Are you serious? The only "cleared" (using your term) people were NSA higher-ups - the very same people who spied on their own citizens.

Snowden sent the docs not to any/all journalists, but to a carefully selected group of the most reputable ones: NYT, WP, Guardian. He had followed Poitras/Greenwald for a long time before to make sure the docs end up in responsible hands.

Also, the journalists asked the US government to cooperate/redact out some national-security sensitive details, they refused. So they had to use their own judgement.

Are you arguing that Snowden giving all of the documents to me would have produced the same outcome as giving them to journalists to review and redact and write articles about?

Yes.

What qualifies you, or journalists, to know umpty-squat about national security?

99% of what snowden leaked had _nothing_ to do with the privacy of U.S. citizens. Nothing.