Thanks for adding that excellent point on personal motivation. Did Snowden have such a motivation? Was he substantially remunerated by Wikileaks? Did he gain more than he lost due to his exile? How much of that offset was planned/expected by him, and thus could be considered as delayed gratification/rewards for his actions?
These are not questions I can answer.
Were the secrets of such a nature that the sponsors (the American public) were upset, withdrew support or in some other way reacted unfavorably to what the American government had done? AFAIK, yes...Correct?
Given the very, very long history of despicable action by the CIA (and other agencies) within the US and across the globe, I think it would be very hard to leak information that would NOT result in an outcry. ;)
When the FBI agent who had wanted to pursue members of the 9/11 group was prevented from doing so, went up the chain of command and was still told to stand down, then went to the public and revealed these facts, she was doing the public a service and revealed the underbelly of what was possibly a conspiracy to allow 9/11. I can posit further, but who will provide proof?
When the CIA was exposed for running the MK-Ultra program on American soil, testing American citizens, most of whom were homeless or mentally troubled, performing torture, vivisections without anesthetics, and killing over 20,000 Americans, the outcry was predictable.
When the CIA's involvement in drug running in SE Asia and South America (separately in history) was revealed, there was an outcry, too.
The CIA has a long, long history of damaging other countries through various types of espionage, even to the point of destroying economies, assassinations and coup d'etat. This in itself marks the CIA as a terrorist organization. That it works for the US government, ostensibly with the POTUS's authority, marks the executive branch of the US government as the leadership (much like bin Laden was the leader of al-Qaeda), meaning that it is the head of the terrorist organization. Hypocrisy at its finest.
So, I guess the real question is: How long will humans continue to do morally, civically, socially, ethically, economically, spiritually, (etc.) reprehensible things? Is there not a better way?