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. For full article text, please visit: http://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/tinker-tailor-whistleblowerspy-4830/ Tinker, Tailor, Whistleblower... Spy? By: Alexander Holstein June 24th, 2013 Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor and so-called whistleblower who leaked classified information on numerous top-secret NSA surveillance programs, is the most damaging traitor in U.S. history.  That’s a pretty incendiary statement, especially considering the legions of overnight devotees—marquee name-plates, political heavyweights and Average Joe Six-Packs from both sides of the partisan equation—who have turned Mr. Snowden into a post-cyberpunk cause célèbre, media darling, and “hero” of individual freedom.  Mr. Snowden’s actions, however, could prove more damaging than those of traditional double agents such as Edward Lee Howard, Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen.  On par perhaps with the most damaging spy of the entire Cold War—Kim Philby, the senior British intelligence officer and KGB mole who defected to the USSR, where he died as a Hero of the Soviet Union. That Mr. Snowden committed a flagrant breach of national security is without question.  The non-disclosures attached to his clearances and to which he was a signatory make that blatantly clear.  The real question, then, is whether or not that breach was warranted in the name of a greater moral good, namely uncovering illegal government activity that violates the Constitution of the United States and threatens the rights of the American people.  Daniel Ellsberg, who famously leaked the Pentagon Papers, has declared Mr. Snowden the most important whistleblower in U.S. history.  But Mr. Snowden doesn’t fit the traditional whistleblower profile.  Ellsberg himself never fled the United States, but voluntarily stood trial on charges of espionage, which were dismissed.  Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army sergeant who dumped a truckload of classified material into the lap of Wikileaks, is now facing a military court martial, and has already pled guilty to 10 of the 22 charges brought against him.  Frank Serpico, the New York police detective who famously blew the lid off widespread corruption within the NYPD, not only exhausted every proper channel open to him before going to the press, but stayed on the job and took a bullet thereafter.  Mr. Snowden, on the other hand, fled to—of all places—Hong Kong, which, of course, is in the People’s Republic of China, hardly a bastion of the electronic freedom for which Mr. Snowden claims to have martyred himself.  The PRC runs one of the most restrictive and intrusive internet regimes in the world—and not as part of a targeted effort to snare suspected terrorists, but in a blanket campaign to suppress the most basic human rights.  It’s like moving in with the Taliban in support of women’s lib.         For full article text, please visit: http://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/tinker-tailor-whistleblowerspy-4830/  follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend  Copyright © 2013 Geopoliticalmonitor.com, All rights reserved.  You are receiving this email because you opted in at our website.  Our mailing address is:  Geopoliticalmonitor.com 5700-100 King Street West Toronto, On M5X1C7 Canada