snip
"On deciding to share classified material with journalists and setting conditions for the publication of the material
I tried to reconstruct the system of checks and balances by using myself to provide documents to the journalists, but never to publish them myself. People don't realize this, but I never made public a single document. I trusted that role to the journalists to decide what the public did and did not need to know. Before the journalists published these stories, they had to go to the government, and this was a condition that I required them to do, and tell the government, warn them they're about to run this story about this program and the government could argue against publication and say, "You've got it wrong," or "You've got it right." But if you publish this is going to hurt somebody. In every case I'm aware of, that process was followed, and that's why in 2019 we've never seen any evidence at all presented by the government that someone's been harmed as a result of these stories. (Editor's note: A 2016 report by the House intelligence committee cited more than 20 examples of which, it said, Snowden damaged national security. The details of those instances were redacted.)
snip to end of interview with NPR
My ultimate goal will always be to return to the United States. And I've actually had conversations with the government, last in the Obama administration, about what that would look like, and they said, "You should come and face trial." I said, "Sure. Sign me up. Under one condition: I have to be able to tell the jury why I did what I did, and the jury has to decide: Was this justified or unjustified." This is called a public interest defense and is allowed under pretty much every crime someone can be charged for. Even murder, for example, has defenses. It can be self-defense and so on so forth, it could be manslaughter instead of first-degree murder. But in the case of telling a journalist the truth about how the government was breaking the law, the government says there can be no defense. There can be no justification for why you did it. The only thing the jury gets to consider is did you tell the journalists something you were not allowed to tell them. If yes, it doesn't matter why you did it. You go to jail. And I have said, as soon as you guys say for whistleblowers it is the jury who decides if it was right or wrong to expose the government's own lawbreaking, I'll be in court the next day.
Sam Briger and Thea Chaloner produced and edited the audio of this interview. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the Web.
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/19/761918152/exiled-nsa-contractor-edward-snowden-i-haven-t-and-i-won-t-cooperate-with-russia
i call BS on the outrage now. It is all just theater. I apologize for my cynicism.
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