The former top law enforcement official in the United States Eric Holder says that NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden performed a "public service" by starting a conversation about US government electronic eavesdropping.

But Holder says that Snowden must pay a price for leaking a cache of classified documents that detailed activities by the US NSA and its allies in the "Five Eyes" group of Anglophone nations (that means you, Australia).

"We can certainly argue about the way in which Snowden did what he did, but I think that he actually performed a public service by raising the debate that we engaged in and by the changes that we made," Holder told David Axelrod, the former top White House aide who now has a pocast for CNN.

"Now I would say that doing what he did - and the way he did it - was inappropriate and illegal," the former US Attorney General said, claiming the Snowden harmed US intelligence assets.  "He's broken the law in my view. He needs to get lawyers, come on back, and decide, see what he wants to do: Go to trial, try to cut a deal. I think there has to be a consequence for what he has done."
"But," Holder emphasized, "I think in deciding what an appropriate sentence should be, I think a judge could take into account the usefulness of having had that national debate."

Edward Snowden has said that he would return to the US from self-imposed exile in Russia, if he had the guarantee of a fair trial.  But the US does not treat its whistle-blowers very well - just ask Chelsea Manning, John Crane, Thomas Drake, or John Kiriakou, all of whom were relentlessly pursued by the US government for exposing wrongdoing in the intertwined intelligence and military worlds.  It's why Julian Assange is permanently camped-out in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.

And if Snowden did go home to face trial, he wouldn't be able to defend himself properly:  "But, as I think you're quite familiar, the Espionage Act does not permit a public interest defense.  You're not allowed to speak the word 'whistleblower' at trial."