Also receiving a Polk award was a journalist from The Record who helped expose the GWB vendetta - lane closure scandal.

But let’s not kid ourselves either. The Greenwald cabal has gotten so much of the story wrong, that it’s not funny.

Besides the fact that they’ve misread/mischaracterized document after document, they’ve also gone full-metal supposition about violation of US law and civil rights, when the documents suggest that the NSA complies with FISA and federal law with regular oversight.

Then there’s the Greenwald claims that these documents don’t harm US national security, when his own reporting indicates the opposite. That includes claims by him that Admiral Clapper lied about how the Snowden documents harmed national security and harmed operations to track terrorists with various digital data. Greenwald’s own reporting confirms Clapper’s very statements by indicating the terrorists have changed tactics to avoid detection by the very means/methods that Greenwald’s earlier reporting had exposed.

Or, loet’s take this past weekend’s big story. You know, the one about how a US law firm was spied upon.

Except that the US wasn’t doing the spying. It was the Aussies trying to figure out what the Indonesians were doing, and the US law firm was representing the Indonesians. Nothing stops the Aussies or anyone else (foreign countries) from spying on US individuals or businesses unless the US government shuts down those ops in counter surveillance.

The NSA connection? It was when the Aussies contacted the NSA on protocol on how to address attorney client privilege in redacting key information about the law firm. Yeah, I know, it’s real scandalous.

Mind you, there’s an interesting legal discussion that could be had about how national security and spycraft intersect the legal business and representing clients (and attorney client privilege). But that discussion isn’t nearly as newsworthy as Greenwald, Poitras, and the rest of his group thinks it is.