Regarding the harm it did to US relations with other countries...I think long term it would be more positive for relations with all countries if there's decent treatment of whistle blowers. Sure short term it sucks to have info along the lines of "we did X to harm your country" leaked but let's face it most sane governments assume that the U.S. is doing some very shady things and has a huge budget to execute that fairly "well". At the end of the day I'd much rather have a U.S. doing shady things and some people shining a light on it every now and then than just the U.S. doing shady things.