Op-ed pick: Snowden was right to flee
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Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, says Edward Snowden was smart to flee the United States.
Ellsberg was indicted in 1971 , but spoke to the media and gave speeches while he waited for trial. Snowden would not be granted such leniency nowadays, says Ellsberg in a column in the Washington Post.
There is zero chance that he would be allowed out on bail if he returned now and close to no chance that, had he not left the country, he would have been granted bail. Instead, he would be in a prison cell like Bradley Manning, incommunicado.
He would almost certainly be confined in total isolation, even longer than the more than eight months Manning suffered during his three years of imprisonment before his trial began recently. The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Torture described Manning’s conditions as “cruel, inhuman and degrading.”
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Read all of Ellsberg's column about why he hopes Snowden settles safely overseas.
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