BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

A 29-year-old kid, and I can call him a kid because I’m a 66-year-old grandparent, decides he should strike a blow for liberty and release highly classified information to the media and maybe directly to our adversaries.

So we’re again having an emotionally, politically, and ideologically charged debate over government secrets, national security, the public’s right to know, and the peoples’ right to privacy. It’s a good debate to have and keep having until we resolve some of the serious questions these incidents raise. Unfortunately, it will peter out soon after the next crisis erupts in the headlines.

It would be helpful, though, to break down those questions and focus on the most relevant.

The first question can be dispensed with rather quickly. Is Edward Joseph Snowden a hero or a criminal? Here’s a hint: Socialist filmmaker Michael Moore, libertarian Senator Rand Paul (who is already exploiting the incident to raise money), technology terrorist Julian Assange, the Russians and the Chinese think he’s a hero. Most legal and intelligence experts we’ve heard from think he’s a criminal. Senator Diane Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee called him a traitor.

Snowden is certainly not the reincarnation of Thomas Paine or Robert LaFollette, the World War I era progressive anti-war and free speech advocate. At best, he’s a copycat version of the Wikileaks weasel, PVT Bradley Manning.

This is not Watergate. Snowden didn’t disclose government illegality, as Daniel Ellsworth did with the Pentagon Papers, or political immorality as John Dean did, or political corruption as Deep Throat Mark Felt did.

He is a misguided, uninformed, immature, apparently bright young man who probably suffers from illusions of grandeur.

He knowingly disclosed highly classified information that aids and abets foreign entities that sponsor, harbor, train and finance people who have little compunction about slaughtering Americans on the sidewalks of Boston, or the streets of New York, or the parade grounds of a Texas military base.

He said his motive was to expose the “surveillance state,” but his disclosures reach well beyond surveillance programs and he threatens to disclose much more. He may well end up with a Chinese or Russian driver’s license.

Snowden claimed he was acting in the name of greater government transparency.

Transparency doesn’t work when what you see is not what it is perceived to be, when the public is put in front of a carnival mirror rather than a looking glass, when disclosure is indiscriminate, unexplained, and lacking context.

Snowden is not a hero. He’s a criminal of the worst kind, one who thinks his crimes are of noble purpose. To call him a patriot is criminal. Intelligence officials say that the PRISM program that he exposed thwarted at least 50 terrorist plots. If they were plots similar to the Boston Marathon bombing, then we know that lives and limbs would have been lost somewhere else in America, and may now because the PRISM is no longer secret. That is criminal.

The second set of questions addresses how he did what he did.

• Who in hell approved his credentials? He was ill prepared and unqualified to be in possession of a top secret security clearance, or have access to technology that would enable him to abuse it. He dropped out of high school and community college. He was discharged from the Army for breaking his legs. He worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, Dell Computers, and Booz Allen, all before turning 30.
• How did he have access to such a treasure trove of what appears to be highly classified information, maybe beyond the level of top secret, and how did he get so much information out of the building, to the airport, through customs and into Hong Kong?
• Was there—is there—any distinction between the clearances he had as a government employee and those he held as a contractor?

There are broader questions, too, about national security oversight. Who’s really in charge?

I thought we settled all of that with the creation of a new super spy position now occupied by James Clapper. What about Congress? I’ve had some experience with the process. The leaders and intelligence chairs used to be briefed pretty thoroughly depending upon circumstances. All members are offered briefings from time to time and apparently were offered access to the PRISM program.  History reminds us and politics teaches us, however, that the more people who know secrets the less change they remain secrets.  A small circle of legislative leaders should be asked to shoulder the responsibility for oversight of the Executives and the rest of Congress should just accept it.

Besides being offered briefings is not the same as being briefed. Being offered briefings does not mean the briefing material is all-inclusive, either, nor does it mean that members of Congress actually absorb what is offered. The public could be told more about the process so they can hold their elected representatives more accountable for keeping an eye on things. The public is done a disservice, however, by public hearings at which intelligence officials are put in untenable situations being grilled about matters that should be kept in private as Clapper was.

The Snowden leaks also remind us that the world of whistleblowers, leaks, anonymous sources, and inconsistent or absent journalistic standards, has a culture all its own. The lines of right and wrong are badly blurred if they exist at all in this world.

