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Eric Holder Says DoJ Could Strike Deal With Snowden; Current AG Takes Hard Line
cold fjord writes with the report at Yahoo that Former Attorney General Eric Holder said today that a "possibility exists" for the Justice Department to cut a deal with ... Edward Snowden that would allow him to return to the United States ... Holder said "we are in a different place as a result of the Snowden disclosures" and that "his actions spurred a necessary debate" that prompted President Obama and Congress to change policies ... "I certainly think there could be a basis for a resolution that everybody could ultimately be satisfied with. I think the possibility exists."
A representative of current Attorney General Loretta Lynch, though, said that there has been no change in the government's position ("This is an ongoing case so I am not going to get into specific details but I can say our position regarding bringing Edward Snowden back to the United States to face charges has not changed."), Holder's musings aside. As the article points out, too, "any suggestion of leniency toward Snowden would likely run into strong political opposition in Congress as well as fierce resistance from hard-liners in the intelligence community."
Especially when the queen of asset forfeiture is in charge. If I was Snowden, I wouldn't take any deal from this administration, because you can't trust them. No honor among thieves, as the saying goes.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
You got that right! He's one of the worst!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
So, which policies did they actually change? And were any of the changes for the better?
Frankly, I can't think of any off the top of my head....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
People get into the "hero" vs. "traitor" camps, but actually he looks