Snowden & Manning: The Insider's Counter-Narrative

30 min read

From: Lurk More

The mainstream narrative and the intelligence community's counter-narrative on Snowden and Manning. Both sides documented, neither side clean.
Contents 78 sections

Research Brief for “Lurk More”

Compiled: 2026-02-22 Purpose: Comprehensive research brief presenting both the mainstream narrative and the insider/IC critique of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. The book’s thesis: the common narrative is wrong or oversimplified. This brief provides documented facts, named sources, and specific claims from both sides.

PART I: EDWARD SNOWDEN

1. The Standard Narrative

The mainstream story: Edward Snowden was a principled NSA contractor who, horrified by unconstitutional mass surveillance of American citizens, sacrificed his career, freedom, and comfort to expose the truth. He is a whistleblower in the tradition of Daniel Ellsberg, and the surveillance programs he revealed (particularly PRISM and bulk metadata collection under Section 215 of the Patriot Act) were later found by federal courts to be illegal. The reforms that followed – the USA FREEDOM Act, tech company encryption, public awareness – vindicated his actions.

Key supporters of this narrative:

  • The ACLU, which called him “a great American”
  • Daniel Ellsberg, who said he identified “more with Chelsea Manning and with Edward Snowden than with any other people on Earth”
  • Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, the journalists who broke the story
  • The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which voted for a resolution calling on the U.S. to allow Snowden to return without prosecution
  • Multiple federal courts that found the Section 215 bulk collection program to be “unprecedented and unwarranted”

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2. What He Actually Took vs. What Was Published

This is the central gap the mainstream narrative ignores.

The Numbers

  • Estimated documents taken: 1.5 million to 1.7 million classified files (NSA Director Keith Alexander initially estimated 50,000-200,000; later Pentagon reviews estimated 1.7 million)
  • Documents given to journalists: Snowden gave Greenwald and Poitras an estimated 9,000-10,000 documents (per Greenwald’s own statement)
  • Documents actually published: Fewer than 10% of what Snowden gave to journalists have ever been published. Ewen MacAskill of The Guardian stated that approximately 1% of the archive was published, citing “diminishing interest” as the main reason
  • DIA assessment: A declassified DIA report from June 2015 revealed Snowden took 900,000 Department of Defense files – more than he downloaded from the NSA itself

The Content Gap

General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified to the House Armed Services Committee:

“The vast majority of the documents that Snowden exfiltrated from our highest levels of security had nothing to do with exposing government oversight of domestic activities. The vast majority of those were related to our military capabilities, operations, tactics, techniques, and procedures.”

Less than 10% of the stolen documents involved domestic surveillance programs. The rest pertained to military, defense, and intelligence programs – what the HPSCI report called material “of great interest to America’s adversaries.”

The documents came from a top-secret network run by the Defense Intelligence Agency, used by intelligence arms of the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines. A top-secret Pentagon report concluded that “the scope of the compromised knowledge related to US intelligence capabilities is staggering.”

The uncomfortable question: If Snowden was motivated solely by concern about domestic surveillance, why did he take 900,000+ Department of Defense files about military operations?

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3. The Damage Assessment

Intelligence Community Assessment

Former intelligence chiefs stated Snowden caused “profound damage” to U.S. national security. Specific claimed impacts:

  • Cost: The U.S. government spent “hundreds of millions of dollars, and will eventually spend billions” to mitigate the damage (HPSCI report)
  • Intelligence streams: Some disclosures “resulted in the loss of intelligence streams that had saved American lives” (HPSCI summary)
  • Capabilities compromised: “Critical intelligence capabilities in which the United States has invested billions of dollars are at risk, or likely to be curtailed or eliminated either because of compromise or conscious decision”
  • Pentagon estimate: General Dempsey estimated it could cost billions of dollars to overcome the loss of security imposed on military operations, with the mitigation task force needing to operate for about two years

MI6/UK Impact (Disputed)

The London Sunday Times reported in June 2015 that Russian and Chinese intelligence services had “decrypted more than 1 million classified files in the Snowden cache,” forcing MI6 to move agents out of live operations in hostile countries. A UK Home Office official said Snowden had “blood on his hands.” However, the same article quoted a government source saying there was “no sign that agents have been hurt.”

