Gene Healy Says Sometimes a ‘Willingness To Steal’ From the Government is a Good Thing

On Monday, former National Security
Agency contractor Edward
Snowden beamed himself into a packed room at the South by
Southwest festival in Austin, Texas,
telling the crowd he broke the law to expose NSA spying because
“the Constitution was being violated on a massive scale.” Snowden
shouldn’t have gotten a hearing, insisted an irate
Rep. Mike
Pompeo (R-Kan.)—his “only apparent qualification is his
willingness to steal from his own government.” Gene Healy recalls a
similar situation forty-three years ago, when an unlikely band of
antiwar activists calling themselves “The Citizens Commission to
Investigate the FBI” broke into a bureau branch office, making off
with reams of classified documents and exposing a secret,
unconstitutional war against American citizens.

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