The Tyler Group News: the lonely flight of Edward Snowden

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-01-030713.html

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As a US State Department whistleblower,
I think a lot about Edward Snowden. I can't help
myself. My friendships with other whistleblowers
like Tom Drake, Jesslyn Radack, Daniel Ellsberg,
and John Kiriakou lead me to believe that, however
different we may be as individuals, our acts have
given us much in common. I suspect that includes
Snowden, though I've never had the slightest contact
with him.
Still, as he took his long flight from Hong
Kong into the unknown, I couldn't help feeling that
he was thinking some of my thoughts, or I his. Here
are five things that I imagine were on his mind (they
would have been on mine) as that plane took off.

I am afraid
Whistleblowers act on conscience because they encounter something so
horrifying, unconstitutional, wasteful, fraudulent, or mismanaged that they are
overcome by the need to speak out. There is always a calculus of pain and gain (for
others, if not oneself), but first thoughts are about what you've uncovered, the
information you feel compelled to bring into the light, rather than your own
circumstances.
In my case, I was ignorant of what would happen once I blew the whistle.
I didn't expect the Department of State to attack me. National Security Agency
(NSA) whistleblower Tom Drake was similarly unprepared. He initially believed
that, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation first came to interview him, they
were on his side, eager to learn more about the criminal acts he had uncovered at
the NSA. Snowden was different in this. He had the example of Bradley Manning
and others to learn from. He clearly never doubted that the full weight of the US
government would fall on him.

He knew what to fear. He knew the Obama administration was
determined to make any whistleblower pay, likely via yet another prosecution
under the Espionage Act (with the potential for the death penalty). He also knew
what his government had done since 9/11 without compunction: it had tortured and
abused people to crush them; it had forced those it considered enemies into years
of indefinite imprisonment, creating isolation cells for suspected terrorists and even
a pre-trial whistleblower. It had murdered Americans without due process, and
then, of course, there were the extraordinary renditions in which US agents
kidnapped perceived enemies and delivered them into the archipelago of post-9/11
horrors.
Sooner or later, if you're a whistleblower, you get scared. It's only human.
On that flight, I imagine that Snowden, for all his youthful confidence and
bravado, was afraid. Would the Russians turn him over to Washington as part of
some secret deal, maybe the sort of spy-for-spy trade that would harken back to the
Cold War era?

Even if he made it out of Moscow, he couldn't have doubted that the full
resources of the NSA and other parts of the US government would be turned on
him. How many CIA case officers and Joint Special Operations Command types
did the US have undercover in Ecuador? After all, the dirty tricks had already
started. The partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who broke
Snowden's story, had his laptop stolen from their residence in Brazil. This
happened only after Greenwald told him via Skype that he would send him an
encrypted copy of Snowden's documents.
In such moments, you try to push back the sense of paranoia that creeps
into your mind when you realize that you are being monitored, followed, watched.
It's uncomfortable, scary. You have to wonder what your fate will be once the
media grows bored with your story, or when whatever government has given you
asylum changes its stance vis-a-vis the US. When the knock comes at the door,
who will protect you? So who can doubt that fear made the journey with him?

Could I go back to the US?
Amnesty International was on target when it stated that Snowden "could
be at risk of ill-treatment if extradited to the US". As if to prove them right,
months, if not years, before any trial, Speaker of the House John Boehner called
Snowden a "traitor"; Congressman Peter King called him a "defector"; and others
were already demanding his execution. If that wasn't enough, the abuse Bradley
Manning suffered had already convinced Snowden that a fair trial and humane
treatment were impossible dreams for a whistleblower of his sort. (He specifically
cited Manning in his appeal for asylum to Ecuador.)
So on that flight he knew - as he had long known - that the natural desire
to go back to the US and make a stand was beyond foolhardy. Yet the urge to
return to the country he loves must have been traveling with him, too. Perhaps on
that flight he found himself grimly amused that, after years of running roughshod
over international standards - Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, "enhanced interrogation
techniques", "black sites" - the US had the nerve to chide Hong Kong, China, and
Russia for not following the rule of law.

