Rhetoric of Whistleblowing: Decoding the Edward Snowden Model

Barak Bullock 1

Rhetoric of Whistleblowing: Decoding the Edward Snowden Model

Barak Bullock

Special Honors in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing

The University of Texas at Austin May 2015

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Patricia Roberts-Miller Department of Rhetoric and Writing Supervising Professor

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Dan Smith Department of Rhetoric and Writing Second Reader

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Chapter I:

The Rhetorical Situation of a Whistleblower

The Snowden Leak

On June 5th, 2013, British daily newspaper The Guardian published a classified top secret

intelligence document taken from the National Security Agency. It was a secret court order drafted by

the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which revealed that US telecommunications giant

Verizon was being forced to hand over the metadata of millions of US customers to the NSA. With

their metadata collection program, the NSA could identify callers’ numbers, locations, the time and

duration of calls and any other unique identifiers of any American customer. The document proved

that under Obama’s administration, the phone records of millions of Americans were “being

collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they [were] suspected of any

wrongdoing” (Greenwald, “NSA Collecting…”).

Two days later, The Guardian and The Washington Post simultaneously published another leak.

This time it was PRISM, a program that gave the NSA direct access into the servers of US tech

firms, including Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo!. With PRISM, the NSA could

scrutinize the “search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats” of American and

foreign customers (Greenwald, “NSA Prism…”). A third story revealed BoundlessInformant, a

datamining tool which could map volumes of metadata collected from telephone or computer

networks from any country around the globe (Greenwald, “Boundless Informant…”). All of these

programs were unveiled in the span of three days by only three documents.

Then, on June 9th, The Guardian posted an interview identifying the leaker of the documents

as Edward Snowden, and employee of NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Three weeks prior,

Snowden secretly left his job, home and long-time girlfriend in Hawaii for Hong Kong, where he

leaked an enormous cache of classified documents to journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras

and Ewen MacAskill in early June. In the interview, Snowden stated the power to spy on others

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afforded to him as a senior analyst disturbed him, and declared that the public should decide whether

they approve of the NSA’s activities (Greenwald, Poitras and MacAskill). In an article on Snowden

posted June 11th, Snowden told The Guardian, "My sole motive is to inform the public as to that

which is done in their name and that which is done against them” (Greenwald, Poitras and

MacAskill). In little less than a week, the existance of the most powerful digital surveillance apparatus

on Earth – and the story behind the man who exposed it – had been brought to light.

On June 14th, federal prosecutors charged Snowden with two counts of violating the

Espionage Act and a third count of theft of government property, potentially carrying a 30 year

prison sentence (Finn and Horowitz; Herszenhorn). Seeking asylum, Snowden left Hong Kong for

Moscow on June 23rd, where he intended to board a flight towards Latin America (Makinen).

Snowden’s passport was revoked by the US government after his arrival in Moscow’s Sheremtyevo

airport, where he stayed for six weeks before being granted asylum in Russia (Kirit, Bruce). Today,

Snowden continues to live in Russia under a three-year residency permit, which allows him to travel

within the country or abroad for up to three-months (Stanglin).

The Snowden leak – which officials estimated to contain approximately 1.8 million

documents from American, British and Australian spy agencies – was called “the biggest theft of U.S.

secrets in history” by the Pentagon, and “the most catastrophic loss to British intelligence ever” by

UK security expert Sir David Omand (“Snowden Leaks…”; Strohm and Wilber). It unleashed a

whirlwind of blockbuster headlines, commanded the attention of governments, news agencies and

citizens all around the world, and engendered dramatic debates on the ethics of whistleblowing,

surveillance and national security. Public discussion born from the leaks focused on the massive

global surveillance program built by the United States government, and on Snowden himself. Since

the leaks were published, reactions to the events have been widely divergent in their views of

Snowden and whether Snowden’s actions were justified.

Soon after Snowden’s documents first appeared in headlines, the Director of National Intelligence

James Clapper called the leaks “reckless,” and said they caused “huge, grave damage” to American intelligence

capabilities (Gardner and Hosenball) (Blake). President Obama said “I don't think Mr. Snowden was a

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patriot,” and stated the leaks hurt the possibility of “a lawful, orderly examination of these laws” and “a

thoughtful fact-based debate” (Wolf). Congressmember Mike Rogers said "Snowden is no patriot” and that

the leaks had caused “irreparable harm” “to America and her allies” (Dilanian, Serrano). In April 2014,

former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said "I think turning over a lot of that material—intentionally or

unintentionally—drained, gave all kinds of information, not only to big countries, but to networks and

terrorist groups and the like” (Roller). A month later, current Secretary of State John Kerry said Snowden’s

leaks "hurt operational security,” and asserted Snowden "told terrorists what they can now do to (avoid)

detection” (“Kerry…”).

Snowden was called a “traitor” and his leaks “an act of treason” by Congressmembers Rogers, John

Boehner, Dianne Feinstein and others (Herb and Sink; Johnson; Simons). Snowden was called a spy by

former Vice President Dick Cheney (M. Williams). Journalists Jeffery Toobin, Richard Cohen and Matt Miller

called Snowden narcissistic and grandiose. Other journalists, such as David Brooks and Roger Simon,

portrayed Snowden as lonely and detached from reality. Former NSA Director Michael Hayden and former

CIA Director James Woolsey moved out of the realm of character assassination and into literal assassination

when Hayden joked about putting Edward Snowden on a kill list, and Woolsey said Snowden “should be

hanged by his neck until he is dead” if convicted of treason (Sasso; Tomlinson).

However, Snowden also received widespread acceptance for his actions. Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked

the Pentagon Papers in 1971, said “there has not been in American history a more important leak than

Edward Snowden's release of NSA material – and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years

ago” (Mirkinson). In January 2014, the editorial staff of the New York Times argued that Snowden had done

“a great service” for the US by exposing abuses, and deserved “some form of clemency that would allow him

to return home, [and] face at least substantially reduced punishment in light of his role as a whistle-

blower” (“Edward Snowden, Whistleblower”). Senator Bernie Sanders praised the value of Snowden’s leaks

when he said "the information disclosed by Edward Snowden has been extremely important in allowing

Congress and the American people to understand the degree to which the NSA has abused its authority and

violated our constitutional rights” (Press). Former Representative Ron Paul reiterated the Times’ call for

leniency by beginning a petition to grant Snowden clemency, on which he wrote: “Thanks to one man's

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courageous actions, Americans know about the truly egregious ways their government is spying on

them” (Lee).

The American and global publics also received Snowden positively in varying degrees. In the first

week of the disclosures, a Quinnipiac University poll found 55 percent of American voters said Edward

Snowden was a whistle-blower, while 34 percent said he was traitor (“Release Detail”). A Gallup poll from the

same time period found that 57 percent of Americans disapproved of federal programs which collect

telephone and Internet records to investigate terrorism, while only 37 percent approved (Newport). Later that

month, an opinion poll in Germany “showed that 50 percent of Germans consider Snowden to be a hero

and 35 percent would hide him in their homes” (Pop). In 2014, a Pew Research survey based on the median

average of 44 countries’ attitudes towards US surveillance found that 81 percent of people found surveillance

on citizens of that country unacceptable, and 62 percent found surveillance on specifically American citizens

unacceptable (“Global Opinions…”).

Snowden has been recognized for his actions with dozens of awards and accolades since 2013. The

list includes first place on Foreign Policy magazine’s 2013 list of leading Global Thinkers, Timeʹ′s Person of the

Year runner-up of 2013 (behind Pope Francis), the biennial German "whistleblower prize,” the 2014 Sam

Adams Award, and the Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize, among many others (“Edward Snowden Awarded…”;

Kopan; Scherer; “The Leading…”; “The Ridenhour Prize…”). He was also nominated to several honorary

positions, including the board of directors of the Freedom of the Press Foundation – of which Ellsberg,

Greenwald and Poitras are also directors – and Rector of the University of Glasgow (“Board of Directors”;

“Edward Snowden Elected…”). Snowden has been chosen to speak at numerous conferences and venues,

including South By Southwest in Austin, Texas, a TED conference in Vancouver, and as the alternative

speaker who followed Queen Elizabeth’s Royal Christmas Message in 2013 (Griggs, Gross; “NSA Leaker…”;

Rowan).

Perhaps most importantly, the leaks precipitated harsh criticisms of the US government’s surveillance

practices. In August 2013, President Obama appointed a panel to review the NSA’s bulk collection programs,

which found that “the government should not be permitted to collect and store mass, undigested, non-public

personal information” and that surveillance “created potential risks to public trust, personal privacy, and civil

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liberty” (Nakashima and Soltani). Later that year, US District Judge Richard J. Leon determined that the

NSA’s collection programs were unconstitutional. In his ruling, Leon insisted “Surely, such a program

infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment” (Nakashima and

Marimow). As recently as May 2015, Circuit Judge Gerard Lynch ruled NSA surveillance to be illegal, and

wrote in his decision:

“Such expansive development of government repositories of formerly private records would

be an unprecedented contraction of the privacy expectations of all Americans…We would

expect such a momentous decision to be preceded by substantial debate, and expressed in

unmistakable language. There is no evidence of such a debate” (Stempel).

On the global stage surveillance was also denounced, and Snowden was credited for his role in

disclosing evidence of surveillance. In 2013, the United Nations General Assembly “unanimously adopted a

symbolic resolution…that declares a worldwide right of individuals to online privacy” and credited Snowden

revealing the NSA’s programs (C. Williams). Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said

"we owe a great deal to [Snowden]” for his revelations on state surveillance, which were made in “the public

interest” (Nebehay and Miles). In early 2014, the European Parliament sought testimony from Snowden for

its investigation into US mass surveillance (“European Parliament Invites…”). While these reactions indicate

the presence of a healthy debate on surveillance, the status quo of surveillance has remained relatively the

same since Snowden’s initial revelations.

As the reactions above illustrate, opposing views of Snowden and his actions span a wide gulf in

attitude. One side warns of enormous danger to national security and expresses plain contempt for Snowden,

while the other celebrates him and the evidence of abuse he uncovered as a huge boon for democratic civil

liberties. Interestingly, it would seem that a large segment of the American and global public has not been

convinced by declarations of damage to US counter-terrorism operations and Snowden’s treachery. This

divide in opinion is not easily explained away through political alignment or profession, either. As we saw

earlier, Snowden was both condemned and praised by government officials and journalists of liberal and

conservative leanings. This peculiarity naturally raises the question: why does this gap in opinion exist? Or, to

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be more precise, what might explain Snowden’s positive reception among many despite the harsh criticisms

of him?

Perhaps it has something to do with the way Snowden interacted with the press when he leaked the

documents. When viewing the early Guardian interviews and reports generated by Greenwald, Poitras and

MacAskill, one gets the sense that the group deliberately intended to counter certain arguments before they

were made. For example, in their initial report on Snowden, space was devoted to explain that Snowden had

only taken documents which detailed surveillance infrastructure rather than personnel operations, so as not to

incur the argument that the leaks would put lives in danger (Greenwald, Poitras and MacAskill). This was an

argument that featured prominently in attacks on another whistleblower, former Army private Chelsea

Manning (formerly Bradley Manning). Manning is currently serving a 35-year sentence for her role in leaking

thousands of State Department cables and military reports to Wikileaks, an anti-secrecy organization. Could

Snowden have prepared for the debate surrounding his leaks by learning from those who blew the whistle on

US government practices before himself ?

If the tasks of analyzing Snowden’s public arguments and his preparation for them are to be

undertaken, then they are surely jobs for the discipline of rhetoric. Rhetorical scholarship specializes in

formulating concepts which interact with texts in various ways, such as extracting a persuasive strategy or

identifying a target audience. Therefore, in this analysis, I use three concepts from rhetorical scholarship to

investigate specific questions in the Snowden story. These concepts are the rhetorical situation, topoi, and

dissociation. These terms will each be used in different ways, but are all integral to my analysis. Each concept

will be introduced immediately before the section in which it is applied to the Snowden story. The over-

arching concept of this entire analysis is the rhetorical situation, which is introduced below.

The Rhetorical Situation

The rhetorical situation is a complex idea consisting of three main parts: an exigence, an audience and

constraints. Each individual component merits a definition before moving on to the rhetorical situation as a

whole. Bitzer, who theorized the rhetorical situation in 1968, wrote that an exigence is “an imperfection marked

by urgency; a defect, an obstacle, something waiting to be done, a thing which is other than it should

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be” (Jasinski 514). Exigences can be rhetorical or nonrhetorical – that is, they are either problems that can be

solved through discourse, or cannot.

As Bitzer writes:

“…an exigence which cannot be modified is not rhetorical…death, winter, natural

disasters – are exigences to be sure, but they are nonrhetorical. An exigence is

rhetorical when it is capable of positive modification and when positive

modification requires discourse or can be assisted by discourse” (Jasinski 514).

Subsequently, if a rhetorical exigence exists, it needs a rhetorical audience to affect or solve it. Not

every person who engages in a certain rhetorical situation is part of the rhetorical audience, which must meet

two conditions according to Bitzer: the audience must “consist only of those persons who are capable of

being influenced by discourse and of being mediators of change” (Jasinski 515). That means the audience is

made up of people who are willing to be persuaded, or who have not refused to consider alternative

perspectives, and those people must have some capacity to induce change (Jasinksi 514-515). Therefore, a

rhetorical situation exists when there is a rhetorical exigence that can be modified by a proper rhetorical

audience.

Inevitably though, rhetors face constraints in the process of eliminating exigences. Constraints, or

“circumstances which interfere with, or get in the way of, an advocate’s ability to respond to an exigence,” are

the third component of a rhetorical situation. In an example from Jasinksi, if a client of a defense attorney has

signed a confession against the attorney’s advice, the confession would become a constraint that the attorney

would have to grapple with in her battle against the exigence (the client’s prosecution) (515). Understanding

each of the “constituents” of the rhetorical situation: exigence, audience and constraints, now allows us to

understand Bitzer’s definition of the rhetorical situation:

“…a complex of persons, events, objects, and relations presenting an actual or

potential exigence that can be completely or partially removed if discourse,

introduced into the situation, can so constrain human decision or action as to

bring about the significant modification of the exigence” (Jasinski 514).

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Though seemingly complex, the rhetorical situation is essentially a description of how to address social

problems through communication. If someone identifies a societal problem, they might be able to fix it if

they voice their concern to an audience capable of doing something about it, provided there aren’t

overwhelming constraints in the way. By understanding the rhetorical situation, we can pose particular questions

about the Snowden story. What was the exigence Snowden said he wanted to fix? Who was Snowden’s

primary audience? Did Snowden overcome the constraints of the situation, reach his target audience, or

eliminate the exigence? If so, how? These are all natural questions that the rhetorical situation allows us to

investigate in any recorded instance of rhetorical discourse. However, though I have chosen to define each of

the three components of the rhetorical situation and situate them within Bitzer’s lifecycle, this analysis will be

almost entirely devoted to discussing the constraints of Snowden’s rhetorical situation as a whistleblower, rather

than his exigence or his audience.

There are three reasons for this. First, I believe defining the constraints Snowden faced and analyzing

how he navigated those constraints are the best routes to understanding Snowden’s rhetorical strategy. I also

believe those discussions contain the most useful insights into debates surrounding instrances of

whistleblowing historically. Third, the exigence and audience Snowden aimed to address can be easily

identified, providing context for the constraints. This is not to say I will not raise the questions of whether

Snowden reached his rhetorical audience or eliminated his exigence, only that I do not intend to

unequivocally claim that he did succeeded in doing so, as that would be outside the scope of this project.

What I do aim to do is define the constraints Snowden faced, examine how he navigated them, and take away

what various groups stand to gain by understanding the Snowden leaks in this way.

