After he sought asylum in Russia, the image of Snowden in the minds of most Americans shifted from that of whistleblower to unsavory character. But Greenwald, who argued that Snowden had no choice but to seek asylum because of America’s totalitarian judicial system, was not among the majority. Were Snowden to return to the United States, Greenwald told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, he would face “the standard whistleblower treatment that the United States government gives to people, which is to put them in a cage for decades and render them incommunicado.” Greenwald repeated this accusation on ABC’s This Week: “Whistleblowers in the United States are put into prison for decades and basically ‘disappeared.’” Greenwald never bothered to specify which “whistleblowers” have “disappeared” or been rendered “incommunicado,” words that evoke Latin American dictatorships throwing people out of helicopters into the ocean. Only one government employee has received jail time under the Obama administration for revealing classified information, and the punishment has been 30 months.

The word traitor may not apply legally to Greenwald, but his role as the privileged publisher rather than thief of such classified information (indeed, Snowden never communicates on his own, but always through an intermediary such as Greenwald, Poitras, or WikiLeaks) does not absolve him of culpability in harming the national-security interests of the United States. Greenwald and other publicizers of Snowden, Manning, and WikiLeaks are engaged in a sinister enterprise that, while purporting to forward a benign agenda of promoting “transparency,” is singularly aimed at exposing the national-security secrets of the United States and its closest allies, all with a view to embarrassing Western governments by portraying them as authoritarian states that have grievously betrayed their purported ideals. They are not traitors themselves, but they serve as public-relations coordinators of treasonous actors. They are working to make traitorous actions seem valiant. Call it “treason chic.”