He certainly knew that his own revelations about extensive NSA cyber-
spying on Hong Kong and China had deeply embarrassed the Obama
administration. It had, after all, been blistering the Chinese for hacking into US
military and corporate computers. He himself had ensured that the Chinese
wouldn't turn him over, in the same way that history - decades of US bullying in
Latin America - ensured that he had a shot at a future in someplace like in Ecuador.
If he knew his extradition history, Snowden might also have thought
about another time when Washington squirmed as a man it wanted left a friendly
country for asylum. In 2004, the US had chess great Bobby Fischer detained in
Japan on charges that he had attended a 1992 match in Yugoslavia in violation of a
US trade ban. Others suggested that the real reason Washington was after him may
have been Fischer's post 9/11 statement: "It's time to finish off the US once and for
all. This just shows what comes around, goes around."
Fischer's American passport was revoked just like Snowden's. In the
fashion of Hong Kong more recently, the Japanese released Fischer on an
immigration technicality, and he flew to Iceland, where he was granted citizenship.

I was a diplomat in Japan at the time, and had a ringside seat for the
negotiations. They must have paralleled what went on in Hong Kong: the appeals
to treaty and international law; US diplomats sounding like so many disappointed
parents scolding a child; the pale hopes expressed for future good relations; the
search for a sympathetic ear among local law enforcement agencies, immigration,
and the foreign ministry - anybody, in fact - and finally, the desperate attempt to
call in personal favors to buy more time for whatever Plan B might be. As with
Snowden, in the end the US stood by helplessly as its prey flew off.
How will i live now?
At some point, every whistleblower realizes his life will never be the
same. For me, that meant losing my job of 24 years at the State Department. For
Tom Drake, it meant financial ruin as the government tried to bankrupt him
through endless litigation. For CIA agent John Kiriakou, it might have been the
moment when, convicted of disclosing classified information to journalists, he said
goodbye to his family and walked into Loretto Federal Correctional Institution.

Snowden could not have avoided anxiety about the future. Wherever he
ended up, how would he live? What work would he do? He's just turned 30 and
faces, at best, a lifetime in some foreign country he's never seen where he might
not know the language or much of anything else.
So fear again, in a slightly different form. It never leaves you, not when
you take on the world's most powerful government. Would he ever see his family
and friends again? Would they disown him, fearful of retaliation or affected by the
smear campaign against him? Would his parents/best friend/girlfriend come to
believe he was a traitor, a defector, a dangerous man?
All whistleblowers find their personal relationships strained. Marriages
are tested or broken, friends lost, children teased or bullied at school. I know from
my own whistleblower's journey that it's an ugly penalty - encouraged by a
government scorned - for acting on conscience.

If he had a deeper sense of history, Snowden might have found humor in
the way the Obama administration chose to revoke his passport just before he left
Hong Kong. After all, in the Cold War years, it was the "evil empire", the Soviet
Union, which was notorious for refusing to grant dissidents passports, while the
US regularly waived such requirements when they escaped to the West.
To deepen the irony of the moment, perhaps he was able to Google up the
2009-2011 figures on US grants of asylum: 1,222 Russians, 9,493 Chinese, and 22
Ecuadorians, not including family members. Maybe he learned that, despite the
tantrums US officials threw regarding the international obligation of Russia to
extradite him, the US has recently refused Russian requests to extradite two of its
citizens.
Snowden might have mused over then-candidate Obama's explicit pledge
to protect whistleblowers.

"Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in
government," Obama then said, "is an existing government employee committed to
public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism...
should be encouraged rather than stifled as they have been during the Bush
administration." It might have been Snowden's only laugh of the flight.
I don't hate the US ... but believe it has strayed
On that flight, Snowden took his love of America with him. It's what all
of us whistleblowers share: a love of country, if not necessarily its government, its
military, or its intelligence services. We care what happens to us the people. That
may have been his anchor on his unsettling journey. It would have been mine.
Remember, if we were working in the government in the first place, like
every federal employee, soldier, and many government contractors, we had taken
an oath that states: "I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States
against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance
to the same.

