On Friday in a press conference at the White House East Room, Barack Obama responded to a question from NBC’s Chuck Todd about NSA leaker Edward Snowden by saying Snowden was “not a patriot.” Obama said that Snowden had been charged with three felonies and said if Snowden believes what he did was right, he could come back to the United States to be charged.
As to concerns that Snowden had to speak via the press out of fear, Obama said he provided whistleblower protections to the intelligence community for somebody “whose conscience was stirred and thought they had to question government actions.”
There’s no doubt that Snowden’s leaks had created a more “passionate” response than it otherwise would have been, Obama said, “but we actually would have gotten to the same place… without putting at risk our national security.”
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).
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