Edward Snowden declares mission 'accomplished'

◼ National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden declared victory in his fight with the government, saying that his "mission's already accomplished." - Washington Examiner

In an interview published Tuesday in the Washington Post, Snowden said that his disclosures about the extent of NSA surveillance on phone and internet traffic had achieved his goal of sparking a debate over the nation's intelligence operations.

“For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished,” said Snowden. “I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated."

"I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself,” Snowden said about his leaks....

“All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed,” Snowden told the Washington Post. “That is a milestone we left a long time ago. Right now, all we are looking at are stretch goals.”

◼ "I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don’t realize it." Says Edward Snowden. - Althouse
◼ Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished - Barton Gellman/Washington Post

Snowden offered vignettes from his intelligence career and from his recent life as “an indoor cat” in Russia. But he consistently steered the conversation back to surveillance, democracy and the meaning of the documents he exposed....

The NSA’s business is “information dominance,” the use of other people’s secrets to shape events. At 29, Snowden upended the agency on its own turf....

By his own terms, Snowden succeeded beyond plausible ambition. The NSA, accustomed to watching without being watched, faces scrutiny it has not endured since the 1970s, or perhaps ever....

People who accuse him of disloyalty, he said, mistake his purpose.

“I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA,” he said. “I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don’t realize it.”

What entitled Snowden, now 30, to take on that responsibility?

“That whole question — who elected you? — inverts the model,” he said. “They elected me. The overseers.”

He named the chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees.

“Dianne Feinstein elected me when she asked softball questions” in committee hearings, he said. “Mike Rogers elected me when he kept these programs hidden. . . . The FISA court elected me when they decided to legislate from the bench on things that were far beyond the mandate of what that court was ever intended to do. The system failed comprehensively, and each level of oversight, each level of responsibility that should have addressed this, abdicated their responsibility.”

◼ Greenwald Snarks at MSNBC: I Defend Snowden Like You Defend Obama ’24 Hours a Day’ - Mediaite