Experts say Edward Snowden's public activity risks undermining his privacy crusade. The leaker who won't stop talking

Edward Snowden is milking it.

The briefly anonymous leaker has leaped into the public spotlight — and now he’s risking overexposure in a big way. Public relations pros and image makers say Snowden’s repeated interviews and growing number of claims are making him look like someone who’s exploiting his sudden worldwide fame for personal glory, and that threatens to undermine the very privacy crusade for which he said he’s willing to give his life.


“If I was advising him, the first thing I’d say is shut the hell up ’cause you’re not helping your cause,” Jim Manley, a senior director at the D.C. public affairs firm Quinn Gillespie & Associates, told POLITICO.

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“I think he’s doing a pretty poor job,” continued Manley, a former spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “I don’t think his Q&A [Monday with The Guardian] made him any more sympathetic than he had been in the past. I think he is coming off as — leaving aside some of the issues he’s raising, which are fascinating — he’s coming across as petulant and arrogant and more than a little bit full of himself.”

Crisis management expert Eric Dezenhall quipped, “It’s almost as if he’s writing a screenplay at the same time he’s blowing the whistle.”

“I’ve noticed this trend of people generally saying out of one side of their mouth, ‘it’s not about me,’ but using ‘it’s not about me’ as a device for further making it about them,” added Dezenhall, of D.C.-based Dezenhall Resources. “Well, if it’s not about you, why the hell are you doing interviews? To me, there’s something very packaged about him. I think that that’s intentional. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t have points to make, but a lot of what I’m seeing at this stage in my career, 30 years, there’s a more cinematic quality to whistleblowers than there used to be.”

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While some experts gave a thumbs down to the leaker who can’t seem to stop talking and appears to enjoy putting himself at the center of the story, others credited Snowden with an effective PR campaign, arguing that he’s controlled the message and attracted support by portraying himself as David against Goliath.

Just days after the first National Security Agency leaks concerning massive government surveillance programs were reported by The Guardian and The Washington Post, Snowden publicly revealed himself as the source. The Guardian’s June 9 sit-down with Snowden — including a video interview — was followed shortly afterward by an interview with the South China Morning Post. And on Monday, Snowden again came to the forefront of the news cycle through a long online Q&A with Guardian readers.

One questioner asked Snowden how he thought things were going in terms of a public debate on secrecy.

“Initially, I was very encouraged,” Snowden wrote. “Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history.”

Strategists and crisis management experts say they’re not buying Snowden’s professed annoyance. With all of his media exposure, there’s a sense that Snowden is fully embracing his moment as an instant, global celebrity.

Marina Ein of Washington-based public relations firm Ein Communications told POLITICO that Snowden’s high-profile commentary looks like it’s just for show.

“He obviously was looking to create a situation where he could instantaneously be famous, and he certainly has done that,” she said. “I think he’s accomplished exactly what he wants to accomplish — another version of Julian Assange syndrome, it’s leaking for fame.”

Snowden has muddied any broader message about privacy and government transparency through his extended time in the spotlight, Florida-based Republican strategist Rick Wilson said in an interview.

“He’s committed a bunch of unforced errors,” Wilson said. “When he became the story, it diminished what the stated mission is. When he turned it into a narrative about him, it’s more difficult for him to be sympathetic and effective at achieving his stated mission.”

Wilson added, “He’s all over the board. You need to stick to your knitting. Say, over and over again, ‘This isn’t about me, my life. It’s about a program that threatens all Americans.’ He needs to stick to the facts of what he’s exposing.”

Image-maker experts are divided about whether Snowden’s youth (he’s 29) helps or hurts his public performance.

Harlan Loeb, a Chicago-based crisis management expert at Edelman’s Crisis & Risk Management practice in Chicago, said Snowden’s age is a definite plus for his media strategy.

“There’s a certain kind of almost ‘boyish honesty’ to his communication,” Loeb said.

By making himself into an “instant global persona” at such a young age, Loeb said, Snowden is able to project an image of “boyish naiveté that in a perverse way gives his media style a certain degree of authenticity.”

“I don’t see an active navigation system in play; I see more of pure instinct, but it is kind of working because he’s 29,” Loeb said. “If he were 59 saying the same things, he would appear to be a naif. But if he doesn’t want to be part of the story, he has to stop talking. The messenger is now the message here.”

Some public relations pros told POLITICO that Snowden’s decision not to hide behind anonymity and put his face to his charges was a smart move.

Chris Lehane, a top Democratic crisis management expert, said Snowden’s tactics have allowed him to drive the conversation to his benefit.

“In terms of the communications strategy that he has employed, he has done some things that put him in a stronger position,” said Lehane — who, like many strategists interviewed by POLITICO, stressed that he isn’t condoning the leaks. “How he put the information out, then coming out in a head-held-high way, … going out to acknowledge that, he was able to put his own story out on his own terms.”

Overall, Snowden has “taken control of the conversation and his image,” Patty Briguglio of Raleigh, N.C.-based PFB Consulting said.

“He’s made an image of him as David going up against Goliath,” she added. “He’s righteous and trying to protect the American public. He’s trying to be a Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers, type of guy.”

That “whistleblower” image is resonating with enough people to give Snowden a hefty dose of worldwide support, Democratic strategist James Carville told POLITICO.

“I think he’s got the strategy to build himself up as a kind of global brand, a modern-day truth teller, I think he’s done a pretty good job, honestly,” Carville said. “I think he’s been pretty damn effective.”

But it could be hard for Snowden to stay ahead in the public eye in the long term, according to crisis management expert Mike Paul, president of MGP & Associates PR in New York. If there are no more substantial leaks driving the conversation — although Snowden said there will be — the media obsession with Snowden’s personal life will only intensify, Paul predicted.

“If he has it, he must release something that puts his strategy back on point that it was absolutely inappropriate for the U.S. government to be spying and utilizing databases that should be private,” Paul said. “That’s the crux and root of his initial positioning as a hero. He has to get back to that, and the only way that will happen is if the focus is off of him and back on the information. So that information must be so compelling that we’re discussing it and not him.”