American whistle-blowers meet with Edward Snowden in Russia

MOSCOW — Former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden met in Moscow this week with four Americans who in some cases had acted as whistle-blowers during their own careers, the group told journalists Thursday.

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, former NSA senior executive Thomas Andrews Drake, former FBI agent Coleen Rowley and Jesselyn Radack from the Government Accountability Project met with the fugitive American on Wednesday to give him the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence, the English-language Russia Today news program reported.

“The irony is that the U.S. has abandoned the rule of law,” Drake told the program Thursday. “They’ve unchained itself from their own Constitution — the mechanism by which we govern ourselves. And when you ban the real law and use a secret law and secret interpretations of law, we’re in a whole new ball game. It’s a Pandora’s box.”

Snowden “is doing remarkably well under the circumstances in which he came here,” Drake said. “I thought he looked great,” Radack added.

Snowden, wanted by U.S. officials for leaking documents about the NSA’s extensive tracking of communications around the globe, arrived at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport on June 23 on a flight from Hong Kong, reportedly hoping to reach a Latin American country that would give him asylum.

McGovern said Snowden “is convinced that what he did was right. He has no regrets, and he is willing to face what the future holds for him.”