[higherpurpose]

It's rather convenient that they put the blame on Snowden's 2-5 year old documents (and they had plenty of time since the documents came out to deal with the spies issues, if it was indeed a problem related to his documents) right after this happened:

"How much info did hackers steal on US spies? Try all of it":

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/13/standard_form_86_dat...

They're trying to hit two birds with one stone:

1) not look completely incompetent in the OPM hack (even though probably about half the executive needs to be fired over it, but in typical Obama fashion all the actual criminals will get protected)

2) make people hate Snowden so he "goes away" and stops making "freedom speeches" and such

[angry_octet]

s/in typical Obama fashion/in typical presidential fashion/

I don't think you could accuse any recent president of prosecuting actual criminals.

[paulsutter]

Since these agents cover has been blown, surely they can release the names and even make them available for an interview, right?

Oops, I guess their identity is still secret. Hmmm....

[shiggerino]

Probably not a good idea to give feedback to the Russian and Chinese intelligence. But then they shouldn't have publicly admitted they were withdrawing spies, but kept the Russians and Chinese authorities guessing. Which makes it smell all the more of lies and propaganda.

[tajen]

If the US couldn't protect data from a patriotic contractor who went public immediately (Snowden), how can the US pretend the data is safe from other leaks through badly intentionned secret ennemies?

[knorby]

He wasn't a contractor at all points in his career, and he moved jobs in-part to gain access to more material; he was often operating with a high level of access. He had several years of planning for his leak. He isn't that great of an example case.

[busterarm]

So succinctly put. This comment is beautiful...