After almost 2 weeks, the story surrounding the NSA leaks by Edward Snowden has done anything but go away. For his former employer, Booz Allen, they haven’t been doing any talking. In fact, since the company acknowledged it fired Snowden, it has been quiet in the face of public speculation. The Washington Post reached out to Media & Communication Strategies’ President Scott Sobel. Scott offers this reason on why Booz Allen has been silent in the face of this media storm:

If Booz Allen was a different company and didn’t have a primary client who was the government — whose key directive was public safety — they would probably be more vocal,” he said. “But they’re probably being cautious because they don’t want to inflame the situation. If there’s an oil spill, you can be vocal about having engineers figure out ways to prevent oil spills in the future. You can speak immediately, and be transparent and proactive. But in the case of national security, you have to be much more conservative in what you can say. You could say something, make a mistake and cost someone their life if they’re an undercover agent. You could talk about something that’s a security breach.

To read the rest of Scott’s comments, read them here on The Washington Post.

Scott Sobel is President of Media & Communications Strategies, Inc., a Washington, DC-based public relations firm that manages reputation and communications challenges of all kinds worldwide. www.macstrategies.com. He is also a former corporate public relations practitioner and major market and TV network investigative journalist with a Media Psychology MA from Touro University Worldwide www.TUW.edu.