Edward Snowden’s appearances through video teleconferences and on TV have lent him an air of impermanence and mystery. His name remains a buzzword; his appearances and commentary via tenuous Internet connection generate publicity on a scale rarely seen. His interviewers ask him about an upbringing that led him to his defection from the intelligence ranks, how deep the rabbit hole really goes, how he feels about being separated from his loved ones, his thoughts on the Constitution, our rights, and a myriad of other things that all unite to imply he’s a patiot or a traitor, but never truly both.

Edward Snowden. A product of 9/11, a nobody drawn to patriotic service. Apprentice spy and contractor working for team Cheney, in some ways everything about a generation of mindless and detached worker bees that the east coast elite hates. But before he was a patriot, before he was this century’s most beloved and reviled American citizen, he was just a man with a job. Just like thousands of other contractors that continue to work under the aegis of Booz Allen Hamilton and Northrop-Grumman.

On Tuesday evening, CIA director John Brennan spoke at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and Micah Zenko, writing for DefenseOne, passed on an exchange between him and Graham Allison, the school's top policy wonk (and frequent government official).

Everyone saw the USS Annapolis come home last year. It returned, poignantly, on Sept. 11, and there was a seriousness amid the usual dockside fanfare—sailors meeting newborn children for the first time, a school band playing "Anchors Aweigh." But there was no mention of the boat's secret missions.