>The exchange began with host Anderson Cooper asking Lincoln Chafee, a former governor of Rhode Island, “Governor Chafee: Edward Snowden, is he a traitor or a hero?”
The answer really should be "both." Snowden supporters readily tout his commendable whistle-blowing of unlawful domestic intelligence gathering while at the same time ignoring, denying, or outright excusing stuff like this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/world/asia/nsa-breached-ch...
Snowden fled first to China and then afterwards to Russia with as much as a terabyte of classified information, at least some of which--specifically information concerning intelligence operations the NSA conducted against Huawei--we know for a fact he shared with them.
Even William Binney, another NSA whistle-blower (who, by contrast, did not seek asylum in two separate major geopolitical adversaries of the US), criticized Snowden's subsequent leaks:
>But now he is starting to talk about things like the government hacking into China and all this kind of thing. He is going a little bit too far. I don't think he had access to that program. But somebody talked to him about it, and so he said, from what I have read, anyway, he said that somebody, a reliable source, told him that the U.S. government is hacking into all these countries. But that's not a public service, and now he is going a little beyond public service.
>So he is transitioning from whistle-blower to a traitor.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/16/snowd...
While Binney has since referred to Snowden as a "patriot," he has yet to publicly disavow his past criticisms of Snowden:
http://www.businessinsider.com/william-binney-and-edward-sno...