Originally posted by the Voice of America.
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                  Is Former NSA Contractor Snowden a Traitor?

   by Andre de Nesnera

   The Russian government recently granted former U.S. intelligence
   contractor Edward Snowden a three-year residency permit. He is wanted
   in the United States on espionage charges after revealing key
   intelligence documents.

   As an intelligence contractor with the [1]National Security Agency,
   Snowden had access to thousands of secret documents. Last year, he
   started leaking to newspapers classified material dealing with the
   NSA's worldwide surveillance programs.

   He first fled to Hong Kong and then to Russia, where he was granted
   asylum for one year. Now Russian authorities have extended his stay for
   three years, providing him with a residency permit.

   ''Stephen Vladeck, an expert on national security law at American
   University, said he is not surprised by Russia's action.

   "Because he really is still very much a thorn in the side of the
   American intelligence community. And most importantly, what this means
   in practice is that Snowden now has a place to stay until after the end
   of the Obama administration," said Vladeck, "by which point the
   politics surrounding him and the potential that he might return to the
   United States could be very, very different."

   Is Snowden a traitor?

   Snowden's actions and Moscow's decision to grant him a residency permit
   have reignited discussion as to whether or not Snowden is a traitor.

   "In my personal view, he is a traitor because he violated his secrecy
   agreements, because no single individual should have the option to put
   his own conscience or decisions about what's proper above the law,"
   said Richard Betts, a national security expert at Columbia University.
   "And I believe he's done damage to what I consider to be reasonable
   intelligence collection activities of the U.S. government."

   But Vladeck takes a different view.

   "I don't think that there is any evidence that Snowden committed
   treason," he said. "Treason is a very specific crime defined by U.S.
   law as requiring the levying of war against the United States. Whatever
   we think of Snowden, he may very well be a criminal. There is no
   question that he violated the Espionage Act. He may very well be a
   patriot - that's a moral judgment. The one thing that I think we all
   should agree on is he is not a traitor. Traitor is a very specific
   legal term and there is just no evidence that is applicable in this
   case."

   1917 espionage law

   Vladeck said the Espionage Act was passed in 1917 just as the United
   States entered World War l. It dealt with what was known as "classic
   spying" - for example, an agent of a foreign nation spying on the U.S.

   The problem with the Espionage Act, said Vladeck, is that it's too old.

   "And so the Espionage Act today takes three very different activities -
   classic spying, 'leaking' and whistleblowing - and treats them all the
   same in any case in which they involve the transmission of national
   security information to someone who is not authorized to receive it."

   Vladeck and other experts say the Espionage Act has been used
   sparingly. But in the last several years, they say, it has reappeared
   as a weapon that the U.S. government has been using in trying to clamp
   down on leaks of classified information.
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   [2]http://www.voanews.com/content/is-former-nsa-contractor-snowden-a-tr
   aitor/2412050.html

References

   1. http://www.nsa.gov/
   2. http://www.voanews.com/content/is-former-nsa-contractor-snowden-a-traitor/2412050.html