[Al Ahram] The US government should grant former NSA contractor Edward Snowden clemency or a plea bargain given the public value of revelations over the National Security Agency's vast spying programs, the New York Times
...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
editorial board said on Thursday.
In its lead editorial, the newspaper said Americans now more fully understand how widely their phone calls, emails and other information are tracked. Information provided to journalists by Snowden has also prompted needed legal review of the intelligence gathering and led a presidential panel to call for a major overhaul of the agency, it said.
"Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has exposed, Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight. He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service," the New York Times' editorial board wrote.
The Guardian, a British newspaper that along with The Washington Post received Snowden's leaked documents, also called for President Barack Obama
I've now been in 57 states -- I think one left to go...
to pardon Snowden in its own editorial published on Wednesday.