I think that Glenn Greenwald overestimates the moral and political constrains on the behavior of the US state security apparatus and the executive branch.

If he returns to the United States they will attempt to destroy him:

When big-name public figures and Edward Snowden critics first started suggesting Glenn Greenwald and other writers who’d published his surveillance disclosures might be in legal jeopardy, Greenwald assumed that both the clamor and the actual risk to journalists would quickly subside, and eventually disappear.

That was about six months ago. Today, Greenwald believes he miscalculated. In an exclusive interview Wednesday he said that the ominous rhetoric directed at him has actually escalated. It’s discouraged him from visiting the United States, where he still has strong family and professional ties. And though he intends to reenter the country sooner rather than later, he’ll do so despite the fact that he believes he faces a much greater risk of detention than most of the other journalists who have access to some or all of Snowden’s files.

“As the story kind of went on I thought the prospect of something happening to the journalists would dissipate to zero. I actually think that the risk is higher than it’s ever been,” Greenwald told me. “My parents are getting older, my nieces [live there] — none of that is something I’m going to go home for now … I had a foundation that wanted to sponsor and pay for and market aggressively a six-city speaking tour to talk about the NSA story and the revelations. I would have completely loved to have done it … on the assurance that nothing would happen. And because we couldn’t get it from the U.S. government, I had to cancel.”

When we last spoke in August, Greenwald was cognizant of the risks he’d face if he visited the United States, but he was also pointedly defiant. “I take more seriously the Constitution’s guarantee of a free press in the First Amendment,” he said at the time. “So I have every intention of entering the U.S. as soon as my schedule permits and there’s a reason to do so.”

Journalist Gary Webb was driven to suicide for revealing that the Contras were smuggling crack into the United States.

With Padilla, they kept him in solitary for years, and when he needed dental work, they kept him blindfolded through the entire trip.

There are people who want to destroy you, and they have the means, and your only protection would be the good will of one Barack Hussein Obama, which, along with $7.50 will get you a Starbucks latte.

They want to make him dead.