Pressure is mounting from external forces for president Obama to officially pardon whistle-blower Edward Snowden ahead of the release of a film by the same name.
The ACLU announced on Monday that they plan to launch an official plea to the president on Wednesday for a full pardon of Snowden, urging individuals to sign petitions and appealing to prominent individuals and organizations to join the cause.
The official appeal is being launched just 2 days before Oliver Stone’s “Snowden” is set to hit theaters. Stone’s hope is that his sympathetic portrayal of the whistleblower will shift public opinion in a more sympathetic direction.
Over the weekend, Stone made comments about what he hopes his film will do.
“Mr. Obama could pardon him and we hope so.
“We hope that Mr. Obama has a stroke of lightning and he sees the way, despite the fact that he’s prosecuted vigorously eight whistleblowers under the Espionage Act, which is an all-time record in American history, (and he’s created) the most extensive invasive surveillance state that ever existed.”
With just a few months left in the president’s tenure, there is no telling which lines he is now willing to cross. While he has freed a large handful of nonviolent drug offenders, he has also continued to campaign aggressively for the TPP – basically, his politics in his final months are all over the place and there is no telling where “Free Snowden” will fall.
