Contemptible McCarthyite Behavior

It appears that that the heads of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Mike Rogers (R) and Dianne Feinstein(D),^* have decided to imply that Edward Snowden was a Russian agent for a long time before he became a whistle blower:

The heads of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees suggested on Sunday that Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, might have been working for Russian spy services while he was employed at an agency facility in Hawaii last year and before he disclosed hundreds of thousands of classified government documents.

The lawmakers, Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan, and Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, offered no specific evidence that Mr. Snowden had cooperated with Moscow. Since Mr. Snowden’s disclosure first became public last spring, there has been much speculation that he was collaborating with a foreign spy service.

Nearly a year later, however, there has been no public indication that the F.B.I.’s investigation of Mr. Snowden’s actions, bolstered by separate “damage assessment” investigations at the N.S.A. and the Pentagon, has uncovered evidence that Mr. Snowden received help from a foreign intelligence service. A senior F.B.I. official said on Sunday that it was still the bureau’s conclusion that Mr. Snowden acted alone.

This is disgraceful, callous, and cowardly behavior, and it harkens back to the worst of Joe McCarthy.

Shame on Mike Rogers, and shame on Dianne Feinstein.

^*Full disclosure, her grandfather, Sam Goldman, and my great-grandfather, Harry Goldman, were brothers.