“No Integrity Award, No Pardon for Edward Snowden”

By Frank Snepp (Posted January 2, 2014)

When I read recently that a group of CIA whistleblowers had traveled to Moscow to present Edward Snowden with their annual “integrity” award – his first public trophy for binge-leaking — I could only marvel at their audacity. The award is dedicated to the memory of the late, great CIA whistleblower Sam Adams and is supposedly reserved for insurgents of similar character. The current nominee doesn’t come close. The same reformist lobby is now invoking Sam’s name as part of an equally ill-considered campaign to win a Presidential pardon for Snowden, and The New York Times has recently seconded this appeal. If Sam were alive to pass judgment on it, he would give it a resolute thumbs down.

I know this with an insider’s certainty. Not only were Sam and I close colleagues in the CIA; we followed the same unwritten rulebook in exposing the wrongs and failings of our own spymasters, and suffered massive recriminations without turning tail. The last person either of us would embrace as a spiritual comrade is the mercurial young flight risk from the NSA.
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