Important caveat: The Sunday Times report has been challenged. The paper said it was “not clear whether Russia and China stole Snowden’s data or whether Snowden voluntarily handed it over.” Security expert Bruce Schneier suggested both China and Russia may have already had access to those files through their own penetration of NSA networks – before Snowden took them.

The Incomplete Assessment Problem

A critical finding from the HPSCI review: the Intelligence Community conducted a damage assessment for only a small subset of the documents Snowden removed, while the Department of Defense reviewed all 1.5 million. The IC did not plan to assess the damage of the vast majority of documents. This means we genuinely don’t know the full extent of the damage – which works against both sides of the argument.

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4. The Russia Question

Timeline

  • May 20, 2013: Snowden arrives in Hong Kong
  • June 23, 2013: Flies from Hong Kong to Moscow (reportedly en route to Ecuador via Cuba, but his passport was cancelled while in transit)
  • June 2013 - Present: Lives in Russia under FSB protection
  • 2014: Granted initial residency permit
  • September 2022: Putin signs decree granting Snowden Russian citizenship
  • 2020: Snowden and wife Lindsay Mills announced they were applying for Russian citizenship; Snowden stated they “remain Americans, raising our son with all the values of the America we love”

The Intelligence Assessment

Some intelligence officials have stated that the possibility of Snowden being a Russian agent “has a high degree of plausibility,” describing it as “an espionage operation joined with an operation for disinformation and influence.”

Investigations by the NSA and FBI reportedly found no evidence that Snowden received aid from a foreign government. However, senior officials noted that “the FSB are now his hosts, and they are taking care of him.”

Snowden’s Claims

Snowden has consistently stated:

  • He gave all documents to journalists in Hong Kong before flying to Moscow
  • He did not bring any classified material into Russia
  • There is “zero chance” that Russia or China obtained his documents
  • He was stranded in Moscow because the U.S. cancelled his passport

The Counter-Counter-Argument

Charlie Savage of the New York Review of Books examined the evidence in a detailed 2017 analysis titled “Was Snowden a Russian Agent?” and concluded that while the circumstantial evidence is concerning, direct evidence of Russian intelligence collaboration has not been publicly produced.

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5. Did He Try Internal Channels? The Disputed Claim

Snowden’s Claim

In March 2014, Snowden stated he had “reported policy or legal issues related to spying programs to more than ten officials” through internal channels before going to journalists.

The NSA’s Response

The NSA released a single email Snowden sent in April 2013 inquiring about the hierarchy of legal authorities – but said they found no other evidence that Snowden had expressed concerns to anyone in an oversight position. The email did not raise concerns about surveillance programs; it asked a legal question about training materials.

The Complication

NBC News was able to confirm at least one attempt by Snowden to go through channels and was reportedly in the process of obtaining records showing other complaints were made to superiors. However, the full evidence has never been publicly released.

The Contractor Problem

As an employee of Booz Allen Hamilton (a private contractor), not a direct government employee, Snowden was not protected by U.S. whistleblower laws and would not have been protected from retaliation for revealing classified information, even through recommended channels.

The Timeline Problem (HPSCI Finding)

The HPSCI report found that Snowden began his mass downloads of classified information eight months before Director Clapper’s March 2013 congressional testimony – the very testimony Snowden later cited as his “breaking point.” The NSA determined Snowden’s first illegal downloads occurred in summer 2012. If his claimed motivation was Clapper’s testimony, the timeline doesn’t support it.

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6. The “Serial Exaggerator” Question

HPSCI Claims

The House Intelligence Committee called Snowden “a serial exaggerator and fabricator” who:

  • Claimed to have worked for the CIA as a “senior advisor” (described by the committee as a gross exaggeration of entry-level computer technician duties)
  • Allegedly doctored his performance evaluations
  • Obtained new positions at NSA by exaggerating his resume and stealing the answers to an employment test
  • Claimed a high school equivalency he may not have had (this specific claim is disputed)

Snowden’s Response

Snowden disputed the “low-level systems administrator” characterization: “I was actually functioning at a very senior level.” He also stated: “I began to move from merely overseeing these systems to actively directing their use. Many people don’t understand that I was actually an analyst and I designated individuals and groups for targeting.”

