Edward Snowden is a “coward,” Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday in response to the NSA leaker’s first television interview.
“Edward Snowden is a coward,” Kerry told Chuck Todd on MSNBC. “He is a traitor. And he has betrayed his country. And if he wants to come home tomorrow to face the music, he can do so.”
In a series of interviews on the Wednesday morning shows, Kerry addressed the interview between Snowden and NBC News anchor Brian Williams.
The nation’s top diplomat conceded to Todd that the debate about privacy and the NSA would not have “risen” to its current level without the Snowden disclosures. But he insisted the issues were important to President Barack Obama before the leaks and said the disclosures imperiled national security.
“More importantly, much more importantly, what he’s done is hurt his country,” he said. “What he’s done is expose, for terrorists, a lot of mechanisms which now affect operational security of those terrorists and make it harder for the United States to break up plots, harder to protect our nation.”
via John Kerry: Edward Snowden a ‘coward … traitor’ – Jonathan Topaz – POLITICO.com.