" We didn't pledge fealty to the government or a president or party, only - as the
Constitution makes clear - to the ultimate source of legitimacy in our nation, "the
people".
In an interview, Snowden indicated that he held off on making his
disclosures for some time, in hopes that Barack Obama might look into the abyss
and decide to become the bravest president in our history by reversing the
country's course. Only when Obama's courage or intelligence failed was it time to
become a whistleblower.
Some pundits claim that Snowden deserves nothing because he didn't go
through "proper channels". They couldn't be more wrong, and Snowden knows it.
As with many of us whistleblowers facing a government acting in opposition to the
Constitution, Snowden went through the channels that matter most: he used a free
press to speak directly to his real boss, the American people.
In that sense, whatever the fear and anxiety about his life and his future,
he must have felt easy with his actions. He had not betrayed his country, he had
sought to inform it.

As with Bradley Manning, Obama administration officials are now
claiming that Snowden has blood on his hands. Typically, Secretary of State John
Kerry claimed: "People may die as a consequence to what this man did. It is
possible that the United States would be attacked because terrorists may now know
how to protect themselves in some way or another that they didn't know before."
Snowden had heard the same slurs circling around Bradley Manning: that
he had put people in danger. After the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to speak
of the war on terror, there is irony too obvious to dwell upon in such charges.
Flying into the unknown, Snowden had to feel secure in having risked
everything to show Americans how their government and the NSA bend or break
laws to collect information on us in direct conflict with the Fourth Amendment's
protections. Amnesty International pointed out that blood-on-hands wasn't at issue.
"It appears he is being charged primarily for revealing US and other governments'
unlawful actions that violate human rights." Those whispers of support are
something to take into the dark with you.

I believe in things bigger than myself
Some of the charges against Snowden would make anyone pause: that,
for instance, he did what he did for the thrill of publicity, out of narcissism, or for
his own selfish reasons. To any of the members of the post-9/11 club of
whistleblowers, the idea that we acted primarily for our own benefit has a theater
of the absurd quality to it. Having been there, the negative sentiments expressed do
not read or ring true.
Snowden himself laughed off the notion that he had acted for his own
benefit. If he had wanted money, any number of foreign governments would have
paid handsomely for the information he handed out to journalists for free, and he
would never have had to embark on that plane flight from Hong Kong. (No one
ever called Aldrich Ames a whistleblower.) If he wanted fame, there were potential
book contracts and film deals to be had.

No, it was conscience. I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere along the line
Snowden had read the Declaration of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal:
"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of
obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to
prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring".
Edward Snowden undoubtedly took comfort knowing that a growing
group of Americans are outraged enough to resist a government turning against its
own people. His thoughts were mirrored by Julian Assange, who said, "In the
Obama administration's attempt to crush these young whistleblowers with espionage
charges, the US government is taking on a generation, a young generation of people
who find the mass violation of the rights of privacy and open process unacceptable.
In taking on the generation, the Obama administration can only lose."
Snowden surely hoped President Obama would ask himself why he has
pursued more than double the number of Espionage Act cases of all his presidential
predecessors combined, and why almost all of those prosecutions failed.

On that flight, Snowden must have reflected on what he had lost,
including the high salary, the sweet life in Hawaii and Switzerland, the personal
relationships, and the excitement of being on the inside, as well as the coolness of
knowing tomorrow's news today. He has already lost much that matters in an
individual life, but not everything that matters.
Sometimes - and any whistleblower comes to know this in a deep way -
you have to believe that something other, more, deeper, better than yourself
matters. You have to believe that one courageous act of conscience might make a
difference in an America gone astray or simply that, matter or not, you did the
right thing for your country.
- Peter Van Buren

The Tyler Group News: the lonely flight of Edward Snowden

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The Tyler Group News: the lonely flight of Edward Snowden