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
