Snowden: Man Without a Country

Edward Snowden, in his haste to acquire Russian citizenship — a wish President Putin fulfilled for him Monday — seems to have forgotten something. How else to explain the way he refuses to return to America to face the charges against him? “I would like to return to the United States,” Mr. Snowden told CBS. Yet “the one bottom line demand that we have to agree to is that at least I get a fair trial.”Hmmmm. Mr. Snowden and America already signed such a deal and did so in writing. In exchange for his government intelligence work, Mr. Snowden himself observed, “I took an oath to support the Constitution.” Even though he avers it “was violated on a massive scale,” that deal does guarantee Mr. Snowden the fair trial he seeks. It’s in the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, and it couldn’t be more clear.“In all criminal prosecutions,” the Amendment says, “the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.” It also guarantees to Mr. Snowden, as to all defendants, the right “to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation;” to confront “the witnesses against him;” and “to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.”What more of a guarantee of a fair trial does Mr. Snowden want? He might respond that the Sixth Amendment isn’t worth the parchment it’s written on. If that’s what he thinks, though, why did he swear to support the Constitution in the first place? He’s supposed to be a smart guy. If the courts don’t give him a fair trial, there’s a raft of judges above the trial court itching to overturn the errors.Then again, too, Mr. Snowden still balks. The federal government, he gripes, “won’t provide access to what’s called a public interest defense.” If only he could tell a jury why he broke the law, he would return to face justice. He clearly imagines that given the chance to use this defense, the jury would think he gave away America’s secrets for a good reason. The Rosenbergs probably thought that, too, before being sent to the chair.The public interest defense that Mr. Snowden wants to invoke cuts little ice in American courts. Another NSA leaker, Daniel Hale, who pled to passing to the press classified information on our drone warfare, tried in 2019 to justify his actions as serving the public interest. He failed. The Justice Department argued that it “would needlessly distract the jury” and “convert the trial into an inquest of U.S. military and intelligence procedures.”“You are not being prosecuted for speaking out about the drone program killing innocent people,” the judge in Hale’s case, Liam O’Grady, said upon sentencing the leaker to 45 months in the hoosegow. “You could have been a whistleblower,” the judge added, “without taking any of these documents.” The same goes for Mr. Snowden and, for that matter, Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of what came to be called the Pentagon Papers. When Ellsberg was tried for leaking the Pentagon Papers, he tried to justify himself by raising questions about the morality of the Vietnam War and the public’s “right to know,” as journalist Tom Mueller writes in “Crisis of Conscience.” The judge ruled his motives “immaterial.” When his lawyer balked he’d never heard of a case where the defendant couldn’t tell the jury why he’d done something, the judge replied “Well, you’re hearing one now.”Ellsberg was let off because of prosecutorial misconduct. As for Mr. Snowden, his pretensions as a champion of transparency are belied by becoming a subject of Mr. Putin. He justified himself Monday by saying “a little stability will make a difference for my family. I pray for privacy for them — and for us all.” Hmmph. It turns out that our Third Amendment and Fourth Amendment aren’t enough for him.

Snowden: Man Without a Country

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