Because of my focus on the constraints of Snowden’s rhetorical situation, I differentiate between

rhetorical constraints and nonrhetorical constraints, much like how Bitzer differentiates between rhetorical

and nonrhetorical exigences. This dichotomy will be explored in the following two chapters. They examine

the nonrhetorical obstacles Snowden traversed before the leaks were published – such as protecting his

communications from interception, choosing a media partner to publish the leaks, and avoiding arrest. I argue

these constraints are just as important as the rhetorical ones which followed, since those hurdles would never

have been reached if Snowden had not first successfully leaked the documents. The rhetorical constraints, on

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the other hand, take the form of argumentative topoi which appear in published and widely disseminated

interviews, articles and editorials (more on that soon) that affect public perception of Snowden, and by

extension, the reformative power of the leaks.

In short, the rhetorical situation trains our attention on the rhetorical and nonrhetorical constraints in

Snowden’s position, and sets up for analyses of those constraints in next two sections using the concepts topoi

and dissociation.

Research Questions

The question which brought us to this discussion of the rhetorical situation was, “why are the

reactions to Snowden so wildly divergent?” While that question was useful for justifying a rhetorical approach

to the Snowden story, it is not the only question that I seek to explore in this analysis. With the rhetorical

situation defined, we can now add some of the questions offered earlier related to Snowden’s situation.

Specifically, my central questions in this analysis are:

• What were Snowden’s exigence and audience in his rhetorical situation?

• What were the rhetorical and nonrhetorical constraints on Snowden’s ability to accomplish his goals?

• How did Snowden navigate those constraints?

• What can Rhetoric help us understand about constraints in the situations of whistleblowers in the post-

Snowden era?

While the first question can be answered quickly by referring to Snowden’s statements within the

early Guardian reports, the other three will require the next three chapters to fully explore them. Since the

constraints sit within a configuration including exigence and audience, it makes sense to briefly define them in

Snowden’s situation to give the constraints more context. As indiciated by an earlier quote, Snowden

identified “the public” as the rhetorical audience of his leaks and the accompanying reports. A brief

definition of his exigence can also be found in the June 11th Guardian report.

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Snowden said "I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible

executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant” (Greenwald, Poitras and

MacAskill). Snowden went on to say "I really want the focus to be on these documents and the debate which

I hope this will trigger among citizens around the globe about what kind of world we want to live

in” (Greenwald, Poitras and MacAskill). On the possibility of prosectuion or pursuit, Snowden stated "I am

not afraid…because this is the choice I've made” (Greenwald, Poitras and MacAskill).

From these statements, it can be inferred that Snowden’s main goal was two-fold: to publish the

documents and get the public talking. Of course, Snowden had other goals, such as acquiring asylum

protection, but as Snowden’s last statement suggests, he considered his personal safety secondary to the

exposure of the documents. This is an important observation since it defines Snowden’s real exigence as

public ignorance of government surveillance rather than the surveillance system itselfs. In other words, his

goal was to empower the public to act rather than destroy the system single-handedly. Establishing this

benchmark is important for determining whether Snowden “successfully” overcame his constraints later in

the analysis.

The following section defines the concept of topoi before launching into a definition of Snowden’s

rhetorical and nonrhetorical constraints. This chapter is primarily a historical survey of the experiences of

whistleblowers before Snowden, who encountered specific constraints on their ability to solve their own

exigences and address their own rhetorical audiences. I argue that their experiences helped Snowden

recognize these constraints and prepare for them, much like the earlier example of how Snowden countered

the claim which affected Manning during her leak saga. It is crucial to defining these constraints before

investigating how Snowden navigated these constraints, which is the subject of the third chapter and makes

use of the concept of dissociation.

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Chapter II:

Defining Snowden’s Constraints

Topoi

Topoi, which is the plural form of topos, is a Greek word whose rhetorical definition has been broadly

defined in different ways. The closest thing to a definition in the document of the term’s origin, Aristotle’s

Rhetoric, is a general argumentative form or pattern which organize individual iterations of a larger argument.

However, this is not the only conception of topos. According to Frans van Eemeren, over time topoi has

become synonymous with “ready-made arguments”:

“…in contemporary literary scholarship the term topos has come to be used almost

exclusively to refer to these ready-made arguments ‘or, by extension, to any theme or idea

that has become a commonplace through repeated use’” (van Eemeren).

The definition of topos as common and often repeated arguements has also been supported by

Roberts-Miller, who defines topos as “the recurrent ways that people tend to argue on a subject.” Due to the

concept’s inherent ambiguity, she offers the term argumentative cliché as a possible replacement, but notes that

this term potentially overlooks the reason for an argument’s frequent repetition (Roberts-Miller, 240). Two

reasons why an argument might become cliché are: it is, in fact, a very sensible argument, or “because it is

repeated so often that people mistakenly think it has been proven” (Roberts-Miller, 240). Using topos rather

than argumentative cliché allows us to consider these reasons why arguments are so often repeated while

avoiding the word “cliché’s” embedded criticism.

Overall, the definition of topoi that will that will be used for this thesis takes traits of both definitions.

That is, they are broad categories of arguments that have been made so common through repetition that they

are often deployed immediately upon encountering familiar debates. For this thesis, those debates are the ones

that surround whistleblowers when they attempt to bring evidence of waste, irresponsibility or illegality into

public view. Among those whistleblowers, I focus on whistleblowers of US government classified documents,

such as Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, William Binney and Thomas Drake. The

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following section aims to illustrate that specific topoi have been used in the past against those whistleblowers,

highlighting their qualities as recurrent patterns which can be given legitimacy through blatant repetition. This

allows us to not only neatly organize some of the myriad arguments featured in debates over Snowden, but

show how their past use allowed Snowden to predict they would be used against him as well.

Topos will serve as a tool for closely analyzing news articles, editorials and other documents in search

of Snowden’s rhetorical and nonrhetorical constraints. This first section defines Snowden’s rhetorical

constraints, or arguments people used against him and his decision to leak the documents. I argue Snowden’s

rhetorical constraints manifest as topoi which attack Snowden’s identity and actions. This section also discusses

Snowden’s nonrhetorical constraints, which were physical and institutional barriers preventing him from

addressing the exigence of surveillance. Understanding these constraints is important not just because they

show us what Snowden had to confront to progress through his rhetorical situation, but also because they

naturally raise the questions of whether and how these constraints were overcome.

Constraints

The constraints of Snowden’s rhetorical situation were both rhetorical and nonrhetorical. In other

words, they were obstacles that Snowden could either change with discourse, or could not. In either case,

these constraints restricted Snowden’s ability to bring what he considered a major exigence, a global mass

surveillance system, to the attention of a rhetorical audience. Defining these constraints is necessary before

explaining how Snowden evaded or resolved them, which is the subject of the next section.

Snowden’s rhetorical constraints were statements of government and media commentators on the

leak story. They are illustrated in this section by news articles, editorials, interviews and videos generated in

the months and years since the leak. Many of the authors attack Snowden on the basis of his identity or his

actions, while others are simply reports of those statements by others. I intend to specifically investigate

claims that Snowden damaged American national security and the smears of Snowden’s character in a number

of different forms. I argue that these various positions constitute recurrent, ready-made topoi that have been

used on past whistleblowers to alter public perception of them. Lastly, Snowden’s rhetorical constraints were

contingent upon solving his nonrhetorical constraints.

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At the risk of oversimplification, Snowden’s nonrhetorical constraints were things he could not talk

his way out of. These included things like the channels of dissent within the government, whistleblower

protection laws, and the Obama administration’s frequent use of the Espionage Act to prosecute

whistleblowers. Practically, they represented Snowden’s obstacles to addressing the problem of mass

surveillance without being imprisoned. As mentioned earlier, Snowden had to confront these constraints

before dealing with any rhetorical ones, as Snowden’s ability to engage with the public depended on his

freedom. Besides the obvious benefits of staying out of prison, remaining free meant Snowden could

continue to collaborate with the media on surveillance reporting. This is what gave Snowden the ability to

respond to his rhetorical constraints initially, and long after the leaks were published. In that sense, it was only

possible to counter the rhetorical constraints after he navigated his nonrhetorical ones. That is why this

section begins with Snowden’s nonrhetorical constraints.

In both cases, the stories of past whistleblowers provide ample evidence for the existence of each

constraint. The whistleblowers featured in this thesis, Manning, Assange, Ellsberg, Binney and Drake, have

each been confronted with their nonrhetorical relationship to the law in differing degrees. Their experiences

with raising concerns internally, seeking protection under whistleblower protection laws and being targeted by

the Espionage Act illustrate significant legal barriers for whistleblowers. The rhetorical attacks based on

national security and personality visited upon Snowden are also reminiscent of attacks on Manning, Assange

and Ellsberg. Surveying the experiences of these past whistleblowers not only identifies the rhetorical attacks

against Snowden as commonplace topoi, it helps show the importance of Snowden’s nonrhetorical constraints

within his larger rhetorical situation.

Nonrhetorical Constraints

As mentioned earlier, Snowden’s three major nonrhetorical constraints were the government’s

internal channels of dissent, the coverage of whistleblower protection laws, and prosecution under the

Espionage Act. Different whistleblowers before Snowden encountered some of these same obstacles to

reform, but not all of them. Specifically, Binney and Drake represent the failure of dissent channels, while

Drake represents the use of whistleblower protection laws. Manning, Assange, Ellsberg and Drake all

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represent prosecution under the Espionage Act, but are by no means the only whistleblowers who have been

targeted in this way.

The first of Snowden’s major nonrhetorical constraints was the effectivness of internal channels of

dissent within the government. Ideally, these systems address the issues of waste or abuse they are designed

for, but, based on the experiences of Binney and Drake, actually constitute a constraint. That is because for

both Binney and Drake, utilizing these internal channels did not result in any substantial reform, but did

result in questioning by officials, raids on their homes, implication as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in

Binney’s case and actual charges filed under the Espionage Act in Drake’s case. Today, Binney and Drake are

both free men who comment frequently on the Snowden case, but their successes in terms of spurring

reform and avoiding retaliation are dodgy.

Binney worked for the NSA for 36 years, and was considered “one of the best analysts in

history” (Mayer). Years before 9/11, Binney and others at the NSA created ThinThread, a program which

would have analyzed mass amounts of email and phone data for potential threats while leaving innocent

civilians’ information encrypted (Mayer). But Binney’s program was passed over for Trailblazer, a much less

effective and more costly alternative, which did not protect civilian privacy. Trailblazer did not stop the 9/11

attacks from happening, and in 2006, it was “abandoned as a $1.2-billion flop” (Mayer). Binney retired from

the NSA shortly after 9/11, when he realized that NSA management modified ThinThread to spy on

American citizens in reaction to the attacks (Mayer).

Drake was a former senior executive at the NSA, who worked his first day on 9/11 (Mayer). He, like

Binney, was of the minority who favored ThinThread over Trailblazer. Drake pursued the channels of dissent

available in his position: he took his his concerns to his boss, the third-highest-ranking member in the NSA,

“to the agency’s inspector general, to the Defense Department’s inspector general and to the Congressional

intelligence committees” (Shane). The report to the Department of Defense is particularly illustrative of

Binney and Drake’s constraint.

In September 2002, Binney and Drake cooperated in attempting to bring attention to Trailblazer

through a report to the DoD Inspector General’s office (Mayer). Drake collected evidence for the report,

while Binney, along with two other retired analysts and a congressional staffer, filed it (Mayer). The Inspector

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General’s follow-up report, which was completed in 2005 but not released to the public, was a “scathing

document” which “hasten[ed] the end of Trailblazer” (Mayer). However, the report did nothing to stop the

other programs which would endure until Snowden’s time. Coincidentally, the DoD finished its report shortly

before two New York Times reporters revealed the NSA was running a warrantless wiretapping program within

the US (Mayer). When federal officials went looking for the source of the Times leak, they found the

Trailblazer critics instead (Mayer).

In the early morning of July 26th, 2007, “armed federal agents simultaneously raided the houses of

Binney” and the other filers of the Inspector General complaint (Mayer). Earlier that year, Binney had been

questioned by the FBI three times about any connection to the Times leak (Shane, Bronner and Savage).

Nevertheless, his home was raided, and computers, disks and documents were confiscated (Shane, Bronner

and Savage). Months later, Drake was similarly raided, and the agents took “documents, computers, and

books, and removed eight or ten boxes of office files from his basement” (Mayer). Though neither Binney

nor Drake had anything to do with the Times leak, Drake had been communicating with a reporter from the

Baltimore Sun about waste within the NSA, which mired him in an extended legal battle.

As Mayer writes, “under the law, such complaints are confidential, and employees who file them are

supposed to be protected from retaliation.” However, officials claimed to have found classified documents

among his possessions as a result of the raid, leading to several charges, including the willful retention of

“national defense information” under the Espionage Act (Mayer). His indictment threatened to put Drake in

prison for thirty-five years (Mayer). Binney and the signers of the Inspector General report were also listed as

“unindicted co-conspirators” in Drake’s case (Harris).

Eventually, Drake’s charges were dropped by the government on the eve of his hearing in 2011.

Because the judge ruled that the prosecution had obstructed the defense, Drake pleaded guilty to “a single

misdemeanor count of exceeding his authorized use of an agency computer,” and was cleared of the ten or

more charges accusing Drake of “illegally possessing classified information, obstructing the investigation into

the leaks and lying to the F.B.I.” (“Ex-Official…”). Much like the first historical case of the Espionage Act

being used against a leaker (Ellsberg), the case was luckily thrown out, but the evidence of the nonrhetorical

Barak Bullock 17

constraint faced by Binney and Drake is still intact. Their effort to use internal channels of dissent, though it

sped up the demise of Trailblazer, was rewarded by intrusive raids and destructive prosecution.

The second nonrhetorical constraint facing Snowden was his protection under whistleblower

protection laws. In this scenario, Drake was also an instructive example. Drake was ultimately a victim of the

murky relationship between the Espionage Act and existing whistleblower protection laws. According to Bob

Turner, a national security expert at the University of Virginia, the Espionage Act contains no explicit

whistleblower protection, rendering those accused incapable of defending themselves in a courtroom (J.

Greenberg). But Turner also noted that Snowden could have sought protection under the Intelligence

Community Whistleblower Protection Act of 1998 (J. Greenberg). As Jon Greenberg writes:

“Under that law, Snowden could have raised his concerns with the Inspector

General’s Office at the NSA or spoken to congressional intelligence

committees…But others familiar with this legal landscape told us that no matter

what, Snowden was still vulnerable.”

According to Greenberg, Snowden’s vulnerability stems from two sources. First, other whistleblowers

from the intelligence community, such as Drake, have still been prosecuted under the Espionage Act, despite

being protected under the ICWPA. As Spencer Kimball of Deutsche Welle wrote in January 2014:

“…the [ICWPA] failed to adequately protect whistleblowers from retaliation. A former

senior executive at the NSA, Drake blew the whistle on a failed surveillance program called

Trailblazer. He used what the government calls ‘proper channels’ to express his concerns

about the program's exorbitant cost and its lack of privacy protections, reaching out to his

immediate supervisor, the office of the inspector general, and the congressional intelligence

committees.”

When Drake felt he had exhausted internal channels of dissent, he contacted a reporter from the

Baltimore Sun in 2005 to expose the illegality and waste of the Trailblazer program. As a result:

“The federal government indicted him under the US Espionage Act for supposedly taking

classified documents illegally, an allegation that unraveled before the trial. In the end, the

government dropped the charges in exchange for Drake agreeing to plead guilty to one

Barak Bullock 18

misdemeanor count of misusing a NSA computer. He was sentenced to a year of probation

and 240 hours of community service” (Kimball).

What the Drake case shows us is despite the ICWPA’s promise of protecting intelligence workers

who report abuse or waste, practical experience demonstrates that whistleblowers still suffered retaliation,

lending more credibility to claim that the government’s internal channels of dissent were ineffective.

The second vulnerability Snowden faced was the lack of support for government contractors in the

most recent whistleblower protection legislation. More legislation devoted to the protection of whistleblowers

had indeed been ratified since the Drake case: In 2012, “Congress passed and President Obama signed the

Whistleblower Protection Act” and “Obama…issued [Presidential Policy Directive 19] that same year,

extending whistleblower protections to the entire intelligence community” (Kimball). However, the precedent

of Espionage Act prosecutions such as the Drake case seem to outweigh any whistleblower’s claim to

protection under the law. William C. Banks, an expert on national security law at Syracuse University College

of Law, told Deutsche Welle he believes criminal investigations into whistleblowers tend to override

whistleblower protections:

“…I think the trump card is the criminal law. Regardless of whether the contractor or a

regular employee of a US agency is blowing the whistle, if he or she is at the same time

violating a criminal law of the United States, the whistleblower protection is

worthless” (Kimball).

