As a source -- and a patriot -- Edward Snowden deserves a presidential pardon

I can’t help but see this through the lens of journalism. The tiresome debate may rage on about whether Snowden is a traitor or a hero — no doubt to be rekindled with the arrival last week of “Snowden,” Oliver Stone’s take on the affair. What Snowden was, without dispute, was an extraordinarily important source. Without his decision to bring the information to journalists, it is very unlikely that we would know what we do about mass surveillance in the post-9/11 world.

And notably, Snowden brought those revelations to those he trusted — at first, to Laura Poitras, a filmmaker who later became one of the founders of the Intercept, along with Glenn Greenwald, who was then at the Guardian. Poitras worked with several news organizations, including with The Post, where Barton Gellman led the reporting.

Snowden did it that way, rather than publish them en masse himself, because he wanted the documents to be carefully handled and responsibly vetted. He has been critical, in recent weeks, of WikiLeaks because of that organization’s reckless just-publish-everything mentality.

In other words, Snowden acted carefully, responsibly and courageously — and squarely in the public interest.