NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden notes ‘extraordinary change’ in attitudes toward him during Democratic primary debate
Snowden was asked if he would vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump but declined to comment.
Edward Snowden has described the Democratic presidential debate last month as marking an “extraordinary change”in attitudes towards him.
In a lengthy interview with Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter published on Friday, Snowden said he had been encouraged by the debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, her main challenger for the Democratic nomination.
During the televised encounter, both candidates called for Snowden to face trial , but Sanders said he thought the NSA whistleblower had “played a very important role in educating the American people”.
That marked an important shift in the US debate over Snowden’s action, he said.
The former National Security Agency analyst said it had taken 30 years for Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam war, to shift from being described regularly as a traitor. But not once in the debate had Snowden been referred to as a traitor.
Snowden, who is living in exile in Moscow after leaking tens of thousands of secret documents from the NSA and its sister agency in the UK, GCHQ, said: “I did see the debate live. It was actually extraordinarily encouraging. In 2013, they were calling for me to be hanged. They were using the word ’traitor’ and things like ’blood on your hands’.
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