Bill Blunden: &quot;In this editorial he asserts that American spies are motivated primarily by the desire to thwart terrorist plots.&quot;<p>Glen Greenwald: &quot;In one sense, this blame-shifting tactic is understandable. After all, the CIA, the NSA and similar agencies receive billions of dollars annually from Congress and have been vested by their Senate overseers with virtually unlimited spying power. They have one paramount mission: find and stop people who are plotting terrorist attacks. When they fail, of course they are desperate to blame others.&quot;<p>Maybe Glen&#x27;s sentence could have been written &quot;They have been given the mandate to find and stop people who are plotting...&quot; to fend off a potential (purposeful?) misreading like Mr. Blunden has done, but the problem here is clearly not the wording.<p>Nothing about Glen&#x27;s article supports any of Mr. Blunden&#x27;s rambling innuendo. Not only is this is a lame attempt to score points off of Glen, but it&#x27;s pretty dubious submission to HN in the first place.