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Snowden Says He Took No Secret Files To Russia
mspohr writes "There's an interesting interview with Edward Snowden in the NY Times. He talks freely about his decision to start collecting documents. His experience in reporting problems and abuse convinced him he would be discredited. He also states he didn't take any of the documents to Russia and that the Chinese don't have them either. 'What would be the unique value of personally carrying another copy of the materials onward? There's a zero percent chance the Russians or Chinese have received any documents,' he said. Snowden turned them all over to the journalists. He also corrects last week's NY Times story about the derogatory comment in his personnel file; it was due to him discovering and trying to report a vulnerability in the CIA's internal software."
He's blown a whole lot of trust as it is, by stabbing his country in the back so spectacularly.
What makes him think that everyone should believe him now?
The Russians have taken in traitors/defectors from the West; but they know that traitors are the scum of the Earth, and can never, ever be fully trusted.
Turning documents over to journalists, or anybody employed in any other profession, does not make them magically uninterceptable, unreadable, or unposessable by Russians, Chinese, or anybody else. He has no control over the distribution after he hands it off to anybody, and the people who have the stuff might not even know if someone else is reading it.
That is assuming that he is even telling the truth now after spending a long time lying so that he could get access to the documents. Lies about his adventure continued when the Russians said they didn't know he was coming when he in fact had a birthday party at the Russian embassy in Hong Kong prior to his departure, and made arrangements there. When he got to Russia, an FSB spokesman was speaking for him. Then there is this gem: "(On June 23 Izvestia, a [formerly] state-owned Russian newspaper, wrote that the Kremlin and its intelligence services collaborated with Wikileaks to help Snowden escape from Hong Kong.)" ... It looks to me that there is far more going on than most people want to believe.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Oh we know they have at least some of the documents, they can read US and UK TOP SECRET documents in the newspapers just like anybody else. They can then use those for their intelligence analysis, or to fill in missing pieces. Before they would have had to get an infiltrator to obtain them, now they can just go to the Guardian. And that's assuming that they haven't managed to obtain either voluntary or clandestine copies of documents from the Guardian or other papers with the documents. Do you recall that Mr. Greenwald's lover was carrying electronic copies of many documents with him, as well as a scribbled note with the password? Funny how we never seem to get releases of Russian, Chinese, Cuban, Iranian, North Korean or other documents.
Bin Laden wants the West to turn to Islam. He failed. But it probably doesn't matter much in the long term since much of the West is heading towards a demographic death spiral. The future belongs to those who show up.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
"not nearly the level of outrage" That is because you long ago accepted the fact that the government is your mommy and should have complete control over your lives. You never gave up the monarchy and simply transferred some of the power into a group of people that are not the monarch.
In contrast, the US gave up the monarchy and lived for a while under the premise that the government is not our mommy. The people started getting this feeling that it would be better if the government were our mommy and we are desperately trying to "catch up." Some of us still don't want to "catch up." That is what all the commotion is about.
Quite the contrary. The Russians and Chinese have access to US & UK top secret documents the same as anyone else that goes to various web sites.
One thing you are discounting is the chain of lies and around Snowden's activities. One very interesting example of which is the birthday party at the Russian embassy in Hong Kong when the Russians later claimed that they had no idea he was coming to Moscow.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell