The Post’s Adam Taylor listed many of the ways in which Putin’s answer is dishonest about the unchecked Russian security state. But Putin’s circle has been on a campaign to portray Russia as a bastion of freedom and respect for human rights, relative to Western governments’ arrogant behavior against their rivals and their own people. It is theater, reminiscent of the way the Soviet authorities used to sell the Russian people barely disguised lies about the West and about their own miserable system, deployed to mask Russia’s outrageous behavior in Eastern Europe. Snowden just lent his star power to the act.

Lest you wonder whether the National Security Agency leaker simply took the best opportunity he had to ask an honest question, consider the circumstances: Heavy state control over the airwaves in Russia, especially programs on which Putin appears, surely makes these sorts of things more staged than a professional wrestling match. Besides, if Snowden really wanted to press Putin, he would have listed the variety of human rights abuses and abridgments of free speech in which the Russian state is implicated — not to mention the suspicious murders of Russian journalists — rather than devoting his preamble to U.S. policy.

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It is one thing to break an oath to keep U.S. secrets. The U.S. government persistently over-classifies material. Even if not all of Snowden’s revelations were helpful, some leaks are necessary. But Snowden surrendered any remaining shred of dignity on Thursday. If he had any choice in the matter, he should have declined to appear. If he did not have a choice, he should have surrendered to the U.S. embassy before humiliating himself. If he could not do even that, he should have protested when it was his turn to play his part. Instead, he revealed his bankruptcy of principle.