Snowden and the Wishy-Washy Gabbard

In the time and place of political opportunists Tulsi Gabbard has found her place.

The former Representative, and former Democratic candidate for president, has put her name forward to be head of the Department of National Intelligence under President Trump’s unsurprisingly far right-wing government.

In this role, created in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Gabbard would oversee 18 intelligence agencies with a budget of about $100 billion and serve as the principal adviser to the president on intelligence matters.

To Gabbard’s credit, in an McCarthy-like hearing in a Senate committee to out find if she was the right person, she failed to call former intelligence analyst and whistleblower Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States.

Later, according to NBC, Gabbard, who “had previously called for Snowden to be pardoned” reversed herself at the hearing, saying she would not seek a pardon or clemency for the former National Security Agency contractor accused of espionage.

Edward Snowden made the same mistake that Reality Winner, and other intelligence analysts have made. He released government information that the government was lying to, and spying on, its own citizens.

In the hearing in which Gabbard refused, correctly, to call Snowden a traitor she said about Snowden that “he broke the law”.

As Snowden himself has said, When exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are being ruled by criminals.

Time will tell how wishy-washy Gabbard will be, either in this role or in any other.