Until Edward Snowden openly revealed himself to the "Guardian's" Glenn Greenwald, in a 12 minute video interview, that he indeed was the whistleblower exposing the NSA's data mining of Americans, he was just another unknown analyst in the NSA's cyber snooping world working as a private contractor analyst for "Booz Allen", the private company under contract with the U.S. government.
Snowden's name will now forever be associated with the likes of Bradley Manning and Daniel Ellsberg as those men of conscience, true American patriots that saw their country being usurped by government secrecy and policies that revealed the unseemly truth behind how we conducted war in Viet Nam and in our latest wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, the global war on terror as well as clandestinely in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia and now the surveillance state of data mining conducted by the NSA of all electronic communications of Americans.
Patriotism in America has too often been twisted by the government and the corporate media with phony expressions of triumphalism, flag waving and extolling the U.S. military as heroes, while the true patriots are maligned as aiding the enemy.
Those whistleblowers mentioned above didn't see themselves as heroes but men whose conscience wouldn't let them continue to be a part of their government's secret wrongdoing; they needed it be exposed to the American people.
Snowden, in the 12 minute video with Greenwald said his greatest fear regarding the outcome for America is "nothing will be done" and the people won't "fight to change things."
Rob Kall's OPEDNEWS headline article, "Hero!!!! Glenn Greenwald Identifies Ed Snowden as his NSA Whistleblower Source" makes Snowden's video interview easy to download. It's must viewing.
