(Photo: campact / creative commons / flickr)
A
group of whistleblowers who stood up to U.S. power from within traveled
to Moscow to tell Edward Snowden they honor what he did.
Snowden,
accompanied by Sarah Harrison of Wikileaks, met with four U.S.
intelligence and security officials-turned-whistleblowers in the Russian
capital on Wednesday. The former NSA operative personally received an
award for ‘Integrity in Intelligence,' granted by the Sam Adams
Associates for Integrity in Intelligence—an organization of U.S.
whistleblowers. This award has been given each year since 2002 to
intelligence officials who 'speak truth to power,'
Consortium News reports.
The delegates who delivered the award—Jesselyn Radack, Thomas Andrews
Drake, Ray McGovern and Coleen Rowley—say they met with a man who
demonstrated striking confidence in the decision he made to expose
dragnet surveillance on the part of the NSA and governments around the
world, despite the personal hardship and global manhunt he has faced
since taking this action.
“He’s convinced that what he did was right," former CIA analyst turned whistleblower McGovern said of the meeting,
RT reports. "He has no regrets. And he’s willing to face whatever the future holds for him."
Raddack, former Department of Justice official who
accused the FBI of ethics violations,
declared on Twitter she is "[h]onored to be among 1st Americans to meet
w/ #Snowden since Hong Kong" and published the following tweet with a
link to a photograph of the meeting:
FBI whistleblower Rowley
told RT that Snowden seemed "remarkably centered," with Raddack adding, "He looked great."
Snowden has been nominated for several awards,
including the Nobel Peace Prize. When he accepted the prestigious German whistleblower prize in early September, he
declared
in a public statement, "[This] belongs to the individuals and
organizations in countless countries around the world who shattered
boundaries of language and geography to stand together in defense of the
public right to know and the value of our privacy."
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