To those who don't think she's a whistle-blower, what do you suppose her intentions were then? Because the intention is a pretty integral component to defining a whistle-blower.
I agree that it's a misguided thing to do to dump a load of sensitive documents in an outsider's hands (by outsider I mean someone who isn't sworn to do a particular job such as upholding the law, or say a reputable press outlet, but apparently he went to the Washington Post first), however, let's say you're a whistleblower and you know that the bit of information you need is somewhere in a subset of a pretty large source of data, don't you think it's reasonable to be worried that you're going to get caught before you can achieve the task you set out to do, and therefore not bring to light the crimes committed by your employer? Who is going to sit on >100,000 pages of data and review them while also doing their full-time job in the hope that they can a) find the specific bits needed for whistle-blowing and b) don't take too long about it so as to avoid getting caught therefore achieving nothing in the process, and worse have one's intentions represented as less than noble by those with the power?
Furthermore, from what I understand it wasn't a specific incident she was hoping to bring to light, but many, and the more the better is a pretty plausible guess for her intentions, therefore if she knew (and let's say had verified) that one particular incident was in that data, and due to the source of data she was confident that more relevant incidents would be catalogued as well, then surely that's a pretty reasonable additional argument for not reviewing every last bit first?
I just wonder whether people are buying into an idea that if one can't whistle-blow in the most ideal manner possible (only the most specific and relevant data and only to the most appropriate people), then one should not whistle-blow at all. To me that's asking for absolute idealism in a situation that's largely devoid of it; it makes no sense.
