It wasn’t all that long ago when Greenwald was complaining about the NYT not taking his position.

Now, an editorial comes out, which attacks those who attack Greenwald. Greenwald cheers?

There’s so much whiplash in how both the Times and Greenwald are “covering” the story.

Greenwald sees this as validation of his brand (IOW - himself).
The NYT sees this as a way to expand their brand, it’s an editorial after all, so it’s the knuckleheads in the editorial department who sat around and decided that they shouldn’t be shut out of the Snowden document dump, so they have signaled a change in their policy in the hopes that they might get some of Snowden’s scraps.

But all this obscures facts that are undeniable:

1) Snowden purposefully broke federal laws by stealing classified documents, means, and materials and transferring them to third parties who were not authorized to have them.
2) Snowden fled to Hong Kong and then to Russia to avoid the US criminal justice system, which would have charged Snowden with espionage and other related crimes.
3) He is not entitled to any kind of clemency at this point in time - he’s still got to face the justice system to adjudicate his actions. After he’s judged on his actions, someone like Greenwald and the DudeBros might then agitate for the President to grant clemency or reduce his sentence - but not before he comes back to the US to face the justice system. That puts the cart before the horse.

What kind of service has Snowden provided? A glimpse into the secretive world of the NSA, which can and does serve a legitimate purpose for US national security. Exposing means and methods has undermined US relations with its allies (who can and do spy on the US for the same reasons and purposes that the US does on its allies). Those are costs to Snowden’s actions.

Revealing means and methods may allow terrorists and those who wish to do the US harm to find ways to avoid detection by NSA methods and techniques. Letting Russia, China and others know what the NSA does is not improving US national security in the slightest. It is revealing US national security details to those who may wish to do the US harm (or undermine US interests domestically and abroad by means available to them that include propaganda hits and undermining US economic interests).

What else have we learned about the NSA from the Snowden documents? That the NSA is following federal law and that there are checks and balances to their actions, including the collection of data and metadata. This is hardly an agency run amok as Snowden and Greenwald have repeatedly claimed, but that’s besides the point they’re trying to make. They want to see the NSA’s data collection systems eliminated - and that ignores real-world threats and national security along the way.