Snowden’s actions and the NBC Investigative report shows that he was actively engaging in espionage. He wasn’t merely seeking those documents within his own compartment. He was actively looking to exploit his SYSADMIN privileges and access other user accounts and their clearances to gain access to documents above his own clearance level.

That indicates intent to do more than merely whistleblow based on the documents he had access to. He wanted to seriously damage the NSA’s operations.

At some point, investigators or even the journalists reporting this, should be able to tell people whether the document that Snowden provided them was from those within his own clearance level and those that were pilfered from other accounts.

Even if you want to claim he’s a whistleblower on his own documents, you’re going to have a much harder time making the case on actively engaging in criminal acts to access other accounts and higher classification levels.

Moreover, this is a further distinguishing feature when compared to Ellsberg (a Greenwald favorite tactic). Ellsberg released the RAND Corp study to the NYT, that was within his own classification level and actual personal knowledge - either from working on the documents directly or being directly involved in the project.

Snowden? He purposefully bypassed security, exploited sysadmin privileges, and sought out documents above his classification level all with the intent of fleeing the country.

Snowden ≠ Ellsberg. This is proof.