If Banks is to be believed, even the whistleblower protections that certified government employees

have been provided would be eclipsed by the Espionage Act, let alone contractors such as Snowden. That

would go well beyond what it would take to demonstrate the constraint on Snowden’s ability to address

surveillance from within the government as a whistleblower. Therefore, it is the trail of Espionage Act

prosecutions itself that constitutes the third major nonrhetorical constraint on Snowden’s position, which can

be verified by the experiences of Manning, Assange, Ellsberg and Drake.

In August 2013, two months after Snowden’s first leak, Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison

for releasing thousands of military reports, State Department cables and “assessments of detainess” from

Guantanamo Bay to the publishing site Wikileaks (Tate). Assange, the lead editor of Wikileaks, has been

Barak Bullock 19

trapped in London’s Ecuadorean embassy since 2012 under the threat of extradition to the US for his

involvement in Manning’s leak. Ellsberg faced over 100 years in prison before his case, like Drake’s, was

dismissed. In each example, the Espionage Act is the common variable which explains the potential penalties

whistleblowers faced.

The Espionage Act of 1917 is a World War I era law which “makes it an offence to take, retain or

transfer knowledge ‘with intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the

United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation’” (Borger). Though the bill was historically intended

to punish spies, the Espionage Act has been increasingly deployed by the Obama administration to punish

leakers and whistleblowers. In fact, the Obama administration has indicted more defendents under the

Espionage Act than all other administrations combined (J. Greenberg). According to Greenberg, since 1945,

there have been eleven Espionage Act prosecutions, and seven of those have happened during Obama’s

presidency.

As mentioned before, the most important thing about the Espionage Act as it pertains to Snowden

is omission of whistleblower protection. Ben Wizner, an ACLU lawyer and legal advisor to Snowden, said in

2014: “The laws under which Snowden is charged don’t distinguish between sharing information with the

press in the public interest, and selling secrets to a foreign enemy” (McCarthy). In other words, claiming that

he was a whistleblower who wanted to address abuse or waste was irrelevant. This paradox is at the heart of

the Espionage Act cases brought against Snowden and Ellsberg, and it deprives whistleblowers – whether

they are employees or contractors – of the protection that existing whistleblower laws supposedly offer.

Unsurprisingly, stripping whistleblowers of legal protection has several negative consequences for

them. In the absence of prosecutorial misconduct, convictions under the Espionage Act may carry enormous

prison sentences. But defendents charged under the Espionage Act have been imprisoned even before their

trials. Before Manning’s hearing, she was “held for nine months in solitary confinement under conditions later

deemed ‘excessive’ by a military judge” (McCarthy). On these pre-trial conditions, the UN’s special rapporteur

on torture Juan E. Mendez said:

I conclude that the 11 months under conditions of solitary confinement (regardless of the

name given to his regime by the prison authorities) constitutes at a minimum cruel, inhuman

Barak Bullock 20

and degrading treatment in violation of article 16 of the convention against torture

(Pilkington, “Bradley Manning’s Treatment…”).

In Manning’s trial, the argument that Manning was a whistleblower attempting to reform injustice did

not feature prominently in the defense’s case. It is unclear whether this was a deliberate strategy or a result of

the judge’s discretion. The defense instead argued that “the government want[ed] to force [Manning] into…

turning evidence against Assange,” and that Manning’s stuggle with her gender identity impacted her

decision-making (Zetter) (Radia). It is difficult to believe the defense would forego arguing that Manning

acted as a whistleblower with without being barred from doing so, especially since the Wikileaks files were

later considered a catalyst for the democritizing Arab Spring movement of 2010-2011 (Walker). This hints at

the Espionage Act’s chilling effect on the arguments available to legal defenders of whistleblowers.

Even whistleblowers who avoid arrest and imprisonment, like Assange, can still find their freedom

restricted. In December 2010, Australian diplomatic cables revealed “the Justice Department was conducting

an ‘active and vigorous inquiry into whether Julian Assange can be charged under US law, most likely the

1917 Espionage Act’” (Dorling). Simultaneously, Assange was alleged to have sexually assaulted two women

in Sweden in August 2010, and some called for his extradition to Sweden (Addley). Assange denied the

claims, and viewed extradition to Sweden as an attempt to put him in the hands of American authorities for

prosecution in relation to Wikileaks, prompting him to seek asylum at the Ecuadorean embassy (Addley).

Assange has been confined to the Ecuadorean embassy in London since 2012, under the threat of immediate

arrest if he walks outside its doors.

Daniel Ellsberg, the first case of a whistleblower being charged under the Espionage Act, faced a

maximum penalty of 115 years when he was first indicted (“The Most Dangerous Man…”). In the course of

his trial, he was also a victim of the Espionage Act’s preclusion of a whistleblower defense argument. As a

virtue of the Nixon administration’s illegal wiretapping of Ellsberg and his subsequent mistrial, Ellsberg

himself can explain how he was barred from defending himself on the basis of addressing waste or abuse in

the public interest:

“…when I finally heard my lawyer ask the prearranged question in direct examination – Why

did you copy the Pentagon Papers? – I was silenced before I could begin to answer. The

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government prosecutor objected – irrelevant – and the judge sustained. My lawyer,

exasperated, said he ‘had never heard of a case where a defendant was not permitted to tell

the jury why he did what he did.’ The judge responded: ‘well, you're hearing one

now’” (Ellsberg).

Similarly to Ellsberg, Drake’s defense was also prevented from including a discussion of

whistleblowing. In the government’s response to the defense’s motion in favor of such a discussion, the

prosecution argued:

Factually, the defendant’s theory of defense is nothing more than a justification defense

wrapped in different sheep’s clothing….Evidence of the defendant’s whistleblowing efforts

should be excluded because both the statute and Fourth Circuit law preclude a justification

defense in this case (“United States of America v. Thomas Andrews Drake”).

These examples of the Espionage Act’s application to whistleblower cases demonstrate the heavy

punishment facing whistleblowers, as well as the deprivation of one of their most powerful defensive

arguments: that they exposed secrets in order to address illegality, waste or abuse encountered in their

occupation. The Obama administration’s pattern of Espionage Act prosecutions, along with the strength of

whistleblower protection laws and internal channels of dissent, also provide evidence of large and potentially

devastating constraints on a whistleblower’s ability to address the exigence of their situation. It is evident,

then, that any whistleblower intending to successfully reach a rhetorical audience and address their exigence

must recognize and overcome these nonrhetorical constraints.

Rhetorical Constraints

Once Snowden traversed his nonrhetorical constraints, leaked the documents and revealed his

identity, he became the subject of verbal and written attacks. Like the nonrhetorical constraints before them, I

argue these rhetorical constraints can be illustrated by the experiences of whistleblowers prior to Snowden. I

break these various attacks into two major categories, which I call the “damaged national security” and

“unstable leaker” topoi. By defining these categories as topoi, I intend to show that these lines of argument are

recurrent over time and ready-made for leak situations, demonstrating their predictability.

Barak Bullock 22

“Damaged National Security”

The first major category of attacks on Snowden can be called the “damaged national security” topos.

This topos is a category of arguments which aimed to prove the national security of the US was damaged by

the Snowden leaks. There are a variety of interdependent arguments contained within this topos. The first

brands Snowden as a traitor and then invents negative consequences of the leaks, including that he put lives

in danger by recklessly dumping the data, aided or worked for a foreign government, and helped terrorists in

some way. In short:

• Snowden is a traitor

• Snowden put lives in danger (“Dumped the data”)

• Snowden aided or is working for a foreign government

• Snowden aided terrorists

All of these sub-arguments carry to implicit message that Snowden’s choice to leave the US and leak

the documents make his motivation for leaking the documents suspicious, and therefore he cannot possibly

be working for the public good. Examples of these arguments directed towards Snowden, as well as towards

Manning, Assange, Ellsberg, Binney and Drake, will be examined in this section.

Soon after The Guardian published Snowden’s identity in early June 2013, Snowden was called a

traitor, and the leaks an act of treason. Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner plainly stated, “He’s a

traitor” (Johnson). New York Republican congressman Peter King said of Snowden: “This guy is a traitor.

He's a defector. He's not a hero” (“Transcript…”). That Sunday, former Vice President Dick Cheney told Fox

News Snowden was a traitor, and suggested he could be a Chinese spy (M. Williams). Accusations of betrayal

came from those on the left as well. Califorina Democratic senator Diane Feinstein, who heads the Senatorial

committee which oversees the NSA, said of Snowden’s leaks, “I don't look at this as being a whistleblower. I

think it's an act of treason” (Herb, Sink). Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada,

stated, “I think Snowden is a traitor, and I think he has hurt our country, and I hope someday he is brought

to justice” (Hagar).

Barak Bullock 23

Whistleblowers before Snowden were called traitors too. Major Ashden Fein, the lead prosecutor in

the case against Manning, said “ he [sic] was not a whistleblower; he [sic] was a traitor” (Pilkington, “Bradley

Manning a Traitor…”). Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly said “Manning is a traitor and should be given life and hard

labor in a military prison.” Right-wing blogger Michael Van Der Galien called Assange a “ruthless traitor.”

When Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, retired general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs

of Staff Lyman Lemnitzer said Ellsberg committed a “traitorous act,” and in Tom Wells’ biography of

Ellsberg, Wild Man: The Life and Times of Daniel Ellsberg, Wells forwards the views of Ellsberg’s former

associates at RAND that he was "a loathsome traitor (Franklin; “Lemnitzer…”).

One of the central claims which often accompanied the charge of traitor was that Snowden exposed

information which would put American lives in danger. In his earlier statement, Speaker Boehner said the leak

“puts Americans at risk” (Johnson). Clapper called the leaks “reckless" and said they compromised “measures

used to keep Americans safe" (Gardner and Hosenball). Republican congressman Mike Rogers, chairman of

the House’s intelligence committee, articulated this point in the most literal sense by arguing Snowden should

be charged with murder (Simons).

More importantly, critics asserted the danger of the leaks came from the way Snowden leaked the

documents, which was styled as a data dump. This point was made earliest by Toobin of The New Yorker, who,

crucially, compared Snowden’s leak to Manning’s leak:

“It’s not easy to draw the line between those kinds of healthy encounters and the wholesale,

reckless dumping of classified information by the likes of Snowden or Bradley Manning.

Indeed, Snowden was so irresponsible in what he gave the Guardian and the Post that even

these institutions thought some of it should not be disseminated to the public.”

Over six months later, the same meme was repeated by Zachary Keck of The Diplomat, who cited the

way Snowden “dumped” the documents as the reason why he should never be called a whistleblower:

Had Snowden been a whistleblower interested in protecting the American constitution, he

would have carefully collected information documenting NSA overreach in spying on

Americans…Instead, he collected an apparently unknowable amount of information

Barak Bullock 24

(unknowable to both him and the NSA) and dumped it on the doorsteps of largely foreign

newspapers.

This argument was used relentlessly against Assange and Manning, who, together, published

thousands of military reports and State Department cables to WikiLeaks in 2010. Harold Koh, a legal advisor

for the State Department, said Wikileaks "could place at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals —

from journalists to human rights activists and bloggers to soldiers to individuals providing information to

further peace and security” (Youssef). Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Assange and Manning’s

leak “puts people's lives in danger, threatens our national security and undermines our efforts to work with

other countries to solve shared problems” (“Clinton Condemns”). Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the

Joint Chiefs of Staff, targeted Assange specifically:

‘Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source

are doing…But the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young

soldier or that of an Afghan family’ (Jaffe and Partlow).

Support for the claim that Manning and Assange put lives in danger was based on Manning’s method

of leaking the documents, which was also portrayed as a data dump. During Manning’s trial, Captain Joe

Morrow told judge Denise Lind that Manning “systematically harvested hundreds of thousands of

documents from classified databases and then dumped that information on to the internet into the hands of

the enemy” (Usborne). Thomas Ricks, writing for Foreign Policy, said “I opposed what Manning did. I thought

his actions were reckless. He did a data dump, making secret information public without knowing what it was

or what he was really doing.” Toobin and Keck’s characterization of the Snowden leak closely resembles these

arguments used against Manning, which rely on painting the method of disclosure as thoughtless,

unexamined, and dangerous.

The accusation that Snowden was a foreign agent or was at least indirectly helping foreign

governments was also a prominent attack. At different points in the leak timeline, Snowden was styled to have

been a Chinese spy (based on his escape to Hong Kong), a Russian spy (based on his asylum bid in Moscow),

and in both instances, the charges of spying and merely helping ran parallel to one another. Toobin sparked

Barak Bullock 25

the discussion on the possibility of Chinese involvement in the leaks soon after Snowden’s identity was

revealed:

“…the overriding fact is that Hong Kong is part of China, which is, as Snowden knows, a

stalwart adversary of the United States in intelligence matters. Snowden is now at the mercy

of the Chinese leaders who run Hong Kong. As a result, all of Snowden’s secrets may wind

up in the hands of the Chinese government—which has no commitment at all to free

speech or the right to political dissent. And that makes Snowden a hero?” (Toobin).

As mentioned earlier, Cheney suggested Snowden’s choice of Hong Kong was evidence that he was a

Chinese spy:

‘I'm suspicious because he went to China. That's not a place where you would ordinarily

want to go if you are interested in freedom, liberty and so forth,’ Cheney said, adding: ‘It

raises questions whether or not he had that kind of connection before he did this.’ Cheney

suggested that Snowden could still be in possession of confidential data and that the

Chinese would ‘probably be willing to provide immunity for him or sanctuary for him in

exchange for what he presumably knows or doesn't know’ (Williams).

Though Toobin and Cheney do not match on whether Snowden is a spy, they both associate

Snowden’s motives with the status of press freedoms in mainland China. However, Cheney extends this by

not simply warning that the documents are within reach of Chinese authorities, but that Snowden has long-

planned to compromise US secrets to China in exchange for protection. Later that month, the Jane Perlez and

Keith Bradsher of the New York Times supplied ammunition for the argument that Snowden was aiding a

foreign government indirectly. In their report of China’s decision to let Snowden leave Hong Kong, they

wrote:

“Two Western intelligence experts, who worked for major government spy agencies, said

they believed that the Chinese government had managed to drain the contents of the four

laptops that Mr. Snowden said he brought to Hong Kong, and that he said were with him

during his stay at a Hong Kong hotel” (Perlez and Bradsher).

Barak Bullock 26

This idea of the Chinese government draining four laptops full of NSA documents was repeated by

multiple commentators, including The New Yorker, “DC gossip sheets, right-wing outlets, and diaries at

Democratic Party sites,” but most notably by Clinton (Greenwald). Speaking on domestic spying programs at

the University of Connecticut in April 2014, Clinton said:

‘’…it struck me as—I just have to be honest with you—as sort of odd that he would flee to

China, because Hong Kong is controlled by China, and that he would then go to Russia—

two countries with which we have very difficult cyberrelationships, to put it mildly’ (Roller).

Here, in a vague suggestion similar to Cheney’s, Clinton insinuates Snowden’s choices of refuge may

either increase the likelihood that Snowden is working for a foreign government, or that of a foreign

government has come to possess the NSA documents, compromising the US’ cyberpower in some way.

Clinton continued:

"I think turning over a lot of that material—intentionally or unintentionally—drained, gave

all kinds of information, not only to big countries, but to networks and terrorist groups and

the like. So I have a hard time thinking that somebody who is a champion of privacy and

liberty has taken refuge in Russia, under Putin's authority” (Roller).

Here, Clinton develops Toobin’s point about aiding foreign governments. We see her mention the

possibility of “intentionally or unintentionally” helping, and her reference to the “drained” information,

which is used to support the claim that Snowden provided information to “terrorist groups and the like.”

