Plenty of opinion to go around on whether ex-intelligence contractor Edward Snowden is a traitor or candidate for canonization.
But a liberal radio host who clearly opts for the latter is unwilling to concede that it wasn't just Americans who learned previously classified information about government surveillance and data mining from Snowden's leaks to the media in 2013.
Despite libtalker Bill Press's reluctance to accept this, Snowden's disclosures could not possibly have gone unnoticed by jihadists around the world, along with those curious sorts in the Russian and Chinese governments.
None of this seems to have occurred to Press, a former Democrat party chief in California who co-hosted the early Crossfire cable show
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PRESS: Yes indeed, time to bring Edward Snowden home and recognize him as a whistleblower and not treat him as a criminal, still gotta make that change. You know, I just was thinking during the break, this is one thing I want to raise with Josh Earnest today at the White House briefing because the last word we heard from President Obama about Edward Snowden was back in February, he was out in the Silicon Valley meeting with the high-tech companies out there and, once again, he said Snowden's done all this harm, all this damage.
OBAMA: The Snowden disclosures were really harmful in terms of the trust between the government and many of these (telecom) companies, in part because it had an impact on their bottom line.
PRESS: You know, I'm sorry, Mr. President, let me just say about you what you said about Elizabeth Warren on TPP (proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact). Mr. President, you are wrong. You're just dead-ass wrong!
There you have it -- Bill Press, obvious racist. Let's remember that liberals have firmly established that harsh criticism of the president is invariably motivated by deep-seated racism. Having clearly established his loathing for people of color, Press also said this --
PRESS: What he is saying is that Edward Snowden, by revealing this, hurt the bottom line of some of these big high-tech. You know why? Because it was revealed that they were giving all this information away to the government without a court order and without the American public knowing it. We did not know that the phone companies were giving away our data to the government, the data on every single phone. We didn't know that until Edward Snowden. And if people lost confidence in these companies, the companies were doing wrong, by us, by the consumers, right? I mean, that's the only thing.
But in terms of any damage, lasting damage that Edward Snowden did to this country or to our national security, I mean, he wasn't giving secrets away to the enemy, he gave secrets away to the American people.
Psst, Bill -- Snowden gave away those secrets to everybody, friend and foe alike, or at least anyone who can connect to the Internet. He disclosed them to Americans and our enemies -- they heard him blowing that whistle too. And based on what we've seen over the last couple of years, the death cult known as ISIS isn't lacking in computer skills. I'm guessing that many of its most fervent warriors are also possessed of basic literacy.
Press insists that Snowden's disclosures caused no "lasting damage," but the two years that have passed since he leaked them hardly constitutes long term. The planning for 9/11 wasn't limited to the first eight months of George W. Bush's administration, but extended back several years into the Clinton presidency than preceded it.
Moreover, how can anyone in Press's position possibly know if Snowden's revelations provided invaluable and harmful intelligence to our enemies? (Agreed, only those with computers). If this has been the case, would our foes helpfully tell us that in the interest of full disclosure?
