Let's credit Richard Cohen with renewing the conversations provoked by Edward Snowden's document cache

"Snowden seems to have sold out to no one. In fact, a knowledgeable source says that Snowden has not even sold his life story and has rebuffed offers of cash for interviews. Maybe his most un-American act is passing up a chance at easy money. Someone ought to look into this."

-- Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen,
in the column "Edward Snowden is no traitor"

by Ken

The odds that a correction will catch up with the original misstatement aren't great, but the correction is still important. And for a newspaper columnist to say, "As time has proved, my judgments were just plain wrong," well, that's something.

As I mentioned last night, the columnist in question is the Washington Post's Richard Cohen, and the column in question is "Edward Snowden is no traitor."

"What are we to make of Edward Snowden?" Cohen asks now.

I know what I once made of him. He was no real whistleblower, I wrote, but "ridiculously cinematic" and "narcissistic" as well. As time has proved, my judgments were just plain wrong. Whatever Snowden is, he is curiously modest and has bent over backward to ensure that the information he has divulged has done as little damage as possible. As a "traitor," he lacks the requisite intent and menace.

As I also mentioned last night, the new column is actually a little stronger than the title suggests. But I suppose it's to Cohen's credit that he takes the accusation of treason seriously. And as he notes, "traitor is what Snowden has been roundly called" (links onsite):

Harry Reid: "I think Snowden is a traitor." John Boehner: "He's a traitor." Rep. Peter King: "This guy is a traitor; he's a defector." And Dick Cheney not only denounced Snowden as a "traitor" but also suggested that he might have shared information with the Chinese. This innuendo, as with Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, is more proof of Cheney's unerring determination to be cosmically wrong.

The "early denunciations" of Snowden," says Cohen, "now seem both over the top and beside the point."

If he is a traitor, then which side did he betray and to whom does he now owe allegiance? Benedict Arnold, America's most famous traitor, sold out to the British during the Revolutionary War and wound up a general in King George III's army. Snowden seems to have sold out to no one. In fact, a knowledgeable source says that Snowden has not even sold his life story and has rebuffed offers of cash for interviews. Maybe his most un-American act is passing up a chance at easy money. Someone ought to look into this.

Whoa, a good joke! And one that actually makes a point! Lest we be rendered wholly insensible, Cohen also makes a bad joke, but it too comes in the context of making a point.

Snowden's residency in Russia has been forced upon him -- he had nowhere else to go. Those people who insist he should come home and go to jail lack a healthy regard for the rigors of imprisonment. After a while it can be no fun. Snowden insists that neither the Russians nor, before them, the Chinese have gotten their grubby hands on his top-secret material, and indeed, this fits with his M.O. He has been careful with his info, doling it out to responsible news organizations -- The Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, etc. -- and not tossing it up in the air, WikiLeaks style, and echoing the silly mantra "Information wants to be free." (No. Information, like most of us, wants a home in the Hamptons.)

I think what Cohen means is that many peddlers of information want a home in the Hamptons, which isn't at all the same thing. But I suppose the confusion is an occupational hazard for folks who have dwelled too long in the arcadian meadows of the Village.

Cohen also has some writerly difficulty transitioning to his crucial paragraph:

Snowden is one of those people for whom the conjunction "and" is apt. Normally, I prefer the more emphatic "but" so I could say "Snowden did some good but he did a greater amount of damage." Trouble is, I'm not sure of that. I am sure, though, that he has instigated a worthwhile debate. I am sure that police powers granted the government will be abused over time and that Snowden is an authentic whistleblower, appalled at what he saw on his computer screen and wishing, like Longfellow's Paul Revere, to tell "every Middlesex village and farm" what our intelligence agencies were doing. Who do they think they are, Google?

(That's another joke, I guess, but there may be some question as to whether this tie-breaker belongs in the "good" or "bad" category. Some people may think that a wicked point has been made about Google.)

I wrote last night that the importance of Cohen's owning up to his previous error goes beyond merely correcting the record, important as that function it is. It also puts the subject of Snowden's whistle-blowing back on the table, having been largely obscured by that hectoring chorus of "Traitor!"

Again, he has a little trouble getting to his point.

My initial column on Snowden was predicated on the belief that, really, nothing he revealed was new. Didn't members of Congress know all this stuff and hadn't much of it leaked? Yes, that's largely true.

Um, well, if we're talking just about the issue of NSA spying, I suppose it's somewhat true, but if anything, the fact that members of Congress have been sitting on that information makes the revelations that much more significant. There's an awful lot that's known to members of Congress and assorted other gnomes of our government -- people who are supposed to be working for us -- which is routinely and intolerably withheld from us. So yes, "the sheer size of these data-gathering programs," which has Cohen's mouth "agape," is an issue, but only one of many raised in those documents leaked by Snowden.

But Cohen hits another dandy point when he recalls that in his earlier writing he "also wrote that 'No one lied about the various programs' Snowden disclosed."

But then we found out that James Clapper did. The director of national intelligence was asked at a Senate hearing in March if "the story that we have millions or hundreds of millions of dossiers on people is completely false" and he replied that it was. Actually, it was his answer that was "completely false."

What? The director of national intelligence just plain lied at a Senate hearing? You bet! And that point can't be repeated enough. Because it seems a pretty good bet that that lie wasn't a lone aberration, that in fact a lot of government officials have lied a whole lot -- at a lot of times, in a lot of places.

And this is the call that Snowden, with apparently great difficulty, took it upon himself to make: that the information in those documents he revealed demanded, not "to be free," but to be public, and as a result we've had more public discussion of a range of issues than we've had since . . . well, maybe ever. We need to have a lot more discussion, but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that without Snowden we wouldn't have had any. Factor in the price he has paid for his actions, and it seems to me we're dealing with a pretety impressive act of patriotism.

And again, I have to give Richard Cohen credit for reopening and renewing the conversation. Even if, again, he gets a little balled up laboring his way to a conclusion.

But (and?) I am at a loss to say what should be done with Snowden. He broke the law, this is true. He has been chary with his information, but he cannot know all its ramifications and, anyway, the government can't allow anyone to decide for himself what should be revealed. That, too, is true. So Snowden is, to my mind, a bit like John Brown, the zealot who intensely felt the inhumanity of slavery and broke the law in an attempt to end the practice. My analogy is not neat -- Brown killed some people -- but you get the point. I suppose Snowden needs to be punished but not as a traitor. He may have been technically disloyal to America but not, after some reflection, to American values.

It's not at all clear to me that Snowden has been shown to be even technically "disloyal to America." But it's certainly worth that period of reflection for Cohen to be able to declare that Snowden has not been disloyal to "American values." This seems to me a darned fine place to wind up, Richard. Nicely done.

#

For a "Sunday Classics" fix anytime, visit the stand-alone "Sunday Classics with Ken."