Lastly, she disputes Snowden’s motives on grounds he is “under Putin’s authority,” insinuating Snowden works

for Russia.

After Snowden’s arrival in Russia on June 23rd, Philip Ewing, writing for Politico, captured Toobin’s

point that Snowden was placing the documents within dangerous proximity of a foreign power, except this

time it was Russian authorities. Ewing wrote two days after Snowden’s arrival:

“…the fact remains that Snowden’s flight from Hong Kong on Sunday has put him right

into the lair of Russia’s infamous intelligence service. And whether or not he started out

intending to talk with foreign intelligence officers, that may be what has happened.”

Barak Bullock 27

Prominent congressional conservatives doubled down on the theory that Snowden was a Russian

agent. In 2013, Rogers stated unequivocally that Snowden was colluding with Russian spies: “Many don't find

it odd he is in the loving arms of an SVR [Russia's External Intelligence Service] agent right now in Moscow.

I do” (Simons). Months later, Senator John McCain said there was “not a doubt in his mind” that Snowden

was working for Russia (Spiering).

Though there doesn’t seem to be a consensus among all of Snowden’s critics as to whether he was a

spy or simply convenient for foreign powers, Keck summarized what they would likely all agree on: that

Snowden provided the countries where he traveled with information: “…Snowden seeking refuge in first

China and then Russia nearly guarantees that the governments in these countries have gained a treasure trove

of valuable information on NSA operations against their countries.” In Keck’s view, no matter which

variation of the attack is true, spy or not spy, the result is the same: Snowden damaged national security by

delivering sensitive classified documents into our rivals’ hands.

Like Snowden, Ellsberg was described as a spy on multiple occassions, although for the Soviet

Union. Trevor Timm, writing for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, explains: “shortly after he leaked the

top secret Vietnam War study, the Nixon administration made a concerted effort to paint him as a Soviet spy

in the press, using anonymous quotes and non-existent ‘secret’ evidence” (Timm). Those efforts are found in

three New York Times articles from 1973 and 1974. The first article covered testimony given to the Senate

Watergate committee by John D. Ehrlicman, a former White House aide for the Nixon administration, who

suggested “that Dr. Ellsberg delivered copies of the Pentagon papers to the Soviet embassy” (Timm).

As Ellsberg’s attorney Leonard B. Boudin later summarized, Ehrlicman claimed: ‘…the Pentagon

papers had been given in 1971 to the Soviet Embassy and implied that this might have been done by…Dr.

Daniel Ellsberg, or with his knowledge…’ (Timm). The second article from 1973 covered the alleged

reasoning behind the Nixon administration’s decision to form the Plumbers’ unit. Essentially, the Nixon

administration feared Ellsberg had given the Soviets US secrets, and therefore compromised an American spy

by bringing on the Senate Watergate committee hearings, so they formed the Plumbers to stop that (Timm).

In 1974, the Times reported on an internal government memo which directly likened Ellsberg to former US

“spies,” on the basis that he claimed to disregard federal law to answer a higher calling:

Barak Bullock 28

Most of what Daniel Ellsberg has said in public since he acknowledged stealing the

Pentagon Papers seems calculated to position him as having responded to an order of

morality higher than his onetime solemn undertakings to his country. This rationale, let it be

remembered, was earlier employed by atomic spies Klaus Fuchs, David Greenglass, Morton

Sobell and Bruno Pontecorvo (Timm).

As the Ellsberg case demonstrates, the accusations of espionage were thrown at both him and

Snowden. In both cases, the charges of espionage were often made in the absence of convincing evidence,

and accompanied campaigns of discrediting the whistleblower.

The same can be said of the argument that the leak helped terrorists understand or circumvent US

counterterrorism efforts. Boehner, describing the NSA’s surveillance programs, said “these were important

national security programs to help keep Americans safe and give us tools to fight the terrorist threat that we

face” and that the disclosures “show our adversaries what our capabilities are” (Johnson). Senator Bill Nelson,

writing for Daily News, wrote “the Department of Justice should bring charges against [Snowden] for

deliberately taking classified information…in such a way that our enemies can use it against us.” As we’ve

already seen, Clinton also stated that the leaks helped terrorists, when she said: “I think turning over a lot of

that material…gave all kinds of information…to networks and terrorist groups” (Roller). Shawn Turner, a

spokesperson for Clapper, perhaps articulated the most complete version of the argument that the leaks

would help terrorists:

"We've been clear that these leaks have been unnecessarily and extremely damaging to the

United States and the intelligence community's national security efforts…As a result of

these disclosures, terrorists and their support networks now have a better understanding of

our collection methods and, make no mistake about it, they are taking counter

measures” (Dilanian and Serrano).

In this variation of the “damaged national security” topos, Manning and Assange were also Snowden’s

predecessors. After Wikileaks’ published American intelligence files supplied by Manning, both Manning and

Assange came under fire from accusations of helping terrorists or being terrorists themselves. Malcolm

Rifkind, chairman of the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee in Britain, said the leaks were "a

Barak Bullock 29

gift to any terrorist (group) trying to work out what are the ways in which it can damage the United

States” (Lister). Moving beyond the claim of aiding terrorists, both Vice President Joe Biden and Republican

Senator Mitch McConnell called Assange a “high-tech terrorist” (Curry; MacAskill). In a similar vein, Peter

King urged WikiLeaks be designated a "foreign terrorist organization," saying it "posed a clear and present

danger to the national security of the United States” (Kennedy).

Manning was exposed to this same line of argument in his pre-trial hearing in 2013. Fein said

Manning “knowingly gave intelligence through WikiLeaks to the enemy,” which he asserted was Al Qaeda, Al

Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and “all other enemies with Internet access” (Gosztola). Interestingly, the

prosectution avoided the hurdle of proving Manning had knowledge that the files would end up in the hands

of Al Qaeda, instead “arguing that Manning is guilty of the aiding the enemy charge because he knew that al

Qaeda has access to the Internet, and to WikiLeaks in particular” (Sledge). These arguments culminated in

Manning’s charge of aiding the enemy, which was eventually dropped, but nonetheless constituted the most

serious charge against Manning, and formed the base of the prosecution’s arguments that Manning aided Al

Qaeda or other groups.

As these comparisons demonstrate, the sub-arguments contained within the “damaged national

security” topos are regularly applied to whistleblowers of classified intelligence files. Together, the constitute a

well-defined rhetorical obstacle that future whistleblowers like Snowden could identify and plan to address.

“Unstable Leaker”

Of all the attacks on Snowden, many fit into what I call the “unstable leaker” topos. This topos is a

category of arguments which aim to discredit a whistleblower’s character, in this case Snowden’s, by smearing

his or her psychiatric state. Some of the sub-arguments contained within this topos are:

• Snowden is a narcissist

• Snowden is grandiose

• Snowden is a loner

• Snowden is sexually deviant

Barak Bullock 30

Emily Masters, writing for Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, has put together a thorough collection of

instances of this topos. The first entry comes from Toobin, who, on June 10th, 2013, “slammed National

Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden as ‘a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison, and

the leak as ‘an act that speaks more to his ego than his conscience’.” That same day, Richard Cohen of the

Washington Post called Snowden “‘merely narcissistic’” and “a cross-dressing Little Red Riding Hood.” His

second comment belies a strain of homophobia which, like many of these other statements, has manifested

in attacks on prior whistleblowers. A day later, another Washington Post writer, Matt Miller, wrote a column

titled “Edward Snowden’s Grandiosity,” where he described Snowden’s desire to end oppression by enlisting

in the Iraq War as “commendable, if a bit grandiose.” One week after that, Bob Schieffer declared on Face

the Nation, “I think what we have in Edward Snowden is just a narcissistic young man who has decided he is

smarter than the rest of us” (Miller).

Masters writes “journalists have long used terms like “narcissism” and “grandiose” to pathologize—

and discredit—whistleblowers.” Specifically, the charges of narcissism, grandiosity, delusion and

homosexuality have been directed at Manning and Assange. According to Masters, Assange “is regularly

called narcissistic.” In his Washington Times article, titled “Assassinate Assange?”, Jeffery Kuhner called

Assange a “puerile, self-absorbed narcissist” who “likes to grandstand for the media as an idealist, a brave

whistleblower.” Clarence Page, writing for the Chigaco Tribune, called Assange “a narcissistic glory-seeker.”

CNN said Assange is “prone to making grandiose statements,” and the New York Times quoted sources who

called him “grandiose and paranoid” (Masters).

Manning was subject to the same treatment, with a homophobic bent. Detroit News called Manning a

narcissist, while the The New York Times “wondered if Manning’s ‘delusions of grandeur’” led to his

whistleblowing, and reported: “He professed a perhaps inflated sense of purpose…’” (Thompson). Attacking

Manning’s sexuality, the Lowell Sun wrote, “Obviously, the vast majority of gays are loyal Americans -- and

witty and stylish to boot! But a small percentage of gays are going to be narcissistic hothouse flowers like

Bradley Manning” (“Wikileak in the Military”). Increasingly in-depth investigations into Manning’s sexuality

Barak Bullock 31

and gender transition were made in a video-report by the Guardian, a New York Magazine piece detailing

Snowden’s psychiatric visits, and an exposé of Manning’s Facebook profile created by PBS Frontline (Masters).

Labeling whistleblowers as narcissists goes all the way back to Ellsberg (Masters). Ellsberg is famous

for being exonerated from the massive 115-year sentence he faced, when evidence came to light that

President Nixon ordered his ‘Plumbers’ to ransack Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office for anything discrediting

(Krogh). Wells describes Ellsberg's motive in his biography of him as “personality-driven,” and Ellsberg as a

“volatile, narcissistic loner with a voracious sexual appetite’” (Scheer). This characterization even includes the

emphasis on sexual deviance that has been seen in attacks on Snowden and Manning.

Much like Wells did with Ellsberg, Snowden was also called a “loner.” In its various uses, the term

was used to portray Snowden’s social bonds as weak, and his prospects for happiness later in life as hopeless.

Exemplifying the first variant, David Brooks wrote in his op-ed for the New York Times on June 10th, 2013:

Though thoughtful, morally engaged and deeply committed to his beliefs, [Snowden] appears

to be a product of one of the more unfortunate trends of the age: the atomization of

society, the loosening of social bonds, the apparently growing share of young men in their

20s who are living technological existences in the fuzzy land between their childhood

institutions and adult family commitments.

The idea of Snowden as disconnected from social reality was repeated by Roger Simon of Politico, who

described him as “a young man who drifted back and forth between the real world and the fantasy world of

computer games.” These strikingly similar characterizations of Snowden both aim to paint him as anti-social,

and therefore untrustworthy.

Former NSA and CIA chief Michael Hayden also contributed to this strain of character assassination

after learning of Snowden’s asylum offer with Russia. After referring to Snowden as "a troubled young man”

and “morally arrogant to a tremendous degree,” Hayden went further, and likened Snowden to an old fugitive

wasting away during the Cold War: "I suspect he will end up like most of the rest of the defectors who went

to the old Soviet Union: Isolated, bored, lonely, depressed -- and most of them ended up

alcoholics” (Peterson). Like the charges of narcissism, grandiosity and sexual deviance, the idea of

whistleblowers as “loners” has been seen attached to previous whistleblowers.

Barak Bullock 32

Manning was a ripe target for this kind of attack. In August 2010, the New York Times insinuated

Manning’s “desperation for acceptance” may have pushed her to leak the documents. Manning was quoted

from a chat with hacker Adrian Lamo saying, “I’ve been isolated so long…But events kept forcing me to

figure out ways to survive” (Thompson). Throughout the article, Manning was described as “troubled,” and

her move to Wales with his mother was called “a new chapter of isolation” (Thompson). Thompson develops

the theme of isolation in Manning’s life with discussions on her difficulty in the military and her small group

of friends from Boston. In the end, the report only serves to paint Manning as a “loner,” and therefore

mentally incapable of leaking documents in good character.

When these attacks on Snowden and other whistleblowers are compared, their status as iterations of

a larger topos becomes apparent. The “unstable leaker” topos is a recurrent theme in characterizations of

whistleblowers, supporting the notion that it is a ready-made category designed to discredit them in the

public’s eyes. By painting targets as deeply self-interested, overly dramatic and sexually deviant, critics aim to

tarnish a whistleblower’s motivations by destroying their character.

Conclusion

Surveying these historical events in the lives of past whistleblowers allows us to recognize the

rhetorical and nonrhetorical constraints in the rhetorical situations of whistleblowers. Both the success of

various whistleblowers by working within the system and the widespread use of particular topoi prior to

Snowden illustrates that these are common barriers whistleblowers face when attempting to bring attention to

a latent problem in society. These attacks undermine the credibility of whistleblowers in the public’s eyes, and

therefore pose a rhetorical challenge to whistleblowers who wish to sustain a public image or debate.

Whistleblowers must also recognize that the nonrhetorical constraints in their positions effectively determine

their ability to rhetorically respond to these topoi, as the ability to interact with the public largely depends on

one’s freedom. Therefore, it would be in future whistleblowers’ interests to avoid the nonrhetorical

constraints which threaten to silence them, while mitigating or countering the effects of rhetorical attacks.

Snowden’s navigation of these constraints was based on the experiences of the whistleblowers before him,

and as a result, he confronted his constraints in various ways.

Barak Bullock 33

Chapter III:

Navigating Snowden’s Constraints

Dissociation

This chapter delves into how Snowden actually navigated the constraints outlined the previous

section. It explains how Snowden dealt with his nonrhetorical constraints first, and then how he addressed

the rhetorical constraints. Another rhetorical concept, called dissociation, will be used to take a look at

Snowden’s rhetorical strategy in response to some of his rhetorical constraints. Dissociation is a powerful

concept concerned with resolving tension or incompatibility between two elements of a unified concept or

thought (Jasinski 176). The concept of dissociation can be articulated through the additional concept of paired

terms. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca offered the pair of elements “appearance/reality” as “the prototype of

all conceptual dissociation” in their 1969 publication, The New Rhetoric (415). Their analysis on dissociative

pairs is highly intricate, but for this thesis, only four basic features of the appearance/reality pair will be

defined to help examine Snowden’s navigation of his rhetorical constraints.

First, it is important to note that dissociation is more than simply dividing the elements of an idea, but

reconstructing them into two novel elements (Jasinksi 177). Jasinski cites Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter

From Birmingham Jail” as an example of this distinction:

King’s dissociative argument…divided ‘the law’ into two realms: a realm of ‘unjust’ (and

hence only apparent) laws and realm of ‘just’ (and hence real) laws…Based on his

dissociation, King could deprive ‘unjust’ laws of the status of the law…He could maintain

that because ‘unjust’ laws were not really laws at all, breaking them was not a sign of

disrespect for the law…; rather, it was in fact (or in “reality’) a way of affirming supporty for

‘real’ laws (Jasinski 177).

In King’s argument, we can see King conforming “the law” to the most basic dissociative pair of all,

the appearance/reality pair. He dissociates the concept of the law into two novel entities, just law and unjust

law.

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The second and third features of a dissociative argument correspond to terms I and II of a

dissociative pair. Terms I and II can be interchanged with values or terms that are specific to any number of

contexts or rhetorical situations, as long as they conform to the basic structure of a dissociative pair. At the

risk of oversimplification, the dissociative pair structure is primarily defined by two things: term I is the thing

being dissociated, while term II is the constant variable, or criterion which allows us to dissociate term I. In

regards to the appearance/reality pair, it amounts to investigating various appearances and expelling error or

illusions in appearance by redefining reality (Perelman, Olbrechts-Tyteca 416-417). Lastly, Perelman and

Olbrechts-Tyteca show that the appearance/reality pair is a tool for general application that can be displayed

with the following schematic:

appearance or, in general, term I . reality term II (416)

This structure is made more easily understood by an analogy from Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca:

There is no doubt that the need to distinguish appearance from reality arises out of certain

difficulties, certain incompatibilities between appearances; these could no longer all be

regarded as expressing reality, if one makes the hypothesis that all aspects of the real are

mutually compatible. When a stick is partly immersed in water, it seems curved when one

looks at it and straight when one touches it, but in reality it cannot be both curved and

straight. While appearances can be opposed to each other, reality is coherent: the effect of

determining reality is to dissociate those appearances that are deceptive from those that

correspond to reality (415-416).

