Senator John McCain made an interesting observation Sunday about National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.
Appearing on Fox News Sunday, McCain said, “There's a young generation that believe that he is some kind of Jason Bourne.”
CHRIS WALLACE, HOST: President Obama said Friday that he wants to reform the government surveillance program. He wants to add some safeguards. He wants to make the whole program more transparent. Republican Congressman Pete King, a member of the House intelligence committee, said this, that he called it a monumental failure of wartime leadership. Senator McCain, who's right?
SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN (R-ARIZONA): Well, I think it's pretty clear that there's been failures throughout that has led to Mr. Snowden now being granted asylum in Russia. There is now a large percentage of Americans particularly, young Americans, who view Mr. Snowden as some kind of a whistleblower when we know that he betrayed his oath of office.
There's a young generation that believe that he is some kind of Jason Bourne and there has got to be more transparency. We need to ask questions like why did Mr. Snowden have access to the information that he had to? It couldn't have been part of his job. The, what about Congressional oversight? Have we had a failure there? And clearly, Mr. Snowden's being granted asylum in Russia is a signal of incredibly bad relations between the United States and Russia and Mr. Putin putting his thumb right in America’s eye.
