CBS' 60 Minutes promised an exposé on what it's like "behind the scenes" at the National Security Agency last night.

What they aired wasn't an exposé. It was a field trip.

The larger takeout from the piece -- the one that ran as a promo on CBS.com -- is a 90-second hitpiece on Edward Snowden.

The NSA appears to have received carte-blanche from one of the most well-respected TV news magazine in America in order to spin this message: "We'd never violate someone's privacy to paint an American citizen as a disgusting sideshow."

They failed at that almost immediately.

In the process of trying to deny this precise problem, the NSA instead confirmed it has looked into someone's webcam in search of an ad hominem attack that will make someone look like a freak in public. It's titled "Snowden Cheated His Way Into the NSA." Here's the transcript:

John Miller: At home, they discovered Snowden had some strange habits. Rick Ledgett: He would work on the computer with a hood that covered the computer screen and covered his head and shoulders, so that he could work and his girlfriend couldn't see what he was doing. John Miller: That's pretty strange, sitting at your computer kind of covered by a sheet over your head and the screen? Rick Ledgett: Agreed.

Let's look at all of the times Rick Ledgett did something a little strange in his own home. Let's search out all of the times Rick Ledgett ate cheese puffs in his underwear while watching America's Next Top Model and screaming at his wife.

Wait, let's not. Because that's what the Fourth Amendment was created to prevent.

This would all be fine, of course, if there were attempts to talk to someone like the readily available and talkative Glenn Greenwald for this piece. It would no longer be constituted as a hitpiece if there was a single hard line of questioning throughout the entire 26-minute segment.

But that never came.

The NSA has repeatedly tripped over itself and lied to the American public -- its director, Gen. Keith Alexander, even did so under oath in Congressional hearings -- since Edward Snowden's initial leak, but 60 Minutes did not ask the agency's leaders a single question about those instances. They were too busy flogging Snowden for a half-hour, and we still don't know why the show allowed it to happen without contention.

The title for CBS.com's behind-the-scenes feature on 60 Minutes' website is this self-congratulatory thing: "How did 60 Minutes get cameras into a spy agency?"

How? They promised the spy agency the show wouldn't run 26 minutes eviscerating unpopular policies, instead recapitulating whatever narrative the NSA has opted to dictate to America.

Typically, the media picking on the media is a kind of flagellation that's bad for everyone involved. We're all in this together. But this isn't the media picking on the media. This is the media picking on a government that overtook a TV show to air a public back-patting for about an hour in between football games on Sunday.

Apologize for this stuff, CBS. At least address it.

The NSA is a disaster. It's either comfortable with or oblivious to its own evil. It needs to be stopped.

This is not a fringe opinion. It is the opinion of the smartest people in America and the common American man at the same time.

It's time for journalists on the national security beat to choose sides: Are you going to retain a comfortable lifestyle and be buddy-buddy with a group of people who refuse to give a straight answer? Or are you going to do your job and keep asking questions until you get an answer that isn't a half-truth, a threat, or a lie?

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