Before today, this club could be seen as a collection of individuals. But not anymore, thanks to the hard-to-believe house editorial of the Washington Post titled "Plugging the Leaks in the Edward Snowden Case." Inveighing against the disclosures of NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the paper wrote that "the first U.S. priority should be to prevent Mr. Snowden from leaking information" and then fretted that Snowden "is reported to have stolen many more documents, encrypted copies of which may have been given to allies such as the WikiLeaks organization."

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Shaye is the Yemeni journalist who in 2009 exposed his government's coverup of a U.S. missile strike that, according to McClatchy's newswire, ended up killing "dozens of civilians, including 14 women and 21 children." McClatchy notes that for the supposed crime of committing journalism, Shaye was sentenced to five years in prison following a trial that "was widely condemned as a sham" by watchdog groups and experts who noted that the prosecution did not "offer any substantive evidence to support (its) charges."

What, you might ask, does this have to do with the American government's attitude toward press freedom? That's where Scahill's movie comes in. As the film shows, when international pressure moved the Yemeni government to finally consider pardoning Shaye, President Obama personally intervened, using a phone call with Yemen's leader to halt the journalist's release.

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In this way, Snowden is a quintessential American outlaw hero, albeit updated for the modern era. With many Americans cheering him on as he evades the law -- moving from Hong Kong to Moscow and possibly some other nation, seemingly outwitting the U.S. government all the while --  it echoes the reception many other fugitives like Whitey Bulger, O.J. Simpson (during the famous Bronco chase), and Bucky Phillips all received.

All of which raises a key question: Why do Americans so often root for outlaws on the run?

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On Sunday, Gregory asked Greenwald, the Guardian reporter who published Edward Snowden's NSA leak, "Why shouldn't you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?" New York magazine points out that Gregory's question "all but accused the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald of aiding and abetting Edward Snowden's fugitive travels."

But Rich rebuts: "Is David Gregory a journalist?"

"As a thought experiment, name one piece of news he has broken, one beat he’s covered with distinction, and any memorable interviews he’s conducted that were not with John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Dick Durbin or Chuck Schumer."

"Presumably if Gregory had been around 40 years ago," Rich adds snidely, "he also would have accused the Times of aiding and abetting the enemy when it published Daniel Ellsberg’s massive leak of the Pentagon Papers."

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Given his own description of his behavior, there is little doubt Snowden is guilty of the crimes with which the government has now charged him: theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information, and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person. (As was reported this weekend, Snowden has left Hong Kong and is seeking asylum in another country via Russia.)

Writing in the Guardian, Glenn Greenwald argues that there is something perverse about charging Snowden with what, under federal law, is a violation of the Espionage Act:

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The best way to see these double standards is to ponder 10 simple questions.

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Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judges "have signed off on broad orders which allow the NSA to make use of information 'inadvertently' collected from domestic US communications without a warrant," Glenn Greenwald and James Ball reported, publishing two leaked documents, which detail the procedures the intelligence agency must follow to target individuals.

Via the Guardian:

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What's surprising about the Snowden theories is that one might think he'd be a sympathetic figure to people deeply skeptical of government power. But instead of holding him up as hero (or even a traitor), some are intent on labeling him a co-conspirator.

Perhaps the most prominent Snowden truther is Naomi Wolf, whom Al Gore reportedly paid $15,000 a month to advise his presidential campaign. People were a little surprised Friday when the prominent feminist author and activist posted a lengthy essay on her Facebook page wondering if Snowden may actually be a plant from "the Police State."

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Is that the case? We're going to find out momentarily from my guest, Daniel Ellsberg.

The Guardian asserted last week --- actually over the weekend in Glenn Greenwald's article in which Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor, was outed as the leaker, the whistle-blower, of these NSA documents we've been seeing over the past week --- The Guardian asserted that former NSA contractor Edward Snowden "will go down in history as one of America's most consequential whistle-blowers alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning." So of course it seems like a good time to talk with Daniel Ellsberg about all of this. We can't really talk with Bradley Manning, unfortunately. He's in a military brig facing his trial.

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Mounting domestic and international pressure against the PRISM surveillance program has forced the Obama administration to concede that the revelations have sparked “an appropriate debate.” Concern – and in some cases, outrage -- at these measures has been expressed by general members of the public and politicians, many of whom made no secret of their anger or mistrust toward them. Given the seriousness of the allegations, the outrage expressed at such a situation is obviously justified; the courage of the leaker and those taking the fight to government, commendable.

