Of all the ways to describe Edward Snowden, former CIA and NSA chief Michael Hayden may have come up with the most incendiary.
In an interview with Financial Review, an Austrian publication, Hayden compared Snowden to the Boston Marathon bombers.
“I don’t think Snowden spied for the money, and he probably did not spy for the power. He seems to have revealed this information because of his ideological embrace of transparency as a virtue,” Hayden said.
“It is a little like the Boston bombers. The issue is at what point does Islamic fundamentalism flip-over and become a genuine national security threat? Likewise, at what point does a cultural tendency towards transparency flip-over to become a deep threat inside your system?”
Just in case you’re keeping score, the Boston bombers terrorized the country, tried to kill a massive amount of people with a bomb and led police on a deadly, dangerous pursuit.
Snowden, on the other hand, leaked records because he believed in transparency.
