Revolt at Washington Post over paper’s call for arrest and imprisonment of its source

Washington journalist sources report that there is something of a revolt taking place at The Washington Post among many of its reporters over the paper’s recent editorial that not only rejected calls for a presidential pardon for National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden but called for his return to the United States from Russia and face arrest, prosecution, and a likely long prison term. The editorial appeared in the September 17 edition of the paper.

The Post shared a Pulitzer Prize with The Guardian for publishing stories based on classified NSA documents provided by Snowden to the newspapers. The Post’s call for Snowden’s arrest for disclosing the NSA documents to the media, including the Post, is likely the first major case in which a newspaper anywhere has called for the arrest and prosecution of one of its own sources.

According to the buzz in the nation’s capital, the Post’s editorial has been criticized internally by the Post’s top reporters across both its print and website editions. The newspaper’s management has justified the editorial by stating that it reflects only the decision of the paper’s editorial board and not the paper itself. A number of Post reporters have scoffed at that notion, pointing out the close relationship of the Post’s owner, Amazon mogul Jeff Bezos, to the intelligence community. In 2014, Amazon signed a $600 million deal with the Central Intelligence Agency to provide secure cloud computing services to the agency.

The Post maintained an extremely close relationship with the intelligence community before the paper’s sale to Bezos.

The Post editorial states: “Ideally, Mr. Snowden would come home and hash out all of this before a jury of his peers. That would certainly be in the best tradition of civil disobedience, whose practitioners have always been willing to go to jail for their beliefs.” However, Dr. Martin Luther King and other civil disobedience protesters did not possess compartmented access and top secret security clearances and none were sources for the Post.

The Post’s editorial board, known for its neoconservative slant, could not resist a slam on Russian President Vladimir Putin in its call for Snowden’s criminal prosecution, “Mr. Snowden hurt his own credibility as an avatar of freedom by accepting asylum from Russia’s Vladi­mir Putin, who’s not known for pardoning those who blow the whistle on him.” There were limits on where Snowden could go for asylum. Snowden’s flight from Hong Kong to Moscow, enabled by China, was the whistleblower’s only recourse. Any flight from Hong Kong to Latin America, where Snowden would have been welcomed in Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, or Uruguay, would have not only entered U.S. airspace but would have entailed a stopover at an airport where the U.S. would have most certainly bagged Washington’s most-wanted man. Moscow was Snowden’s only option.

In its editorial, the Post cited “damage” to national security caused by Snowden’s disclosures. The examples provided indicate that NSA provided off-the-record damage assessment information to Post publisher Fred Ryan, Jr., and editor Martin Baron. The editorial cited Snowden’s disclosures of “cooperation with Scandinavian services against Russia” and “certain offensive cyber operations in China” as examples of egregious breaches in U.S. national security. The Post did not come up with these examples on its own. The paper called these “basically defensible international intelligence operations.” In fact, NSA’s cooperation with Swedish and Finnish intelligence services in operations targeting Russia is a violation of the neutrality of both Scandinavian countries. Offensive cyber operations against China also constitute violations of several treaties and agreements between the United States and China. NSA considers “third party” signals intelligence agreements with countries like Sweden the “holy grail.” In 2013, Snowden’s documents disclosed that Sweden’s FRA signals intelligence agency spied on Russian leaders and shared the data with NSA.

The Post reporters who are rebelling against the paper’s neocon editorial board deserve credit for sticking up for its source, Snowden, and for the journalistic principle of never burning a source. However, in the end, these reporters will lose out. When the first wave of layoffs are announced at the Post’s leased offices at One Franklin Square, those who most ardently defended Snowden will undoubtedly find themselves on the top of the list to be escorted off the property, clutching their boxes of personal belongings. Welcome to the paper where the CIA and NSA now combines forces with the uber-capitalist Bezos—a place where real journalists dare not tread.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

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Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).