During his interview with NBC’s Brian Williams that will air Wednesday night, whistle-blower Edward Snowden says he was trained as a spy in the traditional sense, and defends his very impressive resume in that regard.

“So when they say I’m a low-level systems administrator, that I don’t know what I’m talking about, I’d say it’s somewhat misleading,” Snowden said.

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell in the following video suggests that Snowden damaged the United States’ relationship with partners such as China and Brazil, gave Russian President Vladimir Putin a propaganda victory and even alienated President Obama’s young supporters. One might say instead that the NSA and Obama accomplished those feats all on their own. Snowden just let us know what they were up to.

Dear Ms. Mitchell, here is an explanation of the difference between proximate and ultimate causation, courtesy of Wikipedia: “A proximate cause is an event which is closest to, or immediately responsible for causing, some observed result. This exists in contrast to a higher-level ultimate cause (or distal cause) which is usually thought of as the ‘real’ reason something occurred.”

Let’s look at it another way: The witness to a crime is not guilty of that crime because he or she testifies about it in court.

— Posted by Peter Z. Scheer