Who’s Credible?

Journalist Barton Gellman and others have challenged the accuracy of the HPSCI report’s claims about Snowden’s biography. The Intercept called the declassified report “riddled with obvious falsehoods.” The Century Foundation analysis called it “The House Intelligence Committee’s Terrible, Horrible, Very Bad Snowden Report.” However, Snowden also dropped out of high school and studied intermittently at community college without obtaining a degree – he was not the senior intelligence professional his public narrative sometimes implied.

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7. The Espionage Act Problem

Snowden was charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 with:

  • Two counts of violating the Espionage Act (unauthorized communication of national defense information)
  • Theft of government property

The Espionage Act does not allow a public interest defense. This means that even if Snowden’s disclosures served the public good, he cannot argue that at trial. As the Open Society Justice Initiative explained: “Defendants are forced to waive their right to a fair trial and a public interest defense, and accept restrictions on arguments they can raise in court, as they cannot discuss classified information in their defense.”

This is a genuine structural problem in U.S. law, and it affects the moral calculus. Snowden has argued – with some legal support – that returning to the U.S. would mean accepting a trial in which the central question (did the public benefit outweigh the harm?) is legally inadmissible.

The Counter-Argument

Critics respond: the Espionage Act exists for a reason, and allowing a “public interest” defense in espionage cases would create an impossible standard where anyone who steals classified material can retroactively justify it by claiming public benefit. The government’s position is that proper whistleblower channels exist specifically so that classified wrongdoing can be reported without compromising sources and methods.

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8. The Greenwald/Poitras Question: Who Decided What to Publish?

The Editorial Process

Snowden made clear he did not want to be the decision-maker about what to release. He wanted journalists to filter the material through an editorial process. Greenwald, Poitras, and their collaborators at The Guardian, Washington Post, and later The Intercept made those decisions.

What Was Published

The first revelations (June 5, 2013, The Guardian):

  • NSA collection of domestic phone metadata (Verizon court order)
  • The PRISM program (collection from internet companies under FISA Section 702)

Subsequent publications revealed:

  • MUSCULAR (tapping Google and Yahoo data center links)
  • XKEYSCORE (search system for internet data)
  • Five Eyes intelligence alliance operations
  • NSA spying on world leaders (Angela Merkel’s phone)
  • Economic espionage and corporate surveillance

What PRISM Actually Was

PRISM was “an internal government computer system” used to facilitate foreign intelligence collection “under court supervision, as authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.” Tech companies denied giving the NSA “direct access” to their servers; rather, the NSA was obtaining data through court orders for specific targets. The initial reporting overplayed the “direct access” angle.

The Archive Problem

The Snowden Archive ended up distributed across several outlets:

  • The Intercept (the only outlet with the full archive that continued publishing, until it shuttered the archive project citing cost)
  • The Guardian (retains responsibility for a copy)
  • The New York Times (holds a copy in their office)
  • The Washington Post (holds much but not all of the archive)

The Intercept’s decision to stop publishing from the archive drew criticism from transparency advocates who argued that Greenwald and Pierre Omidyar (who funded The Intercept) had effectively memory-holed 90%+ of the documents.

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9. What Changed After Snowden

Concrete Reforms

  1. USA FREEDOM Act (June 2, 2015): Abolished government bulk collection of communication metadata; required targeted warrants; increased FISA Court transparency. Passed Senate 67-32. A federal appeals court had already held that the NSA’s interpretation of Section 215 was “unprecedented and unwarranted.”

  2. Apple iOS 8 encryption (September 2014): Apple rolled out default device encryption that prevented even Apple’s own engineers from extracting data. Apple’s CEO Tim Cook positioned privacy as a core value, directly citing the post-Snowden environment.

  3. Tech industry response: The Information Technology Industry Council (Dell, Facebook, Google, HP, IBM, Microsoft) collectively pushed back against government demands for backdoor access. Cryptographers unanimously warned that “special access is a dangerous idea.”

  4. FISA Court reforms: Greater transparency requirements and appointment of amici curiae (outside legal advocates) to argue against government positions.

  5. Public awareness: Widespread adoption of encrypted messaging (Signal), VPNs, and privacy tools. HTTPS adoption accelerated dramatically.

