Edward Snowden punched a small hole through one wall of the cavernous repository that contains state secrets. He divulged just enough to say we are all being spied on.

Does he have a legitimate claim for protection as a whistleblower? Consider the history of workers at nuclear weapons plants who risked their jobs to expose grave dangers the US government was hiding from a vulnerable public. Without violating national security these disobedient insiders increased national safety. They, too, were accused of wrongdoing.

Edward Snowden. Credit:Reuters

For more than a quarter of a century, starting in the 1940s, America's nuclear weapons industry spread poison across the land. Radioactive isotopes travelled through flora, fauna, land, water and air, far beyond the bomb factories located in places like Hanford, Oak Ridge, Fernald and Savannah River.

The public was not warned. After each explosion, leak or discovery of a plume, government contractors and bureaucrats recorded the details and their excuses in confidential documents known as "unusual occurrence reports".