Current members of the intelligence and defense community offered confessions of their desire to kill NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, Benny Johnson of BuzzFeed reports.
The article has received criticism for keeping anonymous the sources of these death wishes.
"In a world where I would not be restricted from killing an American, I personally would go and kill him myself," a current NSA analyst told BuzzFeed.
An unnamed Army intelligence officer reportedly described a killing scenario in which Snowden would be casually injected with poison while walking down the street "and next thing you know he dies in the shower."
"I would love to put a bullet in his head," a current Pentagon official told BuzzFeed, and added that Snowden "is single-handedly the greatest traitor in American history."
A defense contractor speaking from an overseas Intelligence collections base told the site, "Most everyone I talk to says he needs to be tried and hung, forget the trial and just hang him."
Two former intelligence officials who have openly expressed their desires to see Snowden dead are former NSA director Michael Hayden and former CIA chief James Woolsey.
Hayden jokingly implied at panel discussion on cybersecurity hosted by the Washington Post in October that Snowden should be put on the "kill list," while Woolsey said in a December interview with Fox News that "If convicted by a jury of his peers, [Snowden] should be hanged by his neck until he is dead."
A growing number of Americans, however, view Snowden more as a whistleblower (57%) than as a traitor (34%), according to Quinnipiac poll released this week.
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