Based on this scene, the mutually exclusive appearances of the stick (straight and curved) are

incompatible with reality, the undergirding variable which allows us to dissociate appearances. By dissociating

the stick’s appearances (term I), we can cast off the illusion (the water’s reflection of a curved stick) by

redefining reality (term II). We can also apply this definition to King’s argument from before. As King

demonstrated, arguments situated with a specificied or narrow context can be generalized with the principles

of dissociation and dissociative pairs. In each case:

Barak Bullock 35

appearance :: curved stick :: unjust law reality straight stick just law

This is how terms I and II of a dissociative pair operate. Based on this definition, the concepts of dissociation

and dissociative pairs will be used to illustrate rhetorical moves Snowden made with the help of journalists to

tackle his rhetorical constraints.

It should be mentioned that when I say Snowden “tackled” his constraints, I don’t mean that he

personally saved himself in every respect or made a rebuttal to every attack directed at him. I mean that by

clearing his nonrhetorical constraints and collaborating with the media, Snowden forwarded a narrative of the

events that enabled others to defend him in public, fighting the topoi used against him on his behalf. For

example, in the Guardian’s exposé on Snowden from June 11th, Snowden declared one of his fears to be that

the media’s tendency to personalize leakers rather than focus on the disclosures would hurt any chance of

meaningful reform. Defenders of Snowden repeated this dissociative argument in their own coverage of

Snowden and the disclosures, helping to counter any commentators hoping to distract the public from the

leaks.

Navigation

With the constraints of Snowden’s rhetorical situation defined, we move to the ways Snowden

responded to them. As we know, Snowden encountered nonrhetorical constraints first, which represented

physical and institutional barriers to surveillance reform. From the experiences of Binney and Drake, working

from within the NSA did not result in substantial reform, and both whistleblowers were pursued by federal

investigations. From Manning, Assange, Ellsberg and Drake, we know that the Espionage Act has come to

dominate legal cases brought against whistleblowers, and outweighs any claims to legal protection or positive

social reforms resulting from disclosures. Therefore, to reach his rhetorical audience, and any hope of

affecting his exigence, Snowden ultimately took a course which would avoid US authorities and US territory

in general, opting to take the files to journalists in Hong Kong instead.

Once in Hong Kong, Snowden successfully delivered the files to reporters Glenn Greenwald, Laura

Poitras and Ewen MacAskill. With their help, select documents were primed for publication, and Snowden’s

Barak Bullock 36

identity was eventually revealed to give moral agency to the leak story. This collaboration was the source of

Snowden’s ability to respond to his rhetorical constraints, and had important consequences. First, Snowden

responded to the “damaged national security” and “unstable leaker” topoi from earlier, albeit with a different

strategy for each topos. Second, other writers and publications came to Snowden’s defense armed with a

massive trove of NSA documents and the facts of Snowden’s account. Like the topoi before, Snowden’s

strategies for confronting his rhetorical constraints can be identified in these articles, editorials and interviews

by Greenwald, Poitras, MacAskill and others who grabbed onto the implications of the documents and

Snowden’s telling of the events.

As the primary receivers of Snowden’s documents, the locus of Snowden’s rhetorical strategy lies

with Greenwald, Poitras, MacAskill and himself. Their articles and interviews serve as primary documents,

from which we can see rebuttals to particular rhetorical constraints, references to nonrhetorical constraints, or

a dissociative strategy which shifted focus away from the topos. From these reports, secondary articles were

published which also reacted to the two topoi. This factor can be viewed as an incomplete measure of the

rhetorical impact the primary Snowden reporting had on other publications. Though each strategy is different

in its execution, they all aim to bring awareness to the rhetorical and nonrhetorical constraints placed in

Snowden’s path. My analysis of these strategies is the component of this thesis which may offer the most to a

rhetorical understanding of how whistleblowers can control public discourse surrounding their disclosures.

Much like the previous chapter, I begin by looking at the nonrhetorical constraints first, as the

rhetorical ones are contingent upon them. Here, I take note of how Snowden faced the three major

nonrhetorical constraints from earlier: the channels of dissent, whistleblower protection and the Espionage

Act. While my discussion on how Snowden navigated his rhetorical constraints is based on textual analysis, the

evidence for how Snowden navigated his nonrhetorical constraints is mostly history. And though the way

Snowden navigated these three particular constraints is instructive, it leaves much of the history of the

Snowden leak out of the picture. That’s why this section also includes a selective timeline of events leading up

to, and in the months after, the Hong Kong meeting. These events were typically actionable steps taken by

Snowden, which merit their own analyses.

Barak Bullock 37

Nonrhetorical Navigation

The existence of Snowden’s nonrhetorical constriants, evidenced by the experiences of past

whistleblowers, prompted certain strategic junctures for Snowden. Would he attempt to sound the alarm from

within the government? Would he seek protection under whistleblower protection statutes? Would he risk an

Espionage Act prosecution if he was arrested for going public? These were the initial decisions Snowden

faced, and because the events have already transpired, we know, for the most part, how Snowden proceeded.

While Snowden claims to have gone to officials in the government with his concerns before leaking the

documents, he did not contact the Inspector General’s office like Binney and Drake did. He did not seek

protection under any whistleblower protection laws, and decided to leave the US rather than endure arrest

and Espionage Act prosecution at home. These were the main decisions Snowden made in order to

circumvent his constraints and address his exigence to the global public.

Snowden’s handling of internal channels of dissent was a nuanced course of action based on Binney

and Drake’s experiences. Rather than abandon all channels of dissent for fear of retaliation, Snowden said he

did take his thoughts to officials within the government before taking matters into his own hands. In March

2014, Snowden testified to the European Parliament on the NSA’s activities. When asked by Shadow

Rapporteur Axel Voss whether he had “exhausted all avenues” before going public, Snowden responded:

“Yes. I had reported these clearly problematic programs to more than ten distinct officials, none of whom

took any action to address them” (“European Parliament”).

Though the details of Snowden’s complaints are sparse, one way Snowden said he did this was by

giving fellow employees at the NSA the “front-page test.” As Barton Gellman wrote in The Washington Post:

Beginning in October 2012…[Snowden] brought his misgivings to two superiors in the

NSA’s Technology Directorate and two more in the NSA Threat Operations Center’s

regional base in Hawaii. For each of them, and 15 other co-workers, Snowden said he

opened a data query tool called BOUNDLESSINFORMANT, which used color-coded

“heat maps” to depict the volume of data ingested by NSA taps.

Barak Bullock 38

Based on the data collected by BoundlessInformant, many of Snowden’s co-workers were “often

‘astonished to learn we are collecting more in the United States on Americans than we are on Russians in

Russia.’” Snowden would then follow up with his test: “‘What do you think the public would do if this was on

the front page?’” According to Snowden, “many of [his co-workers] were troubled…and several said they did

not want to know any more.” Snowden “continued to give his colleagues the ‘front-page test’…until

April” (Gellman, “Edward Snowden…”).

After testing his co-workers, Snowden did not take the same path as Binney and Drake in pursuing

further reform. While whistleblower protection laws afford for those covered to take their concerns to their

bosses, inspector generals and Congressional intelligence committees, Snowden avoided these courses of

action. A possible explanation for why can be found in Snowden’s European Parliament testimony, where

Snowden made overt references to Binney, Drake and one of their colleagues, J. Kirk Wiebe:

In my personal experience, repeatedly raising concerns about legal and policy

matters with my co-workers and superiors resulted in two kinds of responses.

The first were well-meaning but hushed warnings not to "rock the boat," for fear of the sort

of retaliation that befell former NSA whistleblowers like Wiebe, Binney, and Drake. All three

men reported their concerns through the official, approved process, and all three men were

subject to armed raids by the FBI and threats of criminal sanction. Everyone in the

Intelligence Community is aware of what happens to people who report concerns about

unlawful but authorized operations.

The second were similarly well-meaning but more pointed suggestions, typically from senior

officials, that we should let the issue be someone else's problem. Even among the most

senior individuals to whom I reported my concerns, no one at NSA could ever recall an

instance where an official complaint had resulted in an unlawful program being ended, but

there was a unanimous desire to avoid being associated with such a complaint in any form

(“European Parliament”).

Barak Bullock 39

Seeing Snowden directly reference Binney and Drake supports my contention that they helped

illuminate Snowden’s nonrhetorical constraints, and also demonstrates that Snowden likely based his method

of reporting internally on their experiences. Based on Snowden’s statements, it appears Snowden pursued

reform internally up to a point, beyond which lied retaliatory action. Where exactly that line stopped is

unclear, but from Snowden’s statements, we can ascertain that it included gauging the feelings of co-workers

and immediate superiors, without taking any committal legal or official measures to impose corrections on

unlawful programs. Finding this stopping point seems to be the insight Snowden gained from understanding

the experiences of Binney and Drake.

When it came to the use of whistleblower protection laws, Snowden’s decision was less nuanced. As

his testimony indicates, he said he believed he could not benefit from them at all:

As an employee of a private company rather than a direct employee of the US government,

I was not protected by US whistleblower laws, and I would not have been protected from

retaliation and legal sanction for revealing classified information about lawbreaking in

accordance with the recommended process.

It is important to remember that this legal dilemma did not occur by mistake. US

whistleblower reform laws were passed as recently as 2012, with the US Whistleblower

Protection Enhancement Act, but they specifically chose to exclude Intelligence Agencies

from being covered by the statute. President Obama also reformed a key executive

Whistleblower regulation with his 2012 Presidential Policy Directive 19, but it exempted

Intelligence Community contractors such as myself. The result was that individuals like me

were left with no proper channels (“European Parliament”).

Though Snowden obviously left the US without attempting to take advantage of whistleblower

protection, Snowden’s claim that he was legally unprotected from retaliation has been disputed. This

discussion merits a revisiting of whistleblower protection legislation. According to The Washington Post, “most

federal workers fall under the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989,” but the intelligence community is not

included in that bill (Kessler). As we know, the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act

Barak Bullock 40

(ICWPA) was designed in 1998 to cover intelligence workers, but is “generally regarded as fairly

weak” (Kessler). Drake’s experience supports that claim. As Kessler explains, new whistleblower protection

has been enacted to compensate:

At about the time Obama signed the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2012,

which revised the 1989 law, he also issued …Presidential Policy Directive 19…designed to

protect whistleblowers with access to classified information. Section A of the PPD

specifically prohibits retaliation, and Section B prohibits retaliation by taking away an

employee’s access to classified information.

The main point of contention is whether PPD19 “exempted” contractors like Snowden says. Dan

Meyer, who The Washington Post describes as “the person responsible for coordinating policy regarding PPD19

in the intelligence community,” provided his interpretation of it in a panel at Georgetown University’s Center

of National Security and the Law in 2014:

…if you read the executive order cited in Section B, it covers contractors. So, until someone

tells me otherwise, contractors are covered under section B of PPB19…under Section A,

there is no executive order referenced in there that would allow me to go to find a contractor

provision (Kessler).

Despite the fact that Section B covers contractors while Section A does not, Snowden, for all

practical purposes, did not pursue any protection under Section B. It may be less accurate to say PPD19

“exempted” contractors as Snowden claimed, but the nonrhetorical constraint facing Snowden was ultimately

a distinction between the letter of one law the application of another law. As discussed in the previous

chapter, prosecutions under the Espionage Act are the determination of any whistleblower protection’s

power, and according to the experiences of whistleblowers targeted by the Act, whistleblower protections fall

secondary to it. I argue it was this observation, made possible by Drake, which influenced Snowden’s decision

to forego whistleblower protection and to argue that he would reap no benefits from it.

The Espionage Act itself, with all of its conditions and penalties, was Snowden’s third nonrhetorical

constraint. It is, in a way, Snowden’s truest constraint, since the prior two were institutional safeguards which

simply did not carry out their intended purposes. Conversely, the Espionage Act is not something which

Barak Bullock 41

Snowden could have ostensibly benefitted from in different circumstances. As was discussed in the previous

section, the Espionage Act precludes whistleblowers from using their motivation to expose abuse as a legal

defense, and has demonstrably imprisoned those charged under it before their trials have even begun. This,

of course, threatened Snowden’s health and safety, but in the context of the rhetorical situation, threatened

his ability to get the documents out and add his own voice to them, and with that, his ability to target his

audience and address his exigence.

Snowden avoided this constraint by leaving the United States for Hong Kong in May 2013 and

seeking asylum abroad. While that may seem like a simple remedy, the steps Snowden took to actually

increase his liklihood of success in this regard are numerous and worth scrutinizing. Of all the ways Snowden

approached his nonrhetorical constraints, the way he navigated this particular constraint was by far the most

nuanced plan of action. These steps constitute an important timeline of the Snowden leak, one which I

believe is crucial for understanding how Snowden overcame this nonrhetorical constraint:

• Snowden used his security clearance to collect convincing evidence

• Snowden contacted adversarial journalists with encrypted software

• Snowden left for Hong Kong (a secure haven)

• Snowden rendezvoused with journalists and published the documents

• Snowden revealed his request for asylum

• Snowden left Hong Kong for asylum in Latin America, stopping in Moscow along the way

• Snowden acquired asylum in Russia

Since April 2012, Snowden had been amassing a huge cache of classified documents as an

intelligence contractor for Dell (Hosenball). In March 2013, Snowden took a new job at Booz Allen Hamilton

“specifically to gain access to additional top-secret documents that could be leaked to the media” (Hosenball).

As a systems administrator, Snowden access to a much wider range of data than normal NSA analysts,

increasing his access to sensitive documents (Greenwald, Poitras and MacAskill). By accumulating a large

stock of convincing evidence of mass surveillance, Snowden seemed to be setting the stage for a rhetorical

Barak Bullock 42

encounter somewhere down the road, where evidence of the government’s misconduct would be a trump

card. At the same time, the content of his disclosures would determine whether he was a whistleblower in the

eyes of potential asylum countries, impacting his future chances of achieving asylum. Therefore, the effort

Snowden put into collecting the data was an important part of Snowden’s rhetorical and nonrhetorical

strategies.

The next thing Snowden needed were journalists who he could trust to let the documents into the

wild. In December 2012, Snowden anonymously contacted Greenwald about a possible story, but not before

pestering him to encrypt his digital communications (Maass). Greenwald, frustrated by the encryption

methods, ultimately ignored the emails, forcing Snowden to solicit someone else’s attention. In January of

2013, he contacted Poitras, whose familarity with encryption software assured the unidentified Snowden she

would receive his messages securely (Maass). Poitras and Snowden maintained correspondence for six

months, during which Snowden urged Poitras to involve Greenwald in the reporting process, before finally

meeting in Hong Kong (Maass). Both Snowden’s insistence on secure communications and his choice of

journalists to work with had large influences Snowden’s navigation.

As journalists and filmmakers, Greenwald and Poitras are known for their criticism of US

government’s wars, surveillance practices, and erosion of civil liberties after 9/11. In an example of both of

their dedication to these issues and their status as surveilled targets, Snowden first became aware of

Greenwald and Poitras after Greenwald penned an article for Salon in 2012 about how Poitras had been

frequently detained at airports for years in connection to her films (Maass). Greenwald wrote a political

column with Salon from 2007 to 2012 before moving on to The Guardian, and had grappled with issues of

government surveillance and whistleblower prosecution. Snowden had also seen Poitras’ short documentary

on Binney, entitled “The Program,” which recounted the travails of the ThinThread propenents, including

Drake (Carmon). Poitras has directed several films, most of them dealing with the consequences of American

foreign policy after 9/11.

Choosing journalists who were sympathetic to whistleblowers and invested in government

transparency was important to Snowden. As Poitras herself said in an interview with Salon, Snowden was

skeptical of the mainstream media’s ability or willingness to report the story correctly:

Barak Bullock 43

I can say from conversations I had with [Snowden]…he had a suspicion of mainstream

media. And particularly what happened with the New York Times and the warrantless

wiretapping story, which as we know was shelved for a year. So he expressed that to me but I

think also in his choices of who he contacted (Carmon).

