James Clapper and Ed Snowden

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James Clapper

Director of National Intelligence

I have been thinking about Snowden for days wondering how anyone could be that brave, or that stupid, or that evil or that moral. Our own intelligence "slipped up" when it came to Ed Snowden. How did a lower level employee garner so much intelligence information and gain access to millions of secret files?  Ed Snowden who "escaped" to Hong Kong, says of himself, "People who think I made a mistake in picking Hong Kong as a location misunderstand my intentions. I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality."

The Director of National Intelligence says, "Among the most important and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats, ... The unauthorized disclosure of information about this important and entirely legal program is reprehensible and risks important protections for the security of Americans."

Former CIA and Pentagon Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash says, "Snowden’s brain – his knowledge of how our intelligence systems work – would be more dangerous in the hands of a foreign government than any documents he has leaked." And of course Snowden is in Hong Kong pussy footing with the Chinese, a country that the U.S. doesn't even realize is its enemy. Whoever is footing his bill is also the enemy.

Joel Brenner, a former NSA inspector general, said any investigation needs to focus on how Snowden “had access to such a startling range of information. The spy you want in an organization may not be the executive assistant to the secretary of state; it may be the guy in the bowels of the IT department because he has system-administrator privileges and because that person is also in a position to insert malware into your system to facilitate remote access.”

We have all seen the James Bond movies through the years and we know that a lot of "dishonest" methods are used to gather intelligence. This is an erratic world. Half the countries on the globe want to take our money first and then annihilate us. Employees such as Snowden who believe that whistleblowing and revealing intelligence secrets are A-Okay based on their own sense of morality,  put the intelligence community in tailspins as well as our country. The honorable thing for Mr. Snowden to have done was to resign. Isn't what he did "criminal" and a betrayal of his country?

It's still all a mystery and I still have to wonder if he really thought that the greater good of this country was not being served and that our country had stepped on the Constitution when he decided to become a whistleblower. In some strange and fascinating way, I have to admire him.