HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019792.jpg

304 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS

popular movement has emerged questioning its purpose and methods. As a result, a legitimate debate on what should constitute our domestic liberties—and potential limits to those when facing significant security concerns—has largely obfuscated in this mind-set the reality of Snowden’s weakening, durably and structurally, the critical ability of the United States and its allies to address their mounting external security challenges. In this culture of distrust, whatever contradicts the innocent whistle-blower narrative can be preemptively dismissed because Snowden, even though he remains ensconced in Moscow at an unknown location, remains the ultimate truth teller.

I do not accept either this formulation of Snowden or his version of the events in which he was the hero. Opening a Pandora’s box of government secrets is a dangerous undertaking. Whether Snowden’s theft of state secrets proceeded from an idealistic attempt to right a wrong, a narcissistic drive to obtain personal recognition, an intent to weaken the foundations of the surveillance infrastructure in which he worked, or a combination of such factors, by the time he arrived in Moscow, it had evolved, deliberately or not, but necessarily, into a mission of disclosing key national secrets to a foreign power. In the end, such conjectures about Snowden’s motives matter less than that he was helped, consciously or not, by others with interests that differed from those of the United States. The effects on America of such a massive breach of confidence might not easily be reversible.

Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.indd 304
9/30/16 8:13 AM
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019792