It is ironic that just a year ago, the leaking of classified information was somehow okay, when done deliberately by the Administration to mask President Obama’s queasy stomach over the war on terror during the heat of a presidential campaign.

In June of that campaign year, there were “at least five different incidents in which it appears people in the White House or the Obama Administration, or people with their sanction, have leaked highly classified information to the media, presumably to make Obama look tough on terrorism,” I wrote on June 19, 2012.

There was the New York Times revelations on the Stuxnet computer worm the government had apparently injected into the computer nervous system of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges. There was the disclosure of the anti-terrorist kill lists, and the disclosures that helped publicize the story behind the capture and death of Osama bin Laden and the Pakistani physician who helped us find him. There was, as well, the infamous exposure of the double agents operating in Yemen.

“I don’t think you have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out what is going on here,” Senator Lindsay Graham said at the time. “You’ve had…leaks of intelligence that paint the president as a strong leader.”

Now, the tables are turned. This isn’t election-year politics. We’re not polishing the President’s tough-guy trophies. PVT Manning and Snowden have reminded us we can’t have it both ways. National security leaks can’t be noble one day and nefarious the next in the eyes of the law or in its enforcement.

That brings us back to the media. In an age of instant information, fickle fact checking, and journalists on a mission, leakers like Snowden are greatly empowered, but the public is not. It is getting tougher and tougher to depend upon the media as an independent arbiter, a watchdog and a guardian of national security, capable of exercising judgment on what to print and what not to print, in the public interest, for the public good.

Take Glenn Greenwald, for example. He is the London Guardian reporter who wrote about Snowden’s stolen secrets. He exercised no such judgments (the Washington Post to their credit, did) nor did he feel compelled to observe journalistic standards of professionalism. He apparently was in contact with Snowden months before the disclosures, suggesting serious collaboration with him. He was not and is not an objective observer, but a passionate advocate.  He broke American law and is apparently intent on doing it again.  The responsible media need to get a handle on their own profession.   They can’t seek cumulative protection under the First Amendment and then hear no evil and see no evil when it’s convenient.

Leaking, whether involving national security or political gossip, is becoming a free-for-all with little constraint, few rules and little accountability.  It’s not good for journalism and it’s not good for the public interest journalism is supposed to serve.

When it comes to relevant questions, the big Kahuna, of course, is the natural, organic conflicts that arise when trying to preserve both an open and secure society, particularly in time of perpetual warfare.

President Obama tried early in his Presidency to make the war on terrorism go away, figuratively and literally, but it didn’t. He tried to rewrite the rules of engagement, change the language, and camouflage the face of war, but it didn’t change, not even with the death of Osama bin Laden. He pulled us out of Iraq and is pulling us out of Afghanistan, but we will not now be able to live in peace and harmony or in isolation. There are no signs that this despicable, inhumane warfare will go away anytime soon, particularly when religious extremism is at its core. Think Syria. Look at Lebanon and Turkey.

Jimmy Carter was the last American leader delusional enough to believe the mighty West could resolve conflict rooted in centuries of religious strife. President Obama, I thought, tried to channel Carter for awhile, but soon realized the futility.

We are in a state of perpetual threat and we cannot preserve our liberty without securing our safety. Just a fact, Jack.

As long as terrorism is glorified as a God-given tool of redemption that inspires men and women to blow themselves up in a marketplace, there will be a need for us to exercise security measures with which we are all uncomfortable and apprehensive and that require constant vigilance. One of the greatest shortcomings of our politics and government since 9/11 is that we, the people, have not been made stakeholders in this struggle. We have been shielded from the realities of war, the taxes required to pay for it, the loss of privacy required for our security, the responsibility of citizenship and national unity needed to enable good decision-making, and even the extent of the sacrifices of our young warriors.

That brings us back to Snowden and his misguided and destructive behavior and maybe the extent to which he is a manifestation of a society and a process of governance that is, as well, misguided and at best in a state of perpetual indecision and dysfunction. Maybe society produces Snowdens because the rest of us are not doing our part.

As columnist David Brooks said so well: “…Big Brother is not the only danger facing the country. Another is the rising tide of distrust, the corrosive spread of cynicism, the fraying of the social fabric and the rise of people who are so individualistic in their outlook that they have no real understanding of how to knit others together and look after the common good.”

What Snowden and Manning have done must not be a reflection of who we are, what we stand for or what we are destined to become. They are not heroes. They are criminals.

We can govern ourselves better than that.

Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.