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Did Russia Trick Snowden Into Going To Moscow?
An anonymous reader writes "Ex-KGB Major Boris Karpichko says that spies from Russia's SVR intelligence service, posing as diplomats in Hong Kong, convinced Snowden to fly to Moscow last June. 'It was a trick and he fell for it,' Karpichko, who reached the rank of Major as a member of the KGB's prestigious Second Directorate while specializing in counter-intelligence, told Nelson. 'Now the Russians are extracting all the intelligence he possesses.'"
... yea, so Snowden still doesn't know he was tricked?
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If the Americans had any intelligence and sincerity, Snowden would not have had any reason to flee in the first place.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
> This now comes down to whether Snowden was a "useful idiot" or was he working for the Russians all along
If he had been working for them all along he:
(1) Would have gone directly to Russia
(2) Would not have given the information to reporters
If Snowden is a "whistleblower", why did he release so much material about things the NSA does which are not illegal? Why did he release info about capabilities which are clearly under the NSA purview and in the national interest?
Saying it was a trick flagrantly ignores the fact that the vast majority of more than 75 nations would openly and gladly transfer snowden to the United States. As a nation all we'd have to do is threaten to withhold/offer to increase aid to the target nation and in turn theyd cough him up post-haste. this doesnt account for the numerous countries with dictatorial governments favorable to our interests in which we could simply just ask.
Russia is one of a handful of successful foreign nations with the power, both economically and militarily to resist whatever the US asks for. Sending cia agents to him for rendition is a suicide mission, both militarily and politically. We are beholden to 5% of our oil supply from Russia, and the last time we offered an economic incentive was when we bought up a few hundred nuclear missiles from them and converted the payload to nuclear fuel in the 80's so we arent exactly an economic juggernaut in their world.
snowden was smart to take the Russian offer. He was going to expose clandestine secrets about the United States government that fly in the face of the constitution and our rule of law, and Russia saw nothing but gain from his efforts. finally, after 50 years of chest thumping freedom and swinging-dick foreign policy, a piping hot dish of humble pie had been prepared to which America would reluctantly have to at least take a bite and say, "Politically we're no less reprehensible than any other nation. we just have better propaganda."
Good people go to bed earlier.
So which US government agency fabricated this theory in order to bolster anti Snowden sentiments?
I'm sure the US government is astroturfing anti Snowden propaganda like mad. No sane citizen would actually think Snowden is a traitor or even managed to harm US interests, where "US interests" is defined as the interests of the American people and not the interests of the kleptocratic psychos who make up the ruling class.
If he was working for the Russians all along, he would have simply stayed put and kept stealing secrets.
No need to flee anywhere. He also wouldn't give a fuck about the domestic spying aspect, if he wanted to drive a wedge he could have released that part anonymously while giving all the other juicy secrets to the Russians.
If he was really working with Russia he wouldn't have left at all. The whole point of being a double agent is to not out yourself. Since the NSA seemed to be so incompetent to allow him to download massive amounts of classified data he could have easily passed it on the Russia without detection or needing to leave the country. He left because he did not want to be silenced and rot in prison while the NSA kept chugging along with no one else the wiser.
I'm not sure it's possible to "trick" somebody who fled the U.S. to hang out with the Peace and Freedom Loving Peoples of the PRC. Unless Snowden is a completely gullible idiot, it's beyond ludicrous to think he didn't know that months of intelligence extraction awaited him after a flight to Russia.
Frankly, I don't understand the guy. There are plenty of better options that would have been available to him; I still can't figure why he chose the PRC as a first stop. Once he got stuck there, his options were between slim and none.
Plenty of options? Like going to congress where the hard liners were calling for his execution? The truth is that it was hard line bullshitters like that which drove Snowden to Russia. The US political class shot it self in the foot with its come-down-on-him-like-a-ton-of-bricks attitude and now Russia is benefitting. It's basically a reverse of the situation faced during the Cold War by people who had legitimate reason to criticises the Soviet system had no way of doing so except by defecting to the west to avoid being locked away. Perhaps you should ask yourself why the only place from which the NSA and the US govt. can be safely criticisesd these days on certain issues without having to fear being disappeared into some CIA run solitary confinement unit, is a shark tank like Putin's Russia?
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
The press already have it so there's no reason for governments to make deals - a few bucks or a cheap favor to a paper and they've got the lot.
Sorry, it's more like, "one nation's government wants to lock him up for what he did to them, another nation's government wants to lock him up for what he can do for them, and other nations don't want him at all, but will probably hand him over to one or the other in due course."
