program approved by all three branches of the government to protect Americans, Bolton added. 

 "Treason is the only crime defined in the Constitution and it talks about waging war against the United States -- which this is -- and giving aid and comfort to our enemies, and God knows they've gotten a lot of aid and comfort from this release," Bolton said in the interview with Newsmax TV. "Let me ask, who died and made him king? Who gave him the authority to endanger 300 million Americans? That's not the way it works, and if he thinks he can get away with that, he's got another think coming."

As much as I admire the work of John Bolton as Ambassador to the United Nations, he has spoken too emotionally, and too precipitously ... before he was in possession of the facts.

My information is that this information on NSA access to 'communications records' was published in WIRE Magazine in the March issue (2012 or 2013?).

The only thing that SNOWDEN did was to make the information about NSA DataMining more widely publicized ... and nobody can deny that he accomplished that goal.

(Edward Snowden self-outed last weekend.  There is some speculation that, since he made his announcement from Hong Kong, he "may be under Chinese control".)

Since the essentials of the information had already been published,  Snowden offered neither comfort nor aid to the enemy.   What he DID, however, is to violate a Confidentiality Agreement which he signed.  For this he will probably be prosecuted, and rightly so.

He violated a contract, he broke a federal law, and he made a public spectacle of himself.  (Depending on your own personal political views, he may have also made a public hero of him self:  See "The Pentagon Papers" the outing of which made Daniel Ellsberg into a similar icon of either "courage of convictions"  or "cowardly treason" opinions.)

We're all aware of the famous Franklin opion:

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin

Whether Snowden (or for that matter, Ellsberg ... but as a Vietnam Veteran I will NOT go there!) are dupes or fools, heroes or villains, I'm not prepared to defend my own opinion.

 I recall spending a great deal of time during my college days (1964 -1968) discussing the thesis: "MY COUNTRY, RIGHT OR WRONG!" 

I argued against the thesis.  I thought that my country should always be right, and if my country was wrong, we should try to be better.  But I still chose to go to Viet Nam in 1969, rather than go to Canada in 1968.  Even though I may not agree with "my government", it's still "my country".

I still would prefer that my country be right, all the time; I'm aware that my country is always populated and led by fallible sinners, and will from time to time do wrong.   We "live in interesting times", our challenges are exceptional,  and we are lead by a man who promised "the Most Transparent" administration. 

It would appear that Mr. Obama is being held to his promise.
At least, I hope so.

[Columnist Mark Thiessen insists in  a video interview that the data mining only connects "known terrorists from outside the United States" with people he connects with ... which allows NSA to track contacts to find other terrorists.  It's confusing to me, but I accept that they are not actually, for example, examining the CONTENT of your emails.  His protestations are that this "... should not outrage anybody ...", but it's not clear why, if this data mining process is so innocuous, the government would have major objections to announcing that it is occurring.]

FOOTNOTE:
For an interesting read, also SEE HERE.