My problem is the publishing the names of assets that risked their lives to provide information. That doesn’t serve “the public,” that serves the enemy. If we are going to argue against spying, we can have that debate, but there is no question that releasing the names of spies is absolutely espionage. Names could have been redacted without compromising the public’s apparent “need” to know.

If we outed the names of dissidents in Turkey or China, wouldn’t that be met with outrage? Yet as long as it is in the interests of opposing the US, it seems like there is a significant crowd that celebrates that. In the context of the United States and Western Europe, espionage was committed.