People like to prattle on about the tree of liberty and refreshing it with the blood of patriots and tyrants; they always forget the part about the consequences of getting the short end of the stick being rather severe. Mr. Snowden's only real mistake was thinking that he was individually smart enough to take on these world powers and personally win, when in reality he's never going to be free from the machine.
If he wanted to be free and to have done this, he'd have had to move some place isolated, remote, and where he could be somewhat anonymous, and to have released his documentation through several intermediaries. Some place like rural west-central Australia, for example. Unfortunately for him he chose to be known in his releases, and he'll end up paying for that choice for the rest of his life, and possibly with his life.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Well, mostly because pretty much everything he has announced has been admitted to be true. I don't think I've seen any stories with Snowden-released information where it was disproven, although I could be wrong on that.
On the other hand, the US (and other Governments) eventually admitted that he was telling the truth about the releases.
Given two stories from two entities, one which is a proven liar and one which is not, which would you be more likely to trust?
Even putting aside the facts that he was willing to break the oaths he took when he got his security clearance
The oath he took was to "protect and defend the Constitution, against all enemies, foreign and domestic"
He's committed many crimes, but breaking that oath does not appear to be one of them.
And yet, with all the millions of documents he stole
Copied.
he cannot provide any evidence of this beyond "trust me."
Why do you think it is reasonable to expect that people have perfect foresight? He was in a dangerous situation, and not all of the instances where he might have tried to report the problems were necessarily recorded or accessible to him.
I also don't know why you blindly take him at his word.
Who really believes that corrupt government scumbags would care about this, especially when they're the ones who did this to begin with, and many of them still support it?
And for what it's worth, I would have preferred he *had not* gone through the 'proper channels'. The People have a right to know when the government is violating the highest law of the land or people's liberties; not only do they have a right to know, but they should be the *first* to know. By going through the 'proper channels', you risk getting taken out of a position where leaking the information is possible, and then the whole issue would be swept under a rug.
Even putting aside the facts that he was willing to break the oaths he took when he got his security clearance
He had a duty to report the violations of the constitution and people's liberties, silly "oaths" be damned.
he has a strong need to spin his facts and sell his view to keep from looking like a traitor.
You mean like the government? And you realize this is just a silly opinion piece, right?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Imagine a hypothetical situation:
You are cheating on your wife, and have been doing so for some time now. A good friend of hers finds out about what you're doing and tells your her. At this point, people are going to be pissed off at one of two people. People loyal to you are going to be pissed off at your wife's friend for ratting you out. People loyal to her are going to be pissed off at you, and see your wife's friend as a hero. That's just the way things work. So you can always tell where someone's loyalties really lie by determining whom they are pissed off at.
In this situation, the secret police/military complex/power elite/establishment is effectively screwing over the general public and the Constitution (the highest law of that land, for those that are unfamiliar), and has been doing so for some time now. Someone finds out about what they're really doing and tells us. At this point, people are pissed off at one of two people (or groups of people). People who are loyal to the secret police/military complex/power elite/establishment are pissed off at Snowden for ratting them out. People loyal to the general public and Constitution are pissed off at the people screwing them, and see him as a hero.
I'm not trying to scream "shill" to every person who wants Snowden's head on a pike, but you'd better believe that any prominent figure who is crying traitor day in and day out in the public media, well, you know where their loyalties lie is all I'm saying. It's not too hard to figure it out.
[slaps forehead smartly] Do you have any idea how blindingly obvious ALL of that crap is? No one with a functioning brainstem, and that includes Iran, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Russia, China, the King of Siam and the boogey man, is the least bit surprised that the NSA has been doing all that. The only red flag is the part about "tracking people whose movements [happen to] intersect", which, with the fact of an all-seeing eye scrutinizing every single person's life, is the whole point of Snowden's revelation of blatant unconstitutional overreaches.
Furthermore, mere revelation that the NSA has been engaged in those processes conveys no useful information whatsoever to any enemy of the US.
Jesus wept to think that so many people are getting hoodwinked by this crap.
Clearly any information that contradicts your preexisting conclusions must have been fabricated by the evil US government.
"Among other things, Snowden signed an oath, as a condition of his employment as an NSA contractor, not to disclose classified information, and knew the penalties for violating the oath."
The entire Wehrmacht swore an oath too. Breaking a pact with evil is no evil. I suppose you think Colonel von Stauffenburg was a traitor as well?
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
In a story as touchy as Snowden's, nothing is as simple as you make it out to be. Not your theory, not the GP's theory. There are probably thousands of strings being pulled as we converse on the subject, and we have no idea.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
This is why I find this discussion so absurd.
If the US really was concerned about Snowden giving US secrets to Russia, why not reinstate his passport so he can leave? They're the reason he's stranded in Russia, not because Snowden wanted to go there.