Here, Poitras references the Times’ report from 2005, which wasn’t published until after Bush’s re-

election, despite being reported a year earlier. When the Times’ sought the government’s council prior to

publishing, the Bush administration vehemently opposed the story, and professed that the Times’ would be to

blame if ever there was another attack on American soil (Lichtblau). To Snowden, the possibility that

mainstream news outlets would take his documents to the government for consultation was another potential

constraint, which he navigated by choosing his colloborators in the media carefully. What Greenwald and

Poitras’ work proved to Snowden was that if the evidence he could provide was placed in their hands, they

would not hestitate to publish.

Maintaining secure communications was also paramount for Snowden, as digital interception could

alert the NSA to his plans. As mentioned earlier, Snowden urged Greenwald to install PGP, an encrypted

communication software, before giving him more details (Reitman). It was only when Snowden established

secure communications with Poitras that he put his plan to rendezvous with journalists into motion.

Snowden’s caution was based on more than paranoia. As a systems administrator, Snowden was intimately

familiar with the technology he would have to bypass, but also knew at least one of his potential partners was

already a target of digital surveillance. As Snowden told Poitras in an exchange of emails, Poitras had been

“selected” by the NSA’s SIGINT system, which would explain her constant detainment at airports and the

necessity of keeping their communications private (A. Greenberg). Though details on Greenwald’s

relationship to digital surveillance aren’t as readily available, there was reason to believe he was also a target

based on his devotion to national security issues and “his vocal support of Bradley Manning and

WikiLeaks” (Reitman).

Snowden left the US for Hong Kong in May 2013, rather than stay within proximity to US

authorities and risk arrest. After arranging to meet Greenwald and Poitras, Snowden took a leave of absence

from his work in Hawaii under the pretext of seeking treatment for his epilepsy (Greenwald, Poitras and

Barak Bullock 44

MacAskill). Snowden’s choice of Hong Kong was strategic for two reasons. As Snowden said in the Guardian’s

first article on him, he chose Hong Kong because they have “‘a spirited commitment to free speech and the

right of political dissent,’ and because…it was one of the few places in the world that both could and would

resist the dictates of the US government” (Greenwald, Poitras and MacAskill). This second reason is a

reference to Hong Kong’s legal autonomy within the body of mainland China, which would complicate any

extradition request from the US (Pomfret, Roantree). Assange is known for living under the threat of

extradition to the US, which he was only able to avoid because of asylum offered by Ecuador. Therefore,

Snowden likely chose his destination based on the difficulty US authorities would face in their attempts to

extradite Snowden out of Hong Kong, signaling his awareness of this nonrhetorical constraint.

Snowden met with Greenwald and Poitras on June 2nd, 2013. Over the next ten days, the three of

them, along with The Guardian’s senior defense corresponded Ewen MacAskill, would be the first to reveal

the documents Snowden had taken from the NSA’s mainframes to the world. Within that span of time, The

Guardian broke the stories on Verizon’s customer metadata being scooped up by the NSA, and the NSA’s

backdoors into US tech firms like Apple and Google as part of the PRISM program. The Washington Post also

posted the PRISM story with unique documents provided to Gellman. That week, The Guardian revealed

Snowden’s identity in a short interview led by Greenwald and Poitras, and followed up with an article by

Greenwald, Poitras and MacAskill on Snowden’s motivations, future and decision to step forward. The

reporting identified Snowden as a whistleblower, and became the primary sources of Snowden’s responses to

his rhetorical constraints. Governments and news organizations around the world quickly picked up on the

story, which dominated headlines for months throughout 2013, early 2014 and recently in 2015.

This collaboration with journalists in Hong Kong is what gave Snowden the ability to respond to his

rhetorical constraints. While the rhetorical strategies involved are yet to be discussed, this also gave Snowden

the chance to fight the nonrhetorical constraint of extradition based on his Espionage Act charges. For

example, at the end of Snowden’s coming-out article, he explicitly stated he was seeking asylum, and named

Iceland as his top choice, though he was ultimately willing to accept any country who would help him

(Greenwald, Poitras and MacAskill). Second, Snowden ingratiated himself to the people of Hong Kong by

communicating that “Hong Kong and mainland Chinese computers were being hacked by the US

Barak Bullock 45

government” to local Hong Kong reporter Lana Lam. This specific revelation galvanized Hong Kong

residents to demand that local authorities resist American requests for extradition (Lam). These were other

perks of his interactions with journalists beyond the obvious benefits of engaging his rhetoircal constraints.

They highlight that rhetoric itself can be used to undermine constraints in one’s rhetorical situation, even if

they are institutional or physical barriers.

On the advice of local human rights lawyers, Snowden decided he would not seek asylum in China,

“where he could be stuck in legal limbo for years” (Pomfret, Torode). On June 23rd, Snowden left Hong

Kong for Moscow with a Wikileaks escort by his side and a plane ticket paid for by Assange (Pomfret,

Torode). Despite the US’ extradition request, Hong Kong authorities allowed Snowden to go, stating that the

US’ request “did not fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law,” and therefore had “no

legal basis to restrict Mr Snowden from leaving Hong Kong” (“HKSAR Government…”). Upon arriving in

Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, Snowden discovered that his passport had been revoked by the US

government, and therefore he could not continue on to Cuba, Venezuela and then Ecuador, where he

originally intended to apply for asylum (“US Revokes…”). On August 1st, after spending close to a month

trapped in the transit zone of the Sheremetyevo airport, Snowden was granted temporary asylum in Russia

for one year, which could be renewed on a yearly basis indefinitely (Loiko).

Snowden is generally considered safe from US rendition or extradition in Russia for several reasons.

First, the US and Russia do not have an extradition treaty, meaning the US could not initiate an extradition

process with Russia like they attempted with Hong Kong (Frumin). Second, Snowden was initially granted

renewable asylum, meaning he could stay for as long as Russia kept refreshing his asylum status (Frumin).

Third, though Latin America was Snowden’s initial destination, he is safer in Russia according to Assange,

who considered the possibility of regime changes in Venezuela or Ecuador as potential complications for

asylum bids (Reitman). The US has also pressured countries along the airspace to those countries to arrest

Snowden if he attempts to travel there; however, Snowden could not leave Russia as part of the conditions of

his asylum, making any decision to leave unlikely (Frumin). As of August 2014, Snowden has been granted a

Russian residency permit lasting three years, further protecting Snowden against arrest and prosecution under

the Espionage Act (Stanglin).

Barak Bullock 46

As a whistleblower charged under under the Espionage Act, Snowden’s acquisition of reliable asylum

in Russia is an improvement over the outcomes others like Manning and Assange have acheived. Despite the

fact that Snowden cannot leave Russia, he is free to live, travel and work to a degree. These results should be

credited to the ways Snowden deliberately evaded or undermined his nonrhetorical constraints, which would

have hampered Snowden’s ability to address his exigence had he misstepped in some way. But they should

also be credited the rhetorical strategies with which Snowden, Greenwald, Poitras and MacAskill confronted

Snowden’s rhetorical constraints. Of all the ways Snowden is disimilar to prior whistleblowers, the way

Snowden collaborated with journalists to deliberately announce his involvement and respond to hostile topoi is

the most noticably divergent strategy from the others. It represents an important innovation in how

whistleblowers have attempted to control the debates they unleash, and constitutes a crucial object of study

for scholars of rhetoric.

Rhetorical Navigation

Snowden was able to respond to his rhetorical constraints once he had met with journalists in Hong

Kong who were committed to publishing the leak story. With the NSA completely unaware of Snowden’s

intentions, the reporters studied the documents and interviewed Snowden for days to generate reports on the

NSA’s surveillance capabilities. These early reports and interviews contain the responses to Snowden’s

rhetorical constraints that will be examined in this section. Specifically, The Guardian’s first video interview

with Snowden, posted on June 9th, and The Guardian’s first written story on Snowden, posted June 11th, are

two major sources of textual evidence for these responses. Though these texts respond to the hostile topoi

outlined in the previous chapter, it is important to recognize that these responses were anticipatory. They were

pre-emptively countering claims which hadn’t yet been made towards Snowden, but had been made against

whistleblowers historically.

In fact, there were at least two major rhetorical strategies woven into the primary reporting, each

directed towards either the “damaged national security” or the “unstable leaker” topoi. For “damaged

national security,” Snowden directly rebutted sub-arguments contained within the topos. For “unstable

leaker,” Snowden dissociated discourse born out of the leaks between discussions on the leaks and

Barak Bullock 47

discussions on his personality, while delegitimizing the latter. These strategies were repeated by others

commenting on the Snowden story, including Greenwald and other whistleblowers like Ellsberg, Binney and

Drake. While these two strategies do not represent the total number which may be present in the Snowden

reporting, the presence of these two strongly suggests a deliberate rhetorical effort to neutralize the topoi

directed at whistleblowers like Manning, Assange, Ellsberg, Binney and Drake. While this section does not ask

the effectiveness of these strategies, their existence as a result of Snowden’s nonrhetorical navigation alone is

an innovation which should be examined.

“Damaged National Security”

In the variations of the “damaged national security” topos, attackers claim the whistleblower is a

traitor, that they put lives in danger, and that they are working for or aided either foreign governments or

terrorists. Both the first Snowden interview and article offer responses to potential proponents of these

arguments. Indications of this can be seen as early as the titles of the two posts, which both identify Snowden

as a ‘whistleblower,’ rather than a ‘traitor.’ By defining Snowden as a whistleblower and establishing his

motivations before anyone has a chance to react, the groundwork was already being set to deflect the

arguments of the “damaged national security” topos.

In the interview, one particular question deals with the claims of treason, putting lives in danger and

being a spy, while a short segment of the article covers treason and aiding a foreign body:

Greenwald: "If your motive had been to harm the United States and help its enemies or if

your motive had been personal material gain were there things you could have done with

these documents to advance those goals that you didn't end up doing?"

Snowden: "Oh absolutely. Anyone in the positions of access with the technical capabilities

that I had could suck out secrets, pass them on the open market to Russia… I had access to

the full rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community, and

undercover assets all over the world. The locations of every station, we have what their

missions are and so forth."

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"If I had just wanted to harm the US? You could shut down the surveillance system in an

afternoon. But that's not my intention. I think for anyone making that argument they need

to think, if they were in my position and you live a privileged life, you're living in Hawaii, in

paradise, and making a ton of money, 'What would it take you to leave everything

behind?’" (Poitras, Greenwald, “NSA Whistleblower…”).

And in the article two days later:

As strong as those beliefs are, there still remains the question: why did he do it? Giving up

his freedom and a privileged lifestyle? "There are more important things than money. If I

were motivated by money, I could have sold these documents to any number of countries

and gotten very rich” (Greenwald, Poitras and MacAskill).

These texts clash directly with arguments that Snowden is a traitor, and that he is working for a

foreign government or terrorists. In the interview, Greenwald’s question is designed to eliminate the

possibilities of Snowden committing treason, hurting the country, or working with an adversary by

highlighting that Snowden could have easily done these things, but didn’t. Snowden’s answer pushes even

farther against the topos by directly referencing helping Russia, whom Ellsberg was accused of aiding when it

was still the Soviet Union. Snowden then satisfies Greenwald’s question by detailing the treasonous and

damaging options Snowden could have taken. First, he could have delivered the identities of intelligence

employees or agents, locations of assets or the content of military missions directly to a foreign entity.

Second, he could have disrupted the surveillance infrastructure from his position as a systems administrator.

As the article adds, he could have also sold the documents for what would likely be an enormous sum of

money. Snowden’s remaining move is to recognize what he did do, which was abandon a privileged and

comfortable life, taking ground away from hostile efforts to define his motivations.

To undermine any future claims that Snowden intended to aid the Chinese government or that he

was a Chinese spy, Snowden was asked by Greenwald why he decided to leak the documents in Hong Kong:

Greenwald: "We are currently sitting in a room in Hong Kong, which is where we are

because you travelled here. Talk a little bit about why it is that you came here and specifically

there are going to be people…people speculate that what you really intend to do is to defect

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to the country that many see as the number one rival of the Untied States, which is China.

And that what you are really doing is essentially seeking to aid an enemy of the United States

with which you intend to seek asylum. Can you talk a little about that?"

Snowden: "Sure. So there's a couple assertions in those arguments that are sort of embedded

in the questioning of the choice of Hong Kong. The first is that China is an enemy of the

United States. It's not. I mean there are conflicts between the United States government and

the Chinese PRC government but the peoples inherently we don't care. We trade with each

other freely, we're not at war, we're not in armed conflict, and we're not trying to be. We're

the largest trading partners out there for each other."

"Additionally, Hong Kong has a strong tradition of free speech. People think 'Oh China,

Great Firewall.' Mainland China does have significant restrictions on free speech but the

people of Hong Kong have a long tradition of protesting in the streets, of making their

views known. The internet is not filtered here more so then any other western government

and I believe that the Hong Kong government is actually independent in relation to a lot of

other leading western governments” (Poitras, Greenwald, “NSA Whistleblower…”).

And in the article:

He chose the city because "they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of

political dissent", and because he believed that it was one of the few places in the world that

both could and would resist the dictates of the US government (Greenwald, Poitras,

MacAskill).

Much like the first one, the question Greenwald poses to Snowden is crafted to respond directly to

an unvoiced opposition argument, specifically that Snowden wants to “defect” to China and “aid an enemy of

the United States” (Poitras, Greenwald, “NSA Whistleblower…”). Snowden begins his answer to Greenwald

by explaining that Chinese and American citizens are not enemies. He follows that by saying Hong Kong’s

traditon of free speech and independence from western governments drew him there. The excerpt from the

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article mirrors this structure. What makes Snowden’s response interesting is that it does not seem to clash

directly with the opposition argument; that is to say, Snowden does not outrightly deny he is a spy. He does,

however, mention the things that made Hong Kong such an effective haven for him throughout his stay

there, which were political speech and independence. When the US requested Snowden’s extradition, Hong

Kong allowed Snowden to leave after local protestors demanded it, and without any interference of the West.

In this way, rather than rebut the argument by denying he was a spy, Snowden answered the question of “why

Hong Kong?” with the nonrhetorical protections the city offered him as a whistleblower.

In the article, the claim that Snowden’s leaks could put lives in danger was specifically singled out and

refuted. Snowden recalled that he first considered leaking government documents while he was in the CIA in

2007, but decided against it:

"Most of the secrets the CIA has are about people, not machines and systems, so I didn't

feel comfortable with disclosures that I thought could endanger anyone”…Snowden said

that he admires both Ellsberg and Manning, but argues that there is one important

distinction between himself and the army private…"I carefully evaluated every single

document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest," he said.

"There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over,

because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is” (Greenwald, Poitras and MacAskill).

In this scenario, the insight Snowden gained from past whistleblowers is readily apparent. As we

know, the claim that lives were endangered by Wikileaks’ publication of intelligence files was routinely

deployed on Manning, who had no means of countering the claim herself. Here, Snowden takes the wind out

of that argument’s sails by explaining his method of collecting the documents. By avoiding documents which

compromised personnel, Snowden accounted for a risk commonly associated with government leaks.

Interestingly, Snowden’s response can be seen as a way of overcoming a rhetorical constraint being enabled by

nonrhetorical preparation. This is a good example of how Snowden’s rhetorical navigation was made possible

by the nonrhetorical steps he took to collect convicing evidence.

In July 2013, a second part of the same interview from the month before was released by The

Guardian, where Greenwald asked Snowden how he believed the government would portray him in the media:

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Glenn Greenwald: Have you given thought to what it is that the US government’s response

to your conduct is, in terms of what they might say about you, how they might try to depict

you?

Edward Snowden: I think the government’s going to launch an investigation, I think they’re

going to say I’ve committed grave crimes, I’ve – you know, violated the Espionage Act.

