keithamassey

Neither. He broke the law, but he seems to have done so out of a place of conviction. So he's no villain. He's no hero, however, because I think he honestly misunderstood the materials he leaked. We've learned since his leak that there existed significant oversight over these programs and the companies involved divulged information only through specific info requests.

While I was still there, I wrote FISA requests. It was a time consuming and arduous task. It meant I had to stay frequently at work deep into the night to be available to answer questions if necessary. I never did it unless it truly mattered. That explains the success rate.

That really is a great question. Why do we believe anyone we encounter in our lives? The reason is, if we really approached life from the standpoint that everyone is probably lying, we would be paralyzed into inactivity. But our experience is otherwise. Most people who seem to be speaking in good faith are not lying to us. There's nothing further I can say that will make you believe me.

As the President has said, this is a balance and a conversation we do need to have. Having worked inside one of those agencies, I know they are very accountable. Congressional committees aggressively oversee intelligence activities. Every year, I was required to read the Constitution of the United States. I would be at my work station and suddenly a pop up window appears. And I can not do anything else until I have clicked though that pop up window, which shows me sentence by sentence the Constitution. And I took that seriously. I read it. We served to protect the Constitution, not violate it. The notion that Snowden didn't like what we were doing and so fled to Hong Kong (China) and then Russia is a delicious irony. All countries conduct espionage. But we really do allow free speech here.

Great question. It was not an every day event, but yes, I did take part in intelligence processing that involved attack planning. I can tell you that every time it happened my heart would pound within my chest as I tried to do my job, my fingers sometimes shaking as I typed reports, knowing the time sensitive nature of this job. We stopped attacks. It never got dull...