Why Snowden cannot get a fair trial in the US

Many of those angered by Edward Snowden’s disclosures try to imply cowardice in his part and say that in order to prove that he is an honorable man, he should come back to the US, give himself up to the authorities, and allow his case to work its way through the legal system, pointing to Daniel Ellsberg’s example. This is, of course, disingenuous. Ellsberg himself says that things are very different now and that the Obama administration is much worse than Nixon’s in the way it treats whistleblowers and that Snowden did the right thing in leaving the country. [Read more…]