NSA says Snowden e-mails exempt from public disclosure and secret

[MADem]

70. He needs to sign a release, and get it all out there.

Then NSA can issue (redacted, if necessary) copies of these letters.

I still do not understand why he didn't take copies of his dramatic emails. It's just a "too clever by half" ploy. He and the NSA are picking at each other like children in the playground. If he'd just taken his emails with him, and put them out there for all to see, like he's done with so many other documents, we wouldn't be going through all this foolishness.


Who in their right mind doesn't take with them the few important documents that might exonerate them?

Makes no sense.

Now, if the emails talk about things like taking leave for medical reasons, or personal psychiatric issues, or other things protected by the privacy act, the agency IS constrained from releasing those. Snowden can demand copies and release them himself, if he'd like. If they say things like "I am working on (REDACTED TOP SECRET PROGRAM) but I need leave to deal with my (REDACTED MEDICAL ISSUE) you're going to see some parts blotted out. And those can't be released to anyone but Snowden because they deal with personnel issues.

Bottom line is this:

Though the request did not specify records related to Snowden’s claim that he raised concerns about the legality clandestine NSA surveillance programs, Phillips wrote that “there are no e-mails indicating that Mr. Snowden contacted agency officials to raise concerns about NSA programs.”

So, we might not learn about his leave requests, his medical problems, his personnel issues, his disagreements with his bosses, his complaints to the personnel office, his allegation of workplace harassment, his complaint that he was unfairly denied a raise, to include complaints to legal agencies within the agency, any of that stuff...but NSA is still saying “there are no e-mails indicating that Mr. Snowden contacted agency officials to raise concerns about NSA programs.”

I don't think anything has been proven here at all. We're still at the same place we were a month or six ago.

Snowden needs to produce his emails. It's put up or shut up time. He wrote them, he should have kept copies--he sure as hell kept copies of everything else; now it's just a foolish "Waaah waaah, I know what I am, but what are you?" game.