My post was primarily an anti-Gladwell rant rather than a rant in defense of Snowden, but sure I'll bite.

First omission of the essential context of the entire story, which is to say the many leakers who were analogous to Ellsberg -- mentioned upthread in detail, "inside men" who were "serious" and "respected" and attempted to take their concerns through proper channels. Gladwell doesn't mention that it had been tried before, and what happened to the people who did it. Gladwell presents his own context, contrived and mostly irrelevant, and uses it to replace the real context that's relevant to the case. Leakers in the vein of Ellsberg tried. They were shut down. The modern culture of absolute secrecy, unquestioning obedience and tribal loyalty combined with the unlimited power of the national security apparatus and the President's willingness to eviscerate in an unprecedented fashion anyone who dares speak out against the status quo is too powerful to overcome through normal channels.

Second is mostly about the way he leaves the reader feeling; his insidious storytelling which tells a series of truths but leaves the reader holding onto a huge lie, a technique characteristic of Gladwell: I walked away from that piece thinking that Ellsberg is a serious player because he worked at a serious private firm contracted to do spy work, and was instrumental in the spy work that was done and leaked it, while Snowden was not.

Yet Snowden worked at a serious private firm contracted to do spy work, and was instrumental in the spy work that was done. He is a tech person and not an intelligence analyist, but now the spying is all technical. The technical details of how it's collected, stored, etc are completely analogous to the information Ellsberg had before our technical era. Techies are the ones who know what's actually going on in today's spy business, not people who wear suits and make nice with Henry Kissinger.

Every sentence he uses to describe Ellsberg is, contextually, supposed to be in contrast with Snowden, and yet the contrast just doesn't pass muster. "Ellsberg was handsome and charismatic" -- Snowden is too. He's also quite eloquent. "He served in the Marine Corps" -- Snowden tried to serve in the military until physical disabilities disqualified him. Then he served in the CIA. Ellsberg has some prestigious academic credentials -- sure, in order to get a good job as a "soft" person you need to have gone to the best schools, be friends with the best people, etc. In technical fields it's more about knowing how to get things done, which Snowden did. I've heard both of them speak, Snowden wins by far when it comes to clear expression of ideas and ability to present a cogent and defensible argument.

The quotes he gives from Ellsberg sound almost identical to things I've heard/read from Snowden.

"had Snowden been a whistle blower in 1967, he would have blown the whistle on Ellsberg" is a sentence which is simply Gladwell just inventing his own reality out of nothing and presenting it as obvious fact. Since it follows and is followed by a bunch of anecdotal stories, the reader tends to accept it. Is it the case? I don't think so. It's pointless to even discuss -- it's impossible to know. Did Snowden blow the whistle on any single person, at all? I can't recall a name being mentioned. Clapper was exposed committing purgery, but he wasn't mentioned by name -- Snowden revealed facts that provided evidence he lied under oath (though of course he was required to do so and I don't know that anyone holds it against him).

I think there is a wide variety of reasonable positions on Snowden, not all of them favoring him, but Gladwell writing a nasty Gladwell-style hit piece against him is a point in his favor.