They’re going to say, I’ve aided our enemies in making them aware of these systems but that

argument can be made against anybody who reveals information that points out mass

surveillance systems, because fundamentally they apply equally to ourselves as they do to our

enemies (Poitras and Grenwald, “Edward Snowden…”).

And from the article:

He predicts the government will launch an investigation and "say I have broken the

Espionage Act and helped our enemies, but that can be used against anyone who points out

how massive and invasive the system has become” (Greenwald, Poitras and MacAskill).

Like the earlier questions, the one Greenwald poses to Snowden here is designed to respond directly

to his rhetorical constraints. Snowden’s response plainly identifies a variant of the topos, the “aiding our

enemies” arguments, as well his major nonrhetorical constraint, the Espionage Act. It also explicitly

anticipates specific arguments within the “damaged national security” topos will inevitably be used against him,

which has been more or less subtle in each of the interview questions and answers so far. Combined with the

previous segment of the interview, the various sub-arguments within the “damaged national security” topos

were all referred and responded to. Despite this, in Guardian reports after the intial week, Snowden made even

more rebuttals to certain claims within the “damaged national defense” topos.

In a Guardian article from July 2013, Greenwald and Snowden countered Perlez and Bradsher’s earlier

report from the Times, which claimed that four of Snowden’s laptops were “drained,” providing the NSA

intelligence to China. Greenwald wrote:

“NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden…vehemently denied media claims that he gave

classified information to the governments of China or Russia. He also denied assertions that

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one or both governments had succeeded in ‘draining the contents of his laptops’. ‘I never

gave any information to either government, and they never took anything from my laptops,’

he said.”

Greenwald, who conceded that Snowden’s denial was not enough to resolve the issue, directed his

attention to the Times’ reporting strategies:

“In lieu of any evidence, the NYT circulated this obviously significant assertion by quoting

what it called ‘two Western intelligence experts’ who ‘worked for major government spy

agencies’. Those ‘experts’ were not identified. The article then stated that these experts ‘said

they believed that the Chinese government had managed to drain the contents of the four

laptops that Mr. Snowden said he brought to Hong Kong’ [Greenwald’s emphasis]. So that's

how this ‘China- drained-his-laptops’ claim was created: by the New York Times citing two

anonymous sources saying they ‘believed’ this happened.”

Similar to this focused response, Snowden also denied claims that he was a foreign agent or spy in

another article around the same time. This statement contains what may be the most explicit reference to a

deliberate rhetorical strategy from Snowden yet, who called the assertion of being a Chinese spy “a

predictable smear that I anticipated before going public…[which] intended to distract from the issue of US

government misconduct” (Branigan). In the same article, Snowden had asked in a live chat with Guardian

readers, "Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be

living in a palace petting a phoenix by now” (Branigan). When he was pressed again by Guardian readers on

whether he had given any information to China, Snowden said, "No. I have had no contact with the Chinese

government … I only work with journalists” (Branigan).

On top of continuing to push back against the sub-argument that he aided a foreign government,

these follow-up statements in The Guardian are convenient examples of how Snowden used the media as a

platform to wage a sustained and public campaign against the US government’s claims – a capability that he

doubtlessly enjoyed only because of his deliberate nonrhetorical steps taken earlier. The same can be said of

the other journalists who helped defend Snowden against hostile topoi – their contributions were made

possible by a deliberate rhetorical strategy which focused on countering some claims. These extra responses

Barak Bullock 53

helped Snowden further break down his rhetorical constraints by either echoing or extending answers to the

constraints crafted by Snowden and the other journalists.

There were several kinds of responses to claims that Snowden was a traitor. One variation was to

attach to Snowden an opposing binary term to traitor, like “whistleblower,” “hero” or “patriot,” which were

frequently accompanied by responses to the other sub-arguments. These arguments are also responses to the

charge of treason because they typically proceed from the assumption that Snowden provided a public

service by exposing injustice. While identifying Snowden with one of the three choices above is itself a

response, the responses to the other arguments built off of the initial Guardian reporting do more to

demonstrate their usefulness. Like the Snowden reporting, these responses often cross-apply to other sub-

arguments within the “damaged national security” topos, making organization less than straightforward.

However, in an effort to treat each sub-argument individually, responses to charges of treason will be

analyzed first.

Snowden was called a whistleblower, hero or patriot by commentators across the political spectrum.

The Guardian called him a whistleblower, as did Drake, Republican Representative Justin Amash (R-MI), the

New York Times and The Economist (“Amash…”; Cassidy; “Edward Snowden, Whistleblower”; Houston).

Snowden was called a hero by Ellsberg, liberal filmmaker Michael Moore, right-wing commentator Glenn

Beck, judge Andrew Napolitano, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, the New Yorker’s John Cassidy and popular

philospher Slavoj Žižek, among others (Gabbatt; Gold; Mirkinson; “Napolitano…”). Columnists Ezra Klein,

Trevor Timm and former senior CIA analyst Ray McGovern called Snowden a patriot (“Edward Snowden

Is…”). The ACLU called Snowden both a hero and a patriot (German; Romero).

When it came to the “put lives in danger” sub-argument, Greenwald himself commented on the

publishing arrangment he and Snowden agreed on to avoiding potentially dangerous disclosures:

"As every journalist who has worked with Snowden has said, he was adamant that we very

carefully review the materials he gave us and only publish what is in the public interest, while

withholding anything that would endanger the lives of innocent people or invade people's

privacy," Greenwald said. "We have fully honored our agreement with him when publishing

and intend to continue doing so” (Dozier).

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As a close collaborator with Snowden, pusuing the initial strategy of his own reporting would seem

trivial for Greenwald, who does that here by reiterating Snowden’s caution with the documents like in the

article. In another example of Snowden’s caution, recall how Snowden and Greenwald highlighted the

potential dangerous routes Snowden could have taken but did not. Cassidy contributed to this idea by arguing

that Snowden’s leaks were a public service which caused no demonstrable harm. In his discussion on the

contents of the documents, Cassidy responds to the “put lives in danger” sub-argument:

…Let’s remind ourselves of what the leaks so far have not contained. They didn’t reveal

anything about the algorithms that the N.S.A. uses, the groups or individuals that the agency

targets, or the identities of U.S. agents. They didn’t contain the contents of any U.S. military

plans, or of any conversations between U.S. or foreign officials. As Glenn Greenwald…

pointed out…this wasn’t a WikiLeaks-style data dump. “[Snowden] spent months

meticulously studying every document…He didn’t just upload them to the Internet.”

Cassidy’s similarities to the early Guardian report begin with his mention of “the identities of US

agents,” “military plans” and other damaging information in general that Snowden did not disclose. The

comparison between the leak methods of Snowden and WikiLeaks is also present, and even guards against

the “data dump” meme used by Toobin and others. The inclusion of the Greenwald quote at the end not

only distinguishes Snowden’s leak from Manning’s, it illustrates Cassidy’s rhetorical proximity to the strategies

present in Greenwald’s report.

Cassidy also disputed the sub-argument that Snowden’s leaks would aid terrorists, arguing that the

fact that they are monitored is likely common knowledge among them:

Conceivably, the fact that Uncle Sam is watching their Facebook and Google accounts could

come as news to some dimwit would-be jihadis in foreign locales, prompting them to

communicate in ways that are harder for the N.S.A. to track. But it will hardly surprise the

organized terrorist groups, which already go to great lengths to avoid being monitored. Not

for nothing did Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad go without a phone or

Internet connection.

Barak Bullock 55

Though the initial Guardian reports do not mention terrorists, this observation can be seen as an

extension of Snowden’s anticipation that the government would claim he “aided enemies” of the US. Like

detailing Snowden’s method of selecting the documents, mitigating the threat terrorists pose with leaked

information also helps to combat the claims like Turner’s that lives were endangered as a result reinvigorated

terrorist activity. Binney, in a roundtable discussion with USA Today featuring Drake, Wiebe, and their legal

representative Jesselyn Radack, gave a definitive rebuttal to the claim that Snowden aided terrorists:

USA Today: Did foreign governments, terrorist organizations, get information they

didn't have already?

Binney: Ever since ... 1997-1998 ... those terrorists have known that we've been monitoring

all of these communications all along. So they have already adjusted to the fact that we are

doing that. So the fact that it is published in the U.S. news that we're doing that, has no effect

on them whatsoever. They have already adjusted to that (Eisler and Page).

The argument that Snowden was aiding or working for a foreign government was also disputed by

voices in the media. Spencer Ackerman, writing for The Guardian, countered claims that Snowden was doing

so by pointing to the lack of evidence for those claims:

As things stand now, there is no evidence Snowden has aided any US adversary or

intelligence service, wittingly or not…When asked directly if there was any evidence that

Snowden had cooperated with any intelligence service or American adversary, the

administration and Congress declined to provide any. The office of the director of national

intelligence, James Clapper, declined to comment for this story. The Justice Department and

the House intelligence committee didn't even respond to inquiries (Ackerman).

Like Cassidy and Ackerman, Wizner helped break down the “aiding the enemy” component of

Snowden’s rhetorical constraint by arguing those claims were made without substantiation, stating “there is

not a shred of evidence that any adversary has seen any documents other than those that have been published

by journalists who had access to this material,” referring to Snowden’s leaks (Dozier). Slate’s William Saletan

reinforced this point again by noting how the same lack of evidence for the claim of aiding the enemy was

Barak Bullock 56

present in the cases of Manning and David Miranda, Greenwald’s partner, who was detained in London’s

Heathrow airport for having possession of the NSA documents:

Manning, Miranda, and Snowden are different in many ways. But two things unite them.

First, they have all participated in the transfer or release of secret government documents.

Second, for doing this, they have been accused, through formal charges or insinuation, of

collaboration with enemies of the state…In none of these cases has the government

presented any evidence that the leaker intended to aid, or had any contact with, our

adversaries. The rationale is simply that our adversaries benefit from disclosures of classified

information (Saletan).

Notice that highlighting the dearth of evidence for these types of claims is a direct rebuttal to

Toobin, Cheney, Keck, Clinton, Ewing and others who argued that Snowden was wittingly or unwittingly

helping foreign governments or terrorists. In addition to beating back Snowden’s rhetorical constraints, these

statements also further support Snowden’s observation that the “damaged national security” topos is

reflexively deployed in leak situations, regardless of circumstances. But above all, the existence of these

rhetorical defenses of Snowden expound the effectiveness of Snowden’s deliberate rhetorical strategy, made

possible by his nonrhetorical navigation and collaboration with journalists.

“Unstable Leaker”

In the “unstable leaker” topos, the whistleblower is called narcissistic, grandiose, lonely and sexually

deviant. Unlike the “damaged national security” topos, Snowden used a dissociative strategy to distance

himself from the entire topos rather than respond to these sub-arguments individually. This strategy can be

found in the same first-week Guardian reports as before, and can be seen repeated by other defenses posted

after the Guardian. Understanding the function of these texts requires an application of the dissociative pair

“appearance/reality” to the intial Snowden report, which in Snowden’s rhetorical situation became “apparent

story/real story.” Snowden defined the apparent story as media discourse which focused on his personality

and avoided the implications of the leaked documents, while the real story did the opposite.

Barak Bullock 57

Snowden’s dissociative argument lies in this multi-paragraph section, in which Greenwald, Poitras and

MacAskill communicate Snowden’s desire to ignite a debate about the contents of the documents while

avoiding discourse about himself:

Despite his determination to be publicly unveiled, he repeatedly insisted that he wants to

avoid the media spotlight. "I don't want public attention because I don't want the story to be

about me. I want it to be about what the US government is doing.”

He does not fear the consequences of going public, he said, only that doing so will distract

attention from the issues raised by his disclosures. "I know the media likes to personalise

political debates, and I know the government will demonise me."

Despite these fears, he remained hopeful his outing will not divert attention from the

substance of his disclosures. "I really want the focus to be on these documents and the

debate which I hope this will trigger among citizens around the globe about what kind of

world we want to live in."

In order to analyze the dissociative argument in this text, we must adhere to the four basic features

of a dissociative pair discussed in earlier chapters. First, we must identify the unified concept or idea that is

being dissociated, and demonstrate that two novel elements are reconstructed from the dissociation, rather

than simply dividing two existing concepts. In the excerpt above, the noun phrases which signal the thing

being dissociated include “media spotlight,” “public attention,” “the story,” “public debates” and “the focus.”

These noun phrases seem to be different ways of representing the same concept, rather than indicating

disparate ideas. This concept can be defined as the dominant object of the global public’s attention within the

context of Snowden’s leaks. So how is this unified concept – which I will refer to from here on as “the story”

– dissociated?

Snowden’s statement that he wants “the story” to be the government’s actions instead of himself

offers a concise summary of how the dissoctiation functions, but is not the act of dissociating itself. The

dissociation of “the story” into two new elements takes place once these elements are defined, and each has

Barak Bullock 58

been assigned the role of “apparent” or “real.” What this statement does is acknowledge that “the story,” a

product of all media coverage, is capable of being fragmented and trained on different targets. The possible

targets Snowden offers are “me,” referring to himself, “what the government is doing,” “disclosures,” and

“these documents.” Crucially, Snowden also includes other targets in the form of verbs when he says "I know

the media likes to personalise political debates, and I know the government will demonise me.” The words

“personalize” and “demonize” constitute two more targets, which, combined with “me,” create the first

element of the dissociative pair, which can be defined as efforts to focus on Snowden through

personalization or demonization at the expense of the disclosures. The second element is comprised of

“what the government is doing,” “disclosures,” and “these documents,” which can be defined as efforts to

focus on the the implications of the documents concerning the government’s conduct. As Snowden’s

insistence that the focus be placed on the disclosures rather than himself implies, the personality angle is the

“apparent story,” while the disclosure discussion is the “real story.”

We can demonstrate the process of this dissociation even more thoroughly by applying the

properties of terms I and II of dissociative pairs to this context. As we know, term I begins as the thing being

dissociated; it is the holistic reality that is capable of being fragmented into novel categories. However, when

it is displayed in one of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s dissociative pair schematics, it is represented by the

apparent or illusory component which is dissociated out of the whole. With Snowden, term I is “the story,”

which later becomes “apparent story,” the category which is discarded in the course of redefining reality.

Term II is the constant variable which allows the extraction of apparent or erroneous realities from the

unified concept. In other words, term II is the undergirding reality that allows us to dissociate out mutually

exclusive realities. In the Snowden debate, term II is “real story,” which is what allows us to distinguish

between it and the “apparent story,” which are both embedded in the larger concept. Consequently, we can

display the paired terms with Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s dissociative paired terms schematic:

appearance :: apparent story :: me reality real story government

personalization :: demonization disclosures documents

Barak Bullock 59

In each variation, term II is marked as real, and therefore legitimate, while term I is marked as

apparent, and therefore illegitimate. This was Snowden’s way of dealing with the arguments contained within

the “unstable leaker” topos. Rather than devote time and energy into crafting and publishing specific rebuttals

like in the “damaged national security” topos, this dissociative strategy allowed Snowden and the journalists to

counter the entire topos with a blanket response. Snowden categorized the attacks related to narcissism,

grandiosity, lonliness, and sexual deviance as term I of an appearance/reality dissociative pair, which simply

delegitimized those arguments by marking them as an apparent story. Much like how King’s dissociation of

“the law” helped him advocate breaking “unjust” laws without espousing lawlessness, Snowden’s dissociation

of “the story” helped him deflect personal attacks without engaging them directly.

Snowden’s dissociative strategy would seem to apply to the “damaged national security” topos as well.

However, the effort Snowden and his collaborators put into deflecting those specific sub-arguments suggests

that perhaps they did not consider dissociation a completely solvent rhetorical solution on its own.

Nevertheless, the presence of this dissociation, like the responses to the “damaged national security” topos, is

at least indicative of an anticipatory rhetorical strategy which sought to maximize the effects of the leak

reporting by determining the acceptable topics of discourse surrounding the leaks. It is also similar to the

previous topos in that the ways in which this dissociative strategy was picked up by other writers and

commentators, providing insight into how these strategies actually did affect discourse.

In the first week of the Snowden leaks, Ron Fournier of National Journal recognized the schism

between the “real” and “apparent” stories over Snowden, who glossed over Snowden’s personality in favor of

interrogating the documents:

Is Edward Snowden a hero or a traitor? I don't care. You read right: I don't give a whit about

the man who exposed two sweeping U.S. online surveillance programs, nor do I worry much

about his verdict in the court of public opinion.

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Why? Because it is the wrong question. The Snowden narrative matters mostly to White

House officials trying to deflect attention from government overreach and deception, and to

media executives in search of an easy storyline to serve a celebrity-obsessed audience.

Here, Fournier follows Snowden’s definition of the “apparent story,” which Fournier calls “the

Snowden narrative” and “an easy storyline” for a “celebrity-obsessed audience.” He adds that the “apparent

story” is one which government officials use to deliberately “deflect attention from government overreach

and deception,” indirecly referencing the rhetorical constraint which Snowden’s dissociative strategy

undermines. Though Fournier does not mirror Snowden’s entire dissociative strategy, he does further its goals

by disparaging the personality discussion and proceeding on to quesions concerning the documents and the

government’s conduct.

One of the intrinsic qualities of the dissociative paired terms is that term II represents reality in an

ontological or concrete sense, not just in the sense that one believes in that reality. When applied to the

context of the Snowden debate, this translates into a rather important claim, which is that the discussion of

the disclosures is, in fact, a discussion of real objects, events and consequences, whereas efforts to personalize

or demonize Snowden are based on speculation or spurious assertions. This observation was encapsulated by

Drake in an interview with ABC News in late July 2013, who also identified the government’s reaction to

Snowden as an apparent story:

Interviewer: What do you say to the argument, advanced by those with the opposite

viewpoint to you, especially in the U.S. Congress and the White House, that Edward

Snowden is a traitor who made a narcissistic decision that he personally had a right to decide

what public information should be in the public domain?

Drake: That’s a government meme, a government cover—that’s a government story. The

government is desperate to not deal with the actual exposures, the content of the

disclosures. Because they do reveal a vast, systemic, institutionalized, industrial-scale

Leviathan surveillance state that has clearly gone far beyond the original mandate to deal

with terrorism—far beyond (Cassidy).

Barak Bullock 61

The question posed to Drake cites parts of both topoi discussed thus far, making Drake’s response a

particularly relevant defense. In his answer, Drake pits the government’s “meme,” “cover,” and “story”

against “actual exposures,” and “disclosures,” providing ammunition for a potential dissociative argument.

However, Drake does not derive his elements from a unified concept like Snowden. Still, Drake invokes the

clash between the “real story” and the “apparent story,” while arguing, like Fournier, that the government

deliberately personalizes in order to accomplish the opposite of Snowden’s goal – to divert focus away from

the disclosures. As a former NSA executive and whistleblower, Drake has certainly faced the same

nonrhetorical constraints as Snowden and perhaps even rhetorical ones as well. His defense constitutes an

important contribution to Snowden’s dissociative argument.

Three days later, John Naughton, writing for The Guardian, articulated the media’s tendency to

personalize Snowden and avoiding the leaks after they had already begun doing so. In his article, “Edward

Snowden's not the story. The fate of the internet is,” Naughton captured the conflict between the “real” and

“apparent” stories as it was happening:

Repeat after me: Edward Snowden is not the story. The story is what he has revealed about

the hidden wiring of our networked world. This insight seems to have escaped most of the

world's mainstream media…The obvious explanations are: incorrigible ignorance; the

imperative to personalise stories; or gullibility in swallowing US government spin, which

brands Snowden as a spy rather than a whistleblower.

These are pretty significant outcomes and they're just the first-order consequences of

Snowden's activities. As far as most of our mass media are concerned, though, they have

gone largely unremarked. Instead, we have been fed a constant stream of journalistic pap –

speculation about Snowden's travel plans, asylum requests, state of mind, physical

appearance, etc. The "human interest" angle has trumped the real story, which is what the

NSA revelations tell us about how our networked world actually works and the direction in

which it is heading.

Barak Bullock 62

The identification of the “apparent” and “real” stories can hardly get any more explicit than in

Naughton’s piece. More importantly, Naughton mirrors nearly all of Snowden’s entire dissociative argument

by satisfying the four features of a dissociative pair. He starts with “the story” as an undivided concept,

plainly states “Edward Snowden is not the story” while referring to the leak story the “real story.” This

matches the structure of the appearance/reality pair, and could easily be represented by several of the paired

terms schematics above. Naughton’s forceful summarization of Snowden’s dissociation not only helps to

push back against hostile topoi, it shows how Snowden’s rhetorical strategy was directly adopted by other

writers as their angle on the leak story.

Conclusion

Based on the experiences of whistleblowers like Manning, Assange, Ellsberg, Binney and Drake,

Snowden was able to identify the rhetorical and nonrhetorical constaints of his situation and make concerted

efforts to overcome them. The ways through which Snowden navigated his constraints are highly intricate

and likely all deliberate strategies. Snowden successfully circumvented his nonrhetorical constraints by leaking

the documents and then achieving temporary safety from prosecution in Russia. With the help of specific

journalists, Snowden also developed rhetorical strategies to publish alongside the leaks. Though the

effectiveness of these strategies is difficult to claim, this analysis attempted to demonstrate the usefulness of

Snowden’s strategies by including examples of their deployment in defenses by other commentators.

Nevertheless, the results of Snowden’s confrontation with his constraints should be considered extremely

favorable based on the fates of other whistleblowers. At the least, Snowden’s navigation of his rhetorical

situation provides innovative and instructive examples for future whistleblowers who face similar challenges.

It also furthers our understanding of the rhetorical situation by considering the combination of rhetorical

and nonrhetorical constraints in the path to addressing pressing exigencies through discourse.

Barak Bullock 63

Chapter IV:

Why Snowden Matters

The Value of Rhetoric

In the past two chapters, the constraints of Snowden’s rhetorical situation have been defined, and the

ways Snowden dealt with those constraints were studied closely. From there, the experiences of Manning,

Assange, Ellsberg, Binney and Drake showed the government’s internal channels of dissent on the NSA’s

activities were useless, and the legal protection ostensibly offered to whistleblowers was shown to take a back-

seat to Espionage Act charges. These constraints: the channels of dissent, whistleblower protection laws, and

the Espionage Act, constituted Snowden’s nonrhetorical constraints, or barriers impervious to discourse.

From Manning, Assange and Ellsberg, we know that whistleblowers were often attacked with variations of

the “damaged national security” and “unstable leaker” topoi, regardless of the validity of those claims. Those

topoi constituted Snowden’s rhetorical constraints, or obstacles to his audience or exigence which he could

break down with rhetoric. Though this may not be true in all cases, in Snowden’s case these two kinds of

constraints existed in a contingent relationship.

In Snowden’s rhetorical situation, it was necessary that he confront his nonrhetorical constraints first

before attempting to respond rhetorically. Since his nonrhetorical constraints threatened Snowden with arrest

and imprisonment, which would have destroyed any chance of engaging in a sustained rhetorical defense,

Snowden took actionable steps to avoid those constraints before challenging his rhetorical constraints. Not

only that, as part of Snowden’s nonrhetorical steps to avoid capture, he collected vital resources which had

important consequences for his rhetorical response. The care with which Snowden selected documents and

who he chose to publish them are two examples. These steps were designed to guarantee the documents’

publication and refute certain arguments in public, enhancing his rhetorical response. What this suggests is

that in the rhetorical situations of whistleblowers, the whistleblower’s nonrhetorical preparedness for

constraints can determine the strength of their rhetorical response, or whether they get to respond

rhetorically at all.

Barak Bullock 64

When Snowden responded to his rhetorical constraints, he used two different approaches designed to

pre-empively counter each topos. For “damaged national security,” Snowden, Greenwald, Poitras and

MacAskill engineered interviews and articles which directly addressed each variation of the topos, and

enabled other commentators to build on those defenses. For “unstable leaker,” Snowden and the others used

a dissociative argument in the body of their article to distinguish between a “real” and an “apparent” story,

which disqualified that topos as illegitimate discourse. Other writers also adopted this strategy in their

defenses of Snowden. Regardless of its effectiveness, Snowden’s response to his rhetorical constraints is

documentation of a whistleblower’s public rhetorical strategy. For scholars of rhetoric, the methods of

Snowden’s rhetorical responses should be a significant entry into a niche genre of whistleblower defense

discourse.

As indicated earlier, rhetorical constraints can also encompass topoi, or recurrent, ready-made

variations of an argumentative category established through repeated use. The hybridization of these two

concepts allowed for Snowden’s rhetorical constraints to be defined in greater detail, emphasizing common

attacks which have been routinely deployed against whistleblowers historically. Likewise, the primary and

secondary Snowden reporting responded directly to these topoi, indicating that the two sides were rhetorically

clashing over the constraints in Snowden’s path. Those interested in mapping the arguments in the debate

over the Snowden story will find that these concepts offer explanatory force. They would also seem to work

well together in the context of other rhetorical contexts, as they simultaneously elucidate rhetorical

constraints and give them shape. The usefulness of these concepts together speaks to their versatility for

rhetorical application, and to the enduring relevance of the rhetorical situation in contemporary rhetorical

scholarship.

This analysis is admittedly devoted to only the constraints of Snowden’s situation, rather than the

exigence or audience. As a result, only a fraction of Snowden’s entire rhetorical situation was investigated.

New rhetorical projects could easily target the exigences Snowden aimed to address – like mass surveillance –

or Snowden’s rhetorical audience. Other hostile topoi used against Snowden could also be identified, and

responses to those topoi could be dissected for dissociative arguments or other forms of rebuttal. This is to

say that the Snowden story could very well continue to provide rhetorical insight with further application of

Barak Bullock 65

any of these concepts down the road. As the most widely discussed news story of 2013 and the largest leak

of classified intelligence documents in history, I believe the Snowden story should merit additional attention

in academic research.

Though this research is geared for the interests of scholars of rhetoric, a rhetorical understanding of

these events offers value to other groups as well. Throughout this analysis, different rhetorical devices – the

rhetorical situation, topoi and dissociation – have been used to do various tasks, such as identify barriers to

problem solving, detect recursive categories of arguments, and interrogate texts for persuasive strategies. I

argue these rhetorical devices can help future whistleblowers, journalists, and normal, everyday citizens better

understand their individual roles in contemporary discourse surrounding leak events. The way Snowden

executed his leak can be studied by citizens, who can act on leaked information by demanding accountability

from their representatives; it can be studied by journalists interested in aiding whistleblowers and reporting

adversarially against the government; and it can especially be studied by other potential whistleblowers who

look to induce reform while minimizing the effects of retaliation. These lessons can be derived directly from

Snowden’s experience and reactions to him.

By understanding Snowden, the public stands to gain important social tools for enhancing

democracy in the US. Those tools include individual perception of common topoi used against

whistleblowers, and an example of what a responsible whistleblower looks like, as opposed to a reckless

whistleblower or traitor. Specifically, by recognizing the argumentative topoi used by critics of whistleblowers

when a leak happens, citizens can learn how to independently verify the credibility of a whistleblower without

the help of the government or the mainstream media, who have routinely vilified whistleblowers in the past

decade. The public would also be able to better judge whistleblowers by taking note of their actions and how

they account for risks typically associated with leaks. A population capable of appropriately weighing a

dissenting voice against an institutional condemnation is one that will know whether to demand the

punishment of a dangerous criminal or a redress of grievances from an unscrupulous government.

Similarly, journalists can learn from the way reporters Greenwald, Poitras and MacAskill strategized

with Snowden and reported his story. With the help of adversarial journalists, Snowden forwarded certain

political objectives alongside the leaks, which aimed to gain the public’s trust, engage the public on issues

Barak Bullock 66

related to surveillance and counter accusations of treason or terrorism. As the Snowden story demonstrates,

whistleblowers increase the impact of their leaks when they work with journalists who know how to keep

their communications safe, and report on sensitive leaks adversarially without official oversight. Rhetorically

speaking, a combination of direct refutations to certain topoi and a dissociative argument which shifted

attention away from the whistleblower shined through the reporting in this leak scenario. In this regard, the

collaboration between Greenwald, Poitras, MacAskill and Snowden was integral to the formulation of

Snowden’s rhetorical strategy. Journalists should recognize that they play a tremendous role in shaping

discourse surrounding leak events, whether it’s by cooperating with whistleblowers or defaming them.

Potential whistleblowers themselves are perhaps the most relevant audience for a discussion on

whistleblowing strategy. Despite President Obama’s promise of “an unprecedented level of openess in

Government” in January 2009, more whistleblowers have been prosecuted under the Espionage Act during

his administration than any other in American history (“President Obama…”). Espionage Act charges have

resulted in pre-trial detention and massive prison sentences for those convicted. Mainstream media voices

have also reliably derided whistleblowers as narcisstic and mentally unstable. The constraints faced by

Snowden and those before him suggests they are persistent barriers which future whistleblowers will also

face. Confronted with such aggressive retaliation, whistleblowers need a robust plan to realize the reformative

power of their information while evading government pursuits and media smears.

Snowden’s example offers such a plan. From the long list of steps Snowden took to deal with his

rhetorical and nonrhetorical constraints, a basic list of six items can be constructed. They encapsulate the

path Snowden took through his rhetorical situation, which new whistleblowers in government or elsewhere

may find themselves. The list is as follows:

Step 1: Collect evidence

Step 2: Reach out

Step 3: Escape the grasp of authorities

Step 4: Rendezvous with capable allies

Step 5: Control the story

Step 6: Find permanent safety

Barak Bullock 67

Snowden’s methods behind each of these steps have been discussed in detail in previous chapters.

They represent the most consequential strategic decisions throughout Snowden’s navigation of his

constraints. I argue potential whistleblowers who find themselves in a rhetorical situation mirroring

Snowden’s position – with identical constraints and resources at their disposal – would stand the best chance

of actualizing political action from this model of whistleblowing. This is Snowden’s contribution to the our

understanding of the rhetorical situation of a whistleblower in contemporary American history. In the

absence of legislation which bolsters legal protection of whistleblowers beyond its current form – or the

elimination of exigencies which call out for internal dissent – informal strategies such as Snowden’s offer

whistleblowers the best chance at reaching their audiences and resolving their exigences.

If my discussion on Snowden has accomplished anything, I hope it has demonstrated that

whistleblowers of US intelligence secrets face enormous obstacles in their efforts to bring abuse or illegality

to light. A formidable mix of rhetorical and nonrhetorical constraints, which litter the history of

whistleblowers, forced Snowden to avoid domestic resources for dissent altogether, and forge his own path to

restoring transparency in government. The fact that Snowden leaked the documents, sparked a worldwide

debate over surveillance and privacy, and managed to remain free from US authorities is a testament to

Snowden’s understanding of his rhetorical situation, and his resourcefulness. Until whistleblowers are

protected by the law to the same degree that surveillance is enshrined in it, Snowden’s methods will remain

preferable to silence or imprisonment for conscientious individuals. As Snowden himself stated in an

interview with Gellman, whistleblowers before him had been “destroyed by the experience.” Snowden wanted

“‘to embolden others to step forward by showing that ‘they can win’” (Gellman, “Code Name…”). What

Snowden has done is show future whistleblowers that there is, indeed another way.

While Snowden may have innovated his own style of whistleblowing, the rest of us should continue

to advocate for the expanded protection of whistleblowers. In societies that indulge in secret, runaway

security at the expense of citizens’ rights, whistleblowers are the only thing standing between inevitable,

unknowable abuses and accountability. When they do decide to take a stand, they run the risks of losing their

careers, being character assassinated, imprisoned or even tortured. Whistleblowers who bring information to

the public’s attention responsibly, who fulfill such a critical role in a democratic society, should not be treated

Barak Bullock 68

this way. Despite Snowden’s successes, we should not rely solely on a makeshift, underground railroad style of

whistleblowing to address crimes committed by those who operate power in the dark. It is in our interest as

citizens, journalists and scholars of rhetoric to ensure all whistleblowers, including Snowden, are formally

heard and protected, and the crimes they expose are investigated.

Barak Bullock 69

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