Edward Snowden
Labeled a Modernday Alger Hiss
By Cliff Kincaid – November 1, 2013
Former Republican Senator Jon Kyl says former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, now
living in Moscow, is “this generation’s Alger Hiss” and “may be one of the worst traitors
in the history of our nation.” Alger Hiss, the State Department official who was convicted
of perjury in 1950 for denying he was a Soviet spy, served 44 months in prison.
In remarks prepared for delivery on Thursday night to the “Pumpkin Papers Irregulars”
dinner in Washington, D.C., Kyl said, “As with Hiss, many in the public seem to be
confused about whether Snowden is a ‘hero’ or a ‘traitor,’ with many, especially young
people, more worried about the National Security Agency than Edward Snowden. Much
of this confusion is the fault of the same media that is reaping large financial windfalls
from publishing highly damaging news articles and stories.”
Rejecting claims by some conservatives and libertarians that Snowden is a hero or
whistleblower for stealing and releasing classified information, Kyl, who retired from the
Senate after the 2012 election, said, “Heroes and whistleblowers don’t admittedly steal
thousands of classified documents about some of NSA’s most sensitive collection
activities, give copies of them to the media, flee to that bastion of personal and political
freedom, the People’s Republic of China, and, in an irony to end all ironies, seek
political asylum in Russia.”
Snowden gave much of the stolen material to Glenn Greenwald, who has now left the
British Guardian newspaper to work for billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.
Greenwald had been a regular participant in communist conferences, featuring Marxist
enemies of the United States, and this month will speak to a conference of the Council
on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood front.
In comments that could be seen as directed toward some of his fellow Republicans,
such as Senator Rand Paul (KY) or Rep. Justin Amash (MI), the former senator from
Arizona said, “I don’t know whether I’m more dismayed by our failure to protect national
secrets, the despicable actions of Snowden and Greenwald, or the naivety of many
Americans and even leaders in their reaction to the disclosures.”
Amash, who has partnered with far-left Democratic Rep. John Conyers (MI) in a
legislative effort to undermine the surveillance programs of the NSA, was a featured
speaker at an anti-NSA rally on October 26 in Washington, D.C., in support of
Snowden. The event was organized by the George Soros-funded Free Press group.
Senator Rand Paul jumped to Snowden’s defense as the disclosures were being made,
even as the former NSA contractor was making his way to Moscow. Snowden has since
been indicted for espionage and theft of government secrets.
M. Stanton Evans
The term “pumpkin papers” carries special significance for anti-communists and national
security experts and analysts. It is a reference to microfilm copies of secret and stolen
State Department documents given to Whittaker Chambers by State Department official
Alger Hiss for transmission to the Soviet Union. They constituted absolute proof of
Hiss’s guilt and role as a Soviet spy. Chambers broke with the Communist Party and
wrote the classic book, Witness, about his conversion to the cause of freedom.
The “Pumpkin Papers Irregulars” dinner is held every year to pay tribute to Chambers
and those who follow in his footsteps. One of those honored this year was Diana West,
author of American Betrayal, about communist penetration of the U.S. government
during and after World War II. She described the depth of the communist penetration,
comparing it to the modern-day Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the Obama
administration, and the purging from intelligence and training materials of any negative
comments about Islam.
Other speakers included author and veteran journalist M. Stanton Evans; Professor
Paul Kengor, who wrote The Communist, about Barack Obama’s communist mentor;
and Alfred S. Regnery, a former publisher of The American Spectator. Kengor paid
tribute to William P. Clark, also known as “Bill Clark” or “Judge Clark,” a former top
adviser to Ronald Reagan who passed away recently.
A highlight of the evening was Kenneth deGraffenreid announcing the nominees for the
shameful “Victor Navasky Award,” named after the publisher emeritus of The Nation
and representing indifference or blindness to the evils of totalitarianism. Navasky had
famously asked the question, in regard to the Alger Hiss case, “Espionage, is it really so
wrong?”
Among his various positions, deGraffenreid served as Senior Director of Intelligence
Programs at the National Security Council from 1981-1987. While he introduced his
remarks about the award and the nominees by saying, “this is all done in good humor,”
his speech was a combination of jokes and serious warnings about national security
problems and the people who had caused them.
