I was wrong on Edward Snowden (…and so were a lot of others)
In June 2013, I remember checking my Army e-mail to a flood of memorandums and notices that if the press wanted to contact me regarding Edward Snowden and his disclosures to the press, I was not authorized to speak on behalf of the United States Army, my unit, or in any other official capacity.
As a lieutenant in my twenties, this was not horribly surprising.
I was the Public Affairs Officer for the 500th Military Intelligence Brigade at that time. One of our subordinate battalions was tasked to help with the NSA’s counterterrorism mission, and I had been to the Kunia tunnel where Snowden worked, which was across the street from my daughter’s preschool and down the road from my own office at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.
While I have no recollection of ever meeting Snowden, it’s certainly possible that we passed by each other or had some other brief interaction that seemed meaningless at the time.
Other officers, far more senior than I, rushed around to closed door meetings and new security protocols were implemented. We went to trainings on the importance of protecting classified information and “insider threats.”
Early in my career, I had no reason to doubt anything that I was being told. Edward Snowden intentionally leaked classified documents to the press which I had no doubt in my mind compromised our mission to prevent the next terrorist attack from happening on American soil. He was lucky he was in exile in Russia. What he really deserved was a lifetime behind bars for endangering the lives of Americans.
Then, five years later, I leaked documents from Facebook to the press, exposing unethical censorship practices and attempts to interfere with open discourse around elections.
At first I balked at any attempt to make comparisons between myself and Snowden. He put people’s lives at risk. He could have attempted to raise concerns about PRISM to his supervisors. There were protocols in place that he could have followed.
However, looking back on it now, nothing horrific has happened as a result of Edward Snowden’s disclosures and it’s been the better part of a decade. In September, with the courts ruling that the NSA’s mass surveillance was illegal and unconstitutional, I’ve been forced to face reality.
As military officers we take an oath to protect and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies both foreign and domestic. Edward Snowden, by exposing what our institutions were doing, regardless of whether they had good intent or not, upheld the constitution. He wasn’t in the Army at that time, but from all the research I’ve done on the subject, I don’t have any reason to believe that Edward Snowden hated his country or wished to do it harm.
Long before the “Deep State” became more than a far-fetched conspiracy theory, Snowden did something that helped prevent the United States from becoming a surveillance state at the hand of the very institutions put in place to protect not only our physical safety, but our way of life.
This is not an enthusiastic endorsement of Snowden or his actions, not by any means. Part of the rationale I’ve long held as to why my actions were justified, but Snowden’s were not, is that unlike in the government, there is no way at a company like Facebook to escalate concerns over practices from within.
My disclosures to Project Veritas were done out of desperation. I didn’t feel I had any other option. Snowden could have utilized a chain of command to bring up his concerns but instead he went straight to the press which I’m still not sure I agree with. While the intent was no doubt to enact a swift response from the highest levels of government, I’m not sure I want to set a precedence of completely disregarding protocols when they do, in fact, exist.
Donald Trump referred to Snowden as a “traitor” many times before he took office. During the time those tweets were made, I, and many others, completely agreed. But now that over seven years have passed, now that Americans have a greater sense of skepticism about their own government does that rationale still hold water?
One of the most illuminating things about a Donald Trump presidency was the exposure of the Deep State.
I view the Deep State as less of a cabal of elites that come up with nefarious schemes while twirling their mustaches, and more as the self-service of institutions desperate to expand their power, influence, and budgets, while maintaining the status quo.
Donald Trump, an outsider, disrupted that. Edward Snowden, whatever his true motives were, disrupted that as well. The Trump campaign was surveilled by the government before he ever took office over a sham investigation, and isn’t that the exact type of scenario that disclosures such as Snowden’s sought to prevent?
The September 2020 court ruling effectively said that the FBI, NSA, and other agencies engaged in counterterrorism activities were not justified in enacting a program that gathered the phone data of millions of Americans without just cause. In looking at the world we live in, I agree with that, and I think that Donald Trump would too.
Did Edward Snowden violate the NDA’s he signed and mishandle classified information? Absolutely. But given the severity of what these deep state agencies were doing at the time and perhaps would still be doing were it not for the actions of Snowden, I think he is deserving of a pardon.
Cassandra Spencer is a former U.S. Army Public Affairs Officer. She went on to become a whistleblower at Facebook and worked as an undercover journalist for Project Veritas. Her book “Impact” is being released in Spring 2021.
