[tome]

Because it changes my impression of what he's in this game for. My first impression was that he wanted to make the US government look bad in the eyes of US citizens, so the citizens could fix the problem. Now my impression is that he wants to make the US look bad in terms of its foreign policy, which is something entirely different.

[tdirect]

I think this differs very little from the other revelations.

This does make the government look bad in the eyes of US citizens--why are we crying foul at China when we are doing exactly the same thing, and may even be the more aggressive party?

If we are conducting this sort of warfare, the citizenry needs to know. It's probably a better issue to face publicly than to let it slowly morph into a new cold war espionage situation with China.