What Didn’t Change

  • Section 702 of FISA was reauthorized
  • The NSA’s overseas collection capabilities remained largely intact
  • No NSA officials were prosecuted for the programs Snowden revealed
  • James Clapper, who misled Congress about surveillance, was never charged

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10. The Political Alliance

Who Defended Snowden

A strange-bedfellows coalition:

  • Libertarian right: Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Justin Amash (the “audit the NSA” wing)
  • Progressive left: ACLU, EFF, much of the journalism establishment
  • Glenn Greenwald’s coalition vision: Anti-imperialists and civil-liberties activists on the left with paleoconservatives and free-market libertarians on the right, united against what he called the “establishment alliance of mainstream center-left liberals and neoconservatives”

Who Opposed Snowden (Bipartisan IC/Military Critique)

  • Republican hawks: John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Mike Rogers (R-MI, HPSCI chair)
  • Democratic establishment: Dianne Feinstein (Senate Intelligence Committee chair), Hillary Clinton
  • Obama administration: Prosecuted Snowden, though Obama also signed the USA FREEDOM Act
  • Military/IC leadership: General Dempsey, General Alexander, Director Clapper – all bipartisan in their condemnation
  • HPSCI bipartisan report (2016): Both Republican and Democratic committee members agreed Snowden was not a whistleblower and caused tremendous damage

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PART II: CHELSEA MANNING

1. The Standard Narrative

The mainstream story: Chelsea Manning was a brave whistleblower who exposed U.S. war crimes – particularly the “Collateral Murder” video showing the killing of Reuters journalists in Baghdad – and diplomatic hypocrisy through the release of State Department cables. She was punished with the longest sentence ever imposed for a leak conviction (35 years), subjected to prolonged solitary confinement and inhumane detention conditions, and was eventually recognized through President Obama’s commutation.

Key supporters:

  • Amnesty International, which campaigned for her release
  • Daniel Ellsberg, who appeared in support videos
  • Human Rights Watch, which called the commutation overdue (while noting it didn’t erase Obama’s “awful whistleblower legacy”)

2. What Manning Actually Leaked: The Scale

The Numbers

Manning leaked approximately 700,000-750,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks, including:

  • Iraq War Logs: ~400,000 field reports (Oct 2010)
  • Afghan War Diary: ~91,000 reports covering Jan 2004-Dec 2009 (July 2010)
  • Diplomatic Cables: ~250,000 State Department cables
  • Guantanamo Files: Detainee assessment briefs
  • “Collateral Murder” video: Classified Apache helicopter gunsight footage (April 2010)

The Whistleblowing vs. Mass Disclosure Problem

The U.S. government’s case, reflected in Manning’s conviction on 19 of 22 charges: this was “so indiscriminate, a total of something like 750,000 messages” that it went “way beyond any real whistleblowing.” The 250,000 diplomatic cables, covering embassies worldwide, raised the question: how does leaking private diplomatic assessments from every U.S. embassy on earth relate to exposing specific war crimes?

Academic analysis distinguishes between:

  • Whistleblowing: Targeted disclosure of specific wrongdoing through appropriate channels
  • Leaking: Unauthorized disclosure, potentially nefarious
  • Mass disclosure: What Manning did – bulk exfiltration of everything accessible, regardless of content

Manning represents the emergence of what scholars call “big data whistleblowing” – a new category enabled by digital access, where the leaker takes everything they can rather than curating specific evidence of wrongdoing.

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3. “Collateral Murder”: What It Actually Showed

The Facts of July 12, 2007

On July 12, 2007, a U.S. Apache helicopter crew engaged a group of men walking down a street in the New Baghdad district of eastern Baghdad. Among those killed:

  • Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen (age 22)
  • Reuters driver/assistant Saeed Chmagh (age 40)
  • At least 10 other people total in the initial engagement
  • Two children were wounded when the helicopter fired on a van that arrived to help the wounded

What WikiLeaks Showed vs. Full Context

WikiLeaks released two versions: a 17-minute edited version and the full 38-minute unclassified version.

The edited version:

  • Title: “Collateral Murder” – loaded, editorial framing
  • Emphasized the killing of clearly unarmed journalists
  • Highlighted the crew’s callous audio (“Look at those dead bastards”)
  • Did not make clear that attacks took place amid active clashes in the neighborhood

What the full context reveals:

  • Some of the men in the group were openly armed – photographs collected after the shooting included AK-47s and an RPG launcher alongside the two cameras
  • The camera carried by Noor-Eldeen was misidentified as a weapon by the helicopter crew
  • The helicopter crew had requested and received permission to fire under the existing rules of engagement
  • The U.S. military investigation concluded the actions were “in accordance with the law of armed conflict and its own Rules of Engagement”
  • WikiLeaks also released the actual Rules of Engagement for 2006-2008

The New York Times critique: WikiLeaks, “in its zeal to make the video antiwar propaganda, also released a version that didn’t call attention to an Iraqi who was toting a rocket-propelled grenade and packaged the manipulated version under the tendentious rubric Collateral Murder.”

Julian Assange’s response: “Permission to engage was given before the word ‘RPG’ was ever used.”

The Honest Assessment

The video showed something genuinely disturbing – the killing of two journalists and a van full of people trying to help the wounded, including children. The crew’s attitude was chilling. But WikiLeaks deliberately framed it to maximize outrage while minimizing context about the actual combat situation and the presence of armed individuals. Both things can be true simultaneously: the military’s rules of engagement may have been followed, and the rules themselves may be morally inadequate.

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4. The Diplomatic Cables: Actual Damage

Publication Timeline

  • November 28, 2010: Media partners (Guardian, NYT, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, El Pais) begin publishing selected cables with names of sources redacted
  • February 2011: Guardian journalist David Leigh publishes a book containing the decryption passphrase for the full cable file, believing it was temporary
  • August 25, 2011: German newspaper Der Freitag discovers the full archive online and reports it can be decrypted
  • September 1, 2011: WikiLeaks publishes all remaining cables completely unredacted – a “cable bomb”

What the Unredacted Cables Contained

A keyword search revealed more than 2,000 occurrences of the phrase “strictly protect” – a diplomatic designation used to protect confidential source identities. These included:

  • Names of Afghan informants cooperating with U.S. forces
  • Identities of foreign officials who spoke candidly (and critically) about their own governments to U.S. diplomats
  • Embassy contacts in authoritarian countries

Documented Consequences

  • Embassy contacts were harassed and threatened after being named in cables
  • Taliban fighters combed through the files and targeted locals who had helped U.S. forces; many informants received death threats and had to relocate
  • Diplomats rushed to repair broken trust with allies who read harsh private opinions about their leaders
  • Some foreign governments “turned cold and cut back on sharing intelligence”
  • The main lasting impact: a “chilling effect” on foreign officials’ willingness to speak freely with U.S. diplomats

The Critical Nuance: Who Is Responsible for the Unredacted Release?

Manning leaked the material. But it was WikiLeaks – specifically Julian Assange’s decision – that published unredacted cables containing names of informants. The Guardian bears responsibility for publishing the passphrase. The chain of custody and the chain of blame are not the same.

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5. The Afghan/Iraq War Logs: Informant Names

The Scale of Exposure

  • Pentagon task force (led by Brigadier General Robert Carr) found nearly 900 names of local Afghan nationals in Manning’s leaked records
  • A Washington Post search of the 76,000 released reports found at least 100 instances dealing with Afghan informants, with informants’ names and villages listed alongside the names of insurgent commanders they had discussed with U.S. officials

Did Anyone Die?

This is where the evidence gets complicated:

Government position (at trial): General Carr testified at Manning’s sentencing that the task force “had found no specific examples of anyone who had lost his or her life in reprisals due to WikiLeaks’ publication.”

However: Carr also testified that more than 900 Afghan names were identified as potentially at risk. The absence of confirmed deaths does not mean no harm was done – relocated informants, destroyed intelligence networks, chilling effects on future cooperation.

The secret DoD report (obtained by BuzzFeed News): A classified 107-page report prepared by a Department of Defense task force, obtained through FOIA in 2017, stated:

  • The disclosure of 400,000+ Iraq War records would “have no direct personal impact on current and former U.S. leadership in Iraq” (assessed with “high confidence”)
  • The 90,000+ Afghan war documents were not expected to have “significant strategic impact” on U.S. operations
  • The report was classified SECRET/NOFORN
  • Government prosecutors selectively cited it during Manning’s court-martial; defense lawyers were not allowed to read it
  • More than half the report was withheld

This is a critical piece of evidence: the government’s own classified damage assessment, conducted by 20+ federal agencies, found the leaks were “largely insignificant.” Yet they argued the opposite in public and at trial.