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"I'm talking about Greenwald," King said on Fox News. "Greenwald, not only did he disclose this information, he has said he has names of CIA agents and assets around the world and they're threatening to disclose that. The last time that was done in this country, we saw a CIA station chief murdered in Greece. No right is absolute and even the press has certain restrictions."

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King continued:

I think something on this magnitude, there is an obligation, both moral but also legal, I believe, against a reporter disclosing something which would so severely compromise national security. As a practical matter, I guess there have been in the past several years, a number of reporters who have been prosecuted under it, so the answer is yes to your question.

Watch:

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From that view flows the reaction that anyone can see on television right now as the media discusses Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency whistle-blower whose disclosures on top-secret surveillance programs were published by the Guardian‘s Glenn Greenwald.

Jeffrey Toobin, a senior CNN legal analyst and contributor to the New Yorker, was leading the charge against Snowden in the media by characterizing him as a “grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison.” He appeared on Piers Morgan’s program later in the evening and said, “I think there are right ways to do it and there are wrong ways to do it, and by a 29-year-old kid, just throwing open the safe and giving away documents that people have devoted years of their lives to creating and protecting. That’s the wrong way to protest.”

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Poitras is still in Hong Kong, where she is filming the story behind the story -- including her co-author on the Guardian story and former Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald -- for her forthcoming documentary on whistle-blowers and leaks. In a wide-ranging interview, she explained how she first made contact with Snowden, her reaction to the possible future investigation into his leaks, and why Snowden didn't go to the New York Times. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.

So how did this all begin?

I was originally contacted in January, anonymously.

By Edward Snowden?

Well, I didn't know who it was.

What was the format?

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Despite the customary competition between news sources -- heightened, in this case, by differing accounts of how the story was reported -- Poitras achieved the unusual distinction of sharing a byline both with Barton Gellman on the June 6 Washington Post story on PRISM and with Glenn Greenwald and Ewan MacAskill on the June 8 Guardian story naming Edward Snowden as a source. In the accompanying video interview of Snowden, Greenwald is credited as “interviewer” and Poitras as “filmmaker.” Greenwald wrote in a tweet this morning, “The reality is that Laura Poitras and I have been working with [Snowden] since February, long before anyone spoke to Bart Gellman.”

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Greenwald's illuminations on the surveillance state are not new, however. Throughout his career and time at Salon, he argued against the expanding surveillance dragnet, the government agencies, private contractors and political ideologies upholding it.

During a speech at the Socialism 2012 conference, Greenwald called the creeping surveillance state -- with the expansive NSA hoarding complex at its center -- an impediment to any efforts to meaningfully challenge the political status quo:

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[T]here is a lack of skepticism on a whole in the media on the issue of national security." In the U.S., she said, there can be "a sense that it is unpatriotic to question the role that the security services play."

Indeed, Gibson's comments are supported by certain facts that emerged in Bradley Manning's pretrial hearing. The private noted in a statement that he had attempted to approach the New York Times, the Washington Post and Politico with his document trove -- all of whom turned him away -- before he provided WikiLeaks with the classified information.

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Before getting to that monumental query, let's first review officialdom's reactions to the NSA story that are leading to it.

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There are numerous ways of understanding this disheartening turn of events. Maybe the secret note that George W. Bush left in the top drawer of the Resolute desk on Jan. 20, 2009, contained a “Manchurian Candidate”-style code word that switched on the programming! Or maybe, somewhat more plausibly, the entire secret apparatus of American counterterrorism at home and abroad has become an independent and self-replicating organism, a Hydra-headed monster that can’t be killed. The president himself indirectly took that tack on Friday, when he tackled questions about the surveillance revelations for the first time, during a supposedly unrelated press conference.

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"This Week" promises to be a grand old time, as some producer has let civil liberties reporter and commentator Glenn"zilla" Greenwald on national television again to scorch the earth. Greenwald, of course, has been the lead reporter behind a number of top-secret leak reports this week.

"You are really on a roll," George Stephanopoulos congratulates Greenwald, of "the Guardian newspaper." (Full disclosure: I am a contributor to the Guardian U.S.) What are the key findings of your stories this week? Greenwald, talking super-fast to get it all in, has two. From the transcript:

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