"He's a dead man walking" - surely Obama and friends couldn't deal with the outrage that would follow? Their image is already shot. The death of Snowden would put them on par with mafia.
I can't figure out how this would actually matter to Obama, more than a few speeches' worth. Except for a few thousand libertarians, the people most upset by this were Obama's most fervent supporters, who won't be voting for him again anyway. The administration's main political foes seem to recognize that there's a big issue here (after all, slightly more than half of their constituents think that the NSA actions are "hurting Americans"[1]), but don't quite know how to capitalize on it, since they were all in favor of things like this before the story broke. The outrage within the US about this is spread so evenly across the usual parties that it's not clear that there will be any actual fallout for future elections.
> The death of Snowden would put them on par with mafia.
I would suppose that if they choose to kill him, they'll try pretty hard to do it in a way where it's not provable that the US killed him. Future-leaks-wise, though, it might seem beneficial for people to suspect that the US killed him, since presumably that would deter future leaks to some extent.
[1] http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/25/fox-news-poll-mix...
No, Obama's most fervent supporters want to hang Snowden for treason, and Greenwald along with him. They're quite happy to use the word "treason" for both of them.
Ever since the leak supporters of Obama on blogs and Twitter have been attacking Snowden and particularly Greenwald with ferocity. [1]
A derogatory term has recently been coined and is now being applied to anyone on the left who supports Snowden and Greenwald. This term, "emoprog," basically translates to "whiny progressive." The complaint is that emoprogs, instead of falling into line and unquestioningly supporting whatever Democrat is president, whine disloyally about principles said president is violating or not pursuing with enough vigor.
So no, Obama's most fervent supporters wish Snowden and the whole issue would just go away and find infuriating the disloyalty shown by Greenwald and his emoprog supporters.
[1] https://twitter.com/JeffersonObama/status/351829186991759360 https://twitter.com/Johngcole/status/349308095987593217 https://twitter.com/JeffersonObama/status/348879008747896833
At this point you have to remember that there are only two criteria: A) He can't ever be allowed to look like he 'won', like Ellsberg did and B) it has to be public, so that anyone else considering an ethical stand will know that their life is irrevocably ruined if they do.
A careful comparison of the two groups doesn't find much to distinguish them, in terms of what they actually do. The mafia kills people; the government kills people. The mafia regulates commerce; the government regulates commerce. The mafia provides services; the government provides services. The government limits some of the mafia's more outrageous behavior; the mafia limits some of the government's more outrageous behavior. (E.g. tariffs, taxes, and regulations on particular goods may only be effectively increased up to the point at which organized crime is providing the bulk of those goods.) The only differences are those of degree.
I'm not saying this as a criticism of either group.
Not if they got the mafia to do it. Could the CIA covertly pay the Russian mafia to kill Snowden at the airport? Probably, though the real question is what the US government would gain from that. What would be the point in killing him now?