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6. Manning’s Personal Circumstances

Mental Health and Gender Identity

  • Manning was experiencing gender identity disorder during the period of the leaks, which she disclosed to her superior in an April 2010 email: “I have had signs of it for a very long time. It’s caused problems within my family.”
  • A military psychiatrist testified that Manning’s “gender identity disorder combined with narcissistic personality traits, post-adolescent idealism, and his lack of friends in Iraq caused him to reasonably conclude he could change the world by leaking classified information”
  • Manning had “little to no support base” and was in what testimony described as a “hyper-masculine environment” with “few coping skills”
  • Military leaders were described as “lax at best and obstructionist at worst” regarding troop mental health

The Uncomfortable Question This Raises

Manning’s defenders argue her mental health context explains why the military failed in its duty of care. Manning’s critics argue it demonstrates she was psychologically unfit and the leaks were driven by personal crisis rather than principled whistleblowing. Both arguments have merit. Neither is complete.

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7. The Adrian Lamo Betrayal

What Happened

In May 2010, Manning contacted Adrian Lamo – a well-known hacker convicted in 2004 for breaking into the New York Times network – through online chat. Manning confided about the WikiLeaks disclosures. Lamo turned Manning in to the FBI.

Lamo’s Justification

Lamo described the decision as “morally ambiguous but objectively necessary,” writing: “There were no right choices that day, only less wrong ones. It was cold, it was needful, and it was no one’s to make except mine.”

The Hacker Community’s Response

The reaction was overwhelmingly negative. At the Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE) conference in 2010:

  • Attendees yelled “snitch” at Lamo
  • At least one person spat in his direction
  • Another told Lamo after his speech: “From my perspective, I see what you have done as treason”
  • Friend Andrew Blake: “People hated him. He couldn’t log on to any sort of internet platform under his actual name without instantly getting some sort of hate directed toward him”

The Broader Ethical Question

The Manning arrest “forced the [hacker] community to address fundamental questions about what ethical hacking really meant.” It exposed a fault line: the hacker ethos of “information wants to be free” versus the real-world consequences of classified disclosures involving named human sources.

Lamo died in March 2018 at age 37. Manning commented publicly on his death, acknowledging the complexity of their intertwined history.

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8. The Court-Martial and Obama’s Commutation

Trial and Conviction

Manning was charged with 22 offenses. On July 30, 2013:

  • Acquitted of aiding the enemy (the most serious charge, which could have meant life without parole)
  • Convicted of 19 of 22 charges, including six counts of espionage and theft
  • Sentenced: 35 years imprisonment, reduction to E-1, forfeiture of all pay, dishonorable discharge

The 35-year sentence was the longest ever imposed for a leak conviction.

Obama’s Commutation (January 17, 2017)

Obama commuted Manning’s sentence to approximately seven years served. Key arguments:

For commutation:

  • Disproportionate sentence – longer than comparable leak cases
  • Manning attempted suicide multiple times in prison
  • Subjected to prolonged solitary confinement (conditions the UN special rapporteur called “cruel, inhuman and degrading”)
  • Obama said Manning had “served a tough prison sentence” and the commutation was not an endorsement of her actions

Against commutation:

  • Pentagon (Secretary Ash Carter and Army leadership) recommended against it
  • Speaker Paul Ryan: “outrageous” and “a dangerous precedent”
  • Senator John McCain: “a grave mistake” that “may encourage further acts of espionage and undermine military discipline”
  • Critics argued it sent the message that mass disclosure of classified material carries a relatively light penalty

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9. The Ellsberg Comparison

Daniel Ellsberg (who died June 16, 2023) actively endorsed both Snowden and Manning and explicitly identified with them. But the comparison is more complicated than either side admits:

Similarities

  • All three leaked classified material they believed showed government lies or wrongdoing
  • All three faced prosecution under the Espionage Act
  • All three believed the public needed the information

Critical Differences

  • Ellsberg read every page of the Pentagon Papers before leaking them. He knew exactly what he was disclosing. Neither Snowden nor Manning could have reviewed the volume of material they took.
  • Ellsberg stayed in the U.S. and faced trial. Snowden fled. Manning didn’t flee but also didn’t come forward voluntarily.
  • The Pentagon Papers were historical analysis (a government study of decision-making from 1945-1967). They did not contain current operational details, source names, or intelligence methods.
  • Volume: Ellsberg leaked ~7,000 pages of one study. Manning leaked ~700,000 documents. Snowden took 1.5M+ files.

Ellsberg himself dismissed these distinctions, arguing the principle was the same. But the security community sees fundamental differences in scope, curation, and responsibility.

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PART III: THE BROADER ARGUMENT

The People Who Did It “Right” – and Got Destroyed

This is the part that makes the insider critique uncomfortable for the insiders themselves.

Thomas Drake

  • Senior NSA executive who reported waste, fraud, and illegal surveillance through official channels: his bosses, the NSA Inspector General, the DoD Inspector General, and both Congressional intelligence committees
  • In April 2010, indicted under the Espionage Act for “retaining information”
  • The government dropped all ten original charges after the case collapsed
  • Federal Judge Richard D. Bennett called the government’s behavior “unconscionable”
  • Drake’s career was destroyed. He ended up working at an Apple Store.

William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe

  • In September 2002, Binney, Wiebe, Diane Roark, and Edward Loomis filed a formal complaint with the DoD Inspector General alleging massive fraud, waste, and mismanagement at NSA
  • In 2007, armed FBI agents raided all their homes
  • FBI agents held a gun to Binney’s head as he stepped naked from the shower, while his wife and youngest son watched the FBI ransack their home
  • Binney was demoted to prevent his access to Congressional oversight committees
  • FBI officials pressured him to implicate other complainants in criminal activity
  • Neither Binney nor Wiebe was ever charged with a crime

The Paradox

The intelligence community says Snowden should have used internal channels. The people who used internal channels were raided by the FBI, indicted, demoted, and had their careers destroyed. Thomas Drake did everything “right” and still got prosecuted under the Espionage Act. This is the single most powerful argument in Snowden’s favor, and it’s one the IC has never adequately answered.

Snowden himself has cited Drake’s treatment as a primary reason he went to journalists rather than through channels.

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The Digital Native’s Thesis: Bulk Exfiltration Is Not Whistleblowing

The book’s argument, stated directly:

Whistleblowing is the targeted disclosure of specific wrongdoing. Daniel Ellsberg read 7,000 pages and knew what every one of them said. He could have testified about the content.

What Snowden and Manning did was bulk data exfiltration. Snowden took 1.5 million files, the vast majority of which he could not have reviewed. Manning grabbed 700,000+ documents – “everything you can grab” – and handed the entire cache to WikiLeaks. Neither of them fully understood what they were taking.

This isn’t a rhetorical distinction. It’s an operational one:

  • When you take everything, you take the military capabilities documents alongside the surveillance documents
  • When you take everything, you take the names of Afghan informants alongside the war crime evidence
  • When you take everything, you create a situation where the editorial decisions about what to publish fall to journalists (Greenwald), activists (Assange), or accident (David Leigh publishing a passphrase in a book)

The hacker community romanticizes “information wants to be free.” But information attached to a human source in Kandahar has a body attached to it. The 900 Afghan nationals named in Manning’s files didn’t consent to transparency.

The Media’s Incentive Structure

The media had powerful incentives to frame Snowden and Manning as heroes:

  • “Whistleblower vs. Government” is a better story than “contractor steals military secrets, most unrelated to surveillance”
  • The Pulitzer Prizes went to The Guardian and Washington Post for the Snowden reporting
  • The relationship between journalists and their sources creates a structural bias toward defending the source
  • Documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras won an Academy Award for Citizenfour
  • Greenwald built an entire media company (The Intercept) on the Snowden archive
  • The adversarial posture toward government surveillance aligned with existing editorial positions at major outlets

None of this means the reporting was wrong. But it means the framing was not neutral, and alternative framings – “contractor steals crown jewels of NSA capabilities, most having nothing to do with domestic surveillance” – never got the Hollywood treatment.

