Snowden Says They Want To Kill Him

The interview with Edward Snowden which the first German television channel, ARD, aired on Sunday evening was extraordinary for several reasons. In the first place, it was the first in-depth interview with the former National Security Agency-contracted agent who has become the most notable dissident we have seen this century, a hero of our times who has proved the existence of Big Brother, a kind of Thomas Aquinas of the 21st century, with documentation. Journalistically speaking, it was what is known as a “scoop,” a valuable global exclusive story.

Along with that, the interview, which was conducted in Moscow — judging by the furniture, in the Russian capital’s Metropol or National Hotel — was also extraordinary for the content Snowden voiced in it, beginning by stating that “government officials want to kill me.”

And thirdly, it was notable for its reporting. Normally in the face of an interview like this, the television first broadcasts the interview and later organizes a debate about it. In this case it was the reverse: first the debate over what no one had yet seen and then the interview. The motive was to bypass the audience: The debate took place at peak audience hour — and had 4.5 million television viewers — and the interview at 11:15 p.m., when the majority of Germans had already gone to bed, despite an audience of 2 million remaining. Even so, it was news: The next day, Monday, every German newspaper picked up on the interview. But not in the U.S., where press agencies, television stations and newspapers made no mention of the subject.

German television advertised the debate over the interview with a slapdash title like “Hero or Traitor?”, a rather popular alternative for the (political and journalistic) establishment, but absolutely bizarre for the current people reasonably worried about being Big Brother’s prey in their computers, telephones, travels or economies, for which the question is quite clearly absurd.

Edward Snowden himself responded to the question, saying: “If I am a traitor, who did I betray? I gave all my information to the American public, to American journalists who are reporting on American issues. If they see that as treason, I think people really need to consider who do they think they’re working for? The public is supposed to be their boss, not their enemy. Beyond that, as far as my personal safety, I’ll never be fully safe until these systems have changed.”

Snowden pointed out the military quote on the American website Buzzfeed, which said: “If we had the chance, we would end it very quickly; casually walking on the streets of Moscow, coming back from buying his groceries. Going back to his flat and he is casually poked by a passerby … He goes home very innocently and next thing you know he dies in the shower.” Another NSA analyst said: “In a world where I would not be restricted from killing an American, I personally would go and kill him myself.” The analyst’s theory is incorrect as the Obama administration has already extrajudicially assassinated at least two U.S. citizens with drones: Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, originally from Yemen and a naturalized American, and his 16-year-old son Abdulrajman, born in Colorado. But that is just the tip of the iceberg.

“These people, and they are government officials, have said they would love to put a bullet in my head or poison me when I come out of the supermarket and then watch as I die in the shower,” Snowden calmly stated while smiling. He sleeps peacefully because he considers what he did was necessary according to his conscience.

The dissident, who has been made into a global outcast by Western complicity with the abuse by the United States, spelled out his actions in crystal clear terms in defense of the most basic civil rights. “Every time you pick up the phone, dial a number, write an email, make a purchase, travel on the bus carrying a cell phone, swipe a card somewhere, you leave a trace and the government has decided that it’s a good idea to collect it all, everything, even if you’ve never been suspected of any crime.”

The former agent described the “decisive moment” which caused him to go public with the NSA documents. It was in March 2013, “seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress.” Clapper denied the existence of programs which gather information about millions of American citizens. That “was the proof” that there was nothing else to do and that only blowing the whistle from within could expose the truth: “The public had a right to know about these programs. The public had a right to know that which the government is doing in its name and that which the government is doing against the public.”

Snowden is in Moscow, not in Germany, France or any other European country, because those countries’ governments don’t want him there. “I can’t remember the list of countries with any specificity because there were many of them,” he said.

Asked about the accusation that what he has done is “illegal,” Snowden distinguished between the trivial notion of what is legal and what is right. “I think it’s clear that there are times where what is lawful is distinct from what is rightful. There are times throughout history, and it doesn’t take long for either an American or a German to think about times in the history of their country, where the law provided the government to do things which were not right.” The observation hit a very sensitive, and more than obvious, nerve in German memory: the Nazis’ “Unrecht,” under which racism and the most abominable crimes against humanity were legal.

When asked about the possibility of returning to the United States to be tried, Snowden said that according to the Espionage Act of 1917, that would mean accepting a “show trial,” like Bradley/Chelsea Manning’s, where he wouldn’t be allowed to mount a defense against an illegal espionage apparatus and where the necessary documents for his defense would be declared “classified,” making it impossible to appeal to the democratic sense of the judges.

The dissident suggests that not just Merkel but a good part of the German political and economic world has been spied on by the NSA, up to businesses like Siemens or Mercedes, even though they are not involved with security and are involved with economic interests.

In the debate in the ARD’s studio which preceded the broadcast from Moscow, when the former U.S. ambassador to Germany, John Kornblum, one of the guests, responded to Snowden’s assassination, poisoning or kidnapping theory, saying, “I completely rule that out,”* the auditorium burst out in laughter. When the parliamentarian Hans-Christian Ströbele said that “it is an embarrassment to democracy and the rule of law that Snowden need to take refuge in Moscow,”* there was great applause.

The public sympathies remained clear, despite the ARD’s efforts to move its global scoop from peak audience hour and use a very biased title. Only 14 percent of Germans consider Snowden to be a “criminal.” That doesn’t change the reality of Big Brother, but it does complicate his life.

*Editor’s Note: These quotations, accurately translated, could not be verified.