Glenn Greenwald Sparks Snowden Deja-Vu

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On Thursday, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald announced that he was resigning from the news outlet he helped found, The Intercept. His reason? The progressive reporter believes his pro-Joe Biden editors do not want him saying anything critical about the former vice president days before the election.

Greenwald explained, “The final, precipitating cause is that The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression.”

What, exactly, were they suppressing? According to Greenwald, his delving into the Hunter Biden alleged laptop and foreign business dealings controversy, which the journalist still shared on his newly announced platform on Substack.

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The Intercept released a statement insisting the problem was Greenwald’s ego and not their editorial policies. Regardless, Greenwald has been one of the few prominent voices on the left to call out media bias, particularly as it relates to protecting the current Democratic presidential nominee.

Greenwald has also been one of the very few unafraid to point out the very unprogressive record of Joe Biden. This Greenwald was on full display during his interview on Joe Rogan’s popular podcast Wednesday. The two discussed everything from the media refusing to even investigate the latest Hunter Biden controversy, to how interviewers glad-hand Joe Biden.

Greenwald also reminded Rogan’s millions of listeners how Joe Biden bullied other countries into not giving Greenwald’s friend, Edward Snowden, asylum.

In 2013, after Snowden, an NSA contractor turned whistleblower, worked with Greenwald to alert the American public that they were being spied on—activity a federal appeals court ruled illegal just this September—he predictably sought asylum to avoid being arrested by U.S. officials. Snowden originally had a number of options, as different countries offered him safe haven.

That is, until Joe Biden stepped in.

Biden’s former boss, Barack Obama, had once vowed to protect whistleblowers during his 2008 Democratic presidential campaign. His website read, “Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled.”

“We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance,” the Obama website statement continued. “Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government.”

However, after Snowden made his revelations, this statement disappeared from the web.

After all, Snowden had revealed illegal surveillance carried out under Obama-Biden, not Bush-Cheney. The Obama White House subsequently pulled no punches in making this particular whistleblower’s life as difficult as possible.

Rogan asked Greenwald during their interview, “So Joe Biden was responsible for blocking his asylum to other countries?”

Greenwald replied, “Yeah, Joe Biden and John Kerry. They were carrying out the policy of the Obama administration, but it was Joe Biden that took the lead.”

Greenwald would know. As seen in the Oscar-winning documentary “Citizenfour,” Greenwald was holed up with Snowden in a Hong Kong hotel room as both men carefully plotted on how to best sound the alarm on the NSA. They eventually did. Then it came time for Snowden to run.

Greenwald explained:

One of the first things that he did, when Snowden left Hong Kong, the ticket that he had was Moscow, Havana and then he was going to go to Ecuador, where he was going to get asylum. . . and Joe Biden called the Cuban government and said, if you allow him safe passage—which they had already granted him—you’re going to suffer consequences like you’ve never experienced from the U.S. government before. . . so they withdrew their safe passage guarantee.”

Greenwald explained how Biden went out of his way to thwart Snowden at every turn by strong-arming other countries into denying the whistleblower safe haven.

“Then he applied to countries that frequently grant asylum to whistleblowers like Sweden, Finland, even Germany and France, where there were also a lot of revelations and he was looked upon favorably because he was showing those populations how the NSA was spying on them,” Greenwald said.

He added, “And then at the last minute, (Snowden’s) lawyers would get a call from the consulates of those countries and say ‘Joe Biden called and said that they’ll start a trade war with us or they’ll withdraw from this treaty or they’ll do this or that if we grant asylum.”

“Sorry, we just can’t,” the countries informed Snowden.

Rogan and Greenwald went on to discuss how, despite Barack Obama promising to better protect whistleblowers during his 2008 presidential campaign, Rogan noted “his administration was one of the worst for whistleblowers ever.”

Indeed. The Obama administration waged war on whistleblowers and Joe Biden spearheaded the U.S. government hunt for Edward Snowden. Does anyone—does any civil libertarian—believe a Biden administration would behave any different?

Will anyone on the left, besides Glenn Greenwald, even dare to ask such questions?

Jack Hunter is the former political editor of Rare.us and co-authored the 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington with Senator Rand Paul.

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