Tom, you may love or hate what Ellsberg did, but it was a long time ago, and he knew that he would be tried, and was prepared to face the consequences of what he did. According to wiki, he faced enough charges to put him away for 115 years. The fact that he never even thought of running is, imo, a credit to him.
Manning.... is a uniformed soldier who revealed truckloads of secrets. In just about any other army in history he would be court martialed and shot at sunrise.
Snowden... None of us really knows what happened. He revealed that our government is recording and storing tons of info about us - more than any other government was ever able to do in the past, due to technical limitations. That was a good thing. Otoh, he stole away the public's attention from a more important matter - the use of the IRS to destroy political opposition.
If it is true that Snowden held back the bulk of the stolen info in order to use it for personal protection, that would create a really interesting situation. Nation states, including the US, for the past many years are struggling to come to terms with the idea that they are in a state of war NOT with another state, but with a violent religious movement. Now, we may discover that full fledged intelligence operations against states can be conducted not only by other states, but by individuals. Snowden may yet make it into history books.... lol. |
