Former Vice President Al Gore won't call Edward Snowden a traitor.

Appearing at the Southland Conference in Nashville, Gore rejected the proposition that Snowden must be defined as either a patriot or a traitor. "If you set up a spectrum, okay, I would push it more away from the traitor side," Gore said.

“He clearly violated the law, but what he revealed in the course of violating important laws included violations of the United States Constitution that were way more serious than the crimes he committed. So, in the course of violating important laws, he also provided an important service because we did need to know how far this has gone.”

The Hill reports that Gore's defense of Snowden is "a sharp rebuke" of "top government officials." Those officials would be Secretary of State John Kerry and President Obama, but The Hill couldn't bring themselves to name them.