Taibbi: The Washington Post Dabbles In Orwell Taibbi: The Washington Post Dabbles In Orwell Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News , A Monday story in the Washington Post entitled “Putin grants citizenship to Edward Snowden, who exposed U.S. surveillance’” began: Russian President Vladimir Putin granted citizenship on Monday to Edward Snowden, a former security consultant who leaked information about top-secret U.S. surveillance programs and is still wanted by Washington on espionage charges. The story added: Snowden’s disclosures, published first in The Washington Post and the Guardian, were arguably the biggest security breach in U.S. history. The information revealed top-secret NSA surveillance as part of a program known as PRISM and the extraction of a wide range of digital information. Snowden is America’s most famous revealer-of-secrets , and the way he’s talked about has evolved to an extreme degree in less than a decade, showing how quickly a story about security overreach can be flipped into an argument for more vigilance. The press, which once worked with Snowden in its proper role as a bulwark against government excess, is effectively an arm of the state now, as is shown again in this absurd episode.