The Security Community’s Internal Division

The hacker and security community is genuinely split:

Pro-Snowden/Manning faction:

  • The surveillance state is real and was unconstitutional
  • The “proper channels” argument is invalidated by what happened to Drake, Binney, and Wiebe
  • The reforms that followed (USA FREEDOM Act, encryption, awareness) justify the disclosures
  • The government always claims “damage” to avoid accountability
  • Information asymmetry between the government and the governed is inherently dangerous

Anti-Snowden/Manning faction:

  • Sources and methods exist to protect human beings, not to cover up embarrassment
  • Bulk exfiltration is not whistleblowing – it’s theft with a better narrative
  • The damage to military operations and intelligence capabilities was real, even if the surveillance reforms were legitimate
  • You don’t get to claim moral purity while living under FSB protection in Moscow
  • The 900 Afghan names in Manning’s files represent real people whose lives were endangered by someone else’s idealism
  • The hacker community’s “information wants to be free” ethos doesn’t account for the bodies attached to classified sources

The uncomfortable middle:

  • Even if the method was wrong, the information was necessary
  • Even if the information was necessary, the method caused real harm
  • The system for handling whistleblowers is broken (as proven by Drake/Binney)
  • But that doesn’t retroactively justify taking everything and giving it to journalists/activists who may not understand the consequences
  • Both Snowden and Manning forced conversations that needed to happen, at a cost that others paid

Key Quotes for the Book

Gen. Martin Dempsey (Chairman, Joint Chiefs): “The vast majority of the documents that Snowden exfiltrated from our highest levels of security had nothing to do with exposing government oversight of domestic activities.”

Daniel Ellsberg: “I identify more with Chelsea Manning and with Edward Snowden than with any other people on Earth.”

Adrian Lamo: “There were no right choices that day, only less wrong ones.”

HPSCI Report: “The public narrative popularized by Snowden and his allies is rife with falsehoods, exaggerations, and crucial omissions.”

Snowden: “I was actually functioning at a very senior level… I designated individuals and groups for targeting.”

Federal Judge Richard D. Bennett (on Thomas Drake’s prosecution): The government’s behavior was “unconscionable.”

New York Times (on Collateral Murder): WikiLeaks “in its zeal to make the video antiwar propaganda, also released a version that didn’t call attention to an Iraqi who was toting a rocket-propelled grenade.”

Manning’s psychiatrist: Gender identity disorder “combined with narcissistic personality traits, post-adolescent idealism, and his lack of friends in Iraq caused him to reasonably conclude he could change the world.”

Summary: What the Book Should Argue

The “Lurk More” thesis should be:

  1. Snowden and Manning are not simple heroes or simple traitors. They’re something more complicated – people who exposed real wrongdoing through methods that also caused real harm to real people who had nothing to do with domestic surveillance or war crimes.

  2. The scale matters. Taking 1.5 million files is not whistleblowing. Dumping 700,000 documents on WikiLeaks is not whistleblowing. The word “whistleblower” implies precision, and what both did was the opposite of precise.

  3. The system is broken. The people who did it “right” (Drake, Binney, Wiebe) were destroyed. This doesn’t justify what Snowden and Manning did, but it explains it, and the government has never reckoned with this failure.

  4. The media framing was not neutral. The story of a lone hero defying a surveillance state is a better story than the full picture, which includes 900,000 military files, an RPG in the Collateral Murder video, and a home in Moscow. Journalists had structural incentives to tell the simpler version.

  5. The reforms were real but incomplete. The USA FREEDOM Act, Apple encryption, and FISA Court reforms are genuine positive outcomes. But they could have been achieved without compromising military operations, intelligence sources, and the names of Afghan informants.

  6. The hacker community needs to grow up about this. “Information wants to be free” is not a moral framework adequate to a world where classified documents have human names in them. The digital native who calls them traitors isn’t wrong, and neither is the civil libertarian who calls them heroes. The full picture contains both.

This research brief compiled from public sources including: HPSCI reports, federal court filings, DoD damage assessments obtained via FOIA, journalism from NPR, Washington Post, New York Times, The Intercept, BuzzFeed News, The Guardian, ABC News, NBC News, CNBC, and academic analysis. All major claims are sourced above.

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