For example, taking a cue from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who deflected
questions about her responsibility for the deaths of four Americans at Benghazi,
deGraffenreid listed other nominees for the Navasky Award and their anti-American
activities, and jokingly posed the question, “What difference at this point does it make?”
For this audience, it makes all the difference in the world.
One of the runners up was “Sandinista and Cuba worshipper” Bill de Blasio, the
Obama-backed Democratic “progressive” candidate for mayor of New York City.
DeGraffenreid said de Blasio “…also has a soft spot for Islamic terrorists, vowing to
dismantle the New York PD’s outstanding counter-terrorism program…”
But deGraffenreid saved a lot of invective for NSA leaker Edward Snowden, another
nominee, calling him a “vain and impudent product of the moral nihilism produced by
the American left’s 50 year assault on America, its values, its achievements, and its
strengths.” He said Snowden is “as damaging a spy as any we have seen in the long
history of betrayal.”
While it is possible the Obama administration could use the NSA for corrupt purposes
against the American people, he said, “we must be crystal clear: Snowden is a
premeditated calculating spy who defected to Russia and shared the secrets of
America’s necessary intelligence capabilities—and by the way some of the crown jewels
of our intelligence capabilities—with our enemies.”
He said Snowden’s “leak a week stories” are designed to inflict “maximum damage to
U.S. national security,” which is why he has become “a hero and rallying symbol of the
international and home grown anti-American left.”
DeGraffenreid predicted Snowden would one day meet with a terrible accident, perhaps
by falling down a back stairway, “when he is no longer of use to the FSB,” the successor
to the old Soviet KGB.
Diana West
Still, Snowden didn’t win the Navasky award. Instead, it went to Saul Alinsky, author of
Rules for Radicals, who has inspired such figures as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Obama himself had gotten the award two other years.
Kyl, who for personal reasons could not appear in person to deliver his speech, served
in a series of top leadership posts in the Senate. He explained in his remarks that the
classified programs that Snowden has willfully disclosed “are legal and have been
subjected to some of the closest legislative, executive, and judicial branch scrutiny of
any intelligence program in our nation’s history.”
He added, “If some of these programs had been in existence before 9/11, the attacks of
that day may well have never happened. The foreign intelligence information from these
programs has been used to disrupt terrorist plots against the United States and our
allies.”
“My hope is that we will be blessed with leaders with the uncommon courage of
Whittaker Chambers; leaders who can help us bring Edward Snowden, our modern-day
Alger Hiss, to justice,” Kyl said. “For as much harm as Hiss did to our country and to
patriots like Chambers, we are just beginning to understand the breadth and depth of
damage Snowden and his cohorts have done and are doing to our country. Our work is
to testify that this is wrong and it must not be made worse by taking the easier political
course” of making changes to the NSA in response to the media’s sensational but
misleading coverage of the agency.
The former senator said he is aware of legislative maneuvers to gut the NSA’ s
surveillance programs by repealing or prohibiting Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which
permits the bulk collection of phone call data in the possession of third party
telecommunications carriers.
One of those maneuvers, supported by Rep. Amash, is the so-called USA Freedom Act,
also known as H.R. 3361.
If that section is modified so that it can no longer be used to collect bulk data, Kyl said,
“That would deprive the Intelligence Community of an important tool necessary to help
identify terrorist networks or corroborate information about those networks from other
intelligence sources.”
He said that “while there are a lot of emotional and purely hypothetical concerns about
this bulk data collection, the fact is, there is no infringement of my privacy or the privacy
of anybody else
arising out of this program.”
He found it ironic that content collection is done by companies in the private sector
which advise Internet users of products they may find interesting, based on previous
buying patterns. “That is content collection by the private sector being acted upon, yet
no one seems to be getting too upset about it,” he noted.
Kyl also warned against other proposed changes to NSA programs that would “make it
harder for our intelligence professionals to gather or share information than it would for
an ordinary criminal investigator” solving crimes. He also said our enemies should not
be given “better insight into our intelligence sources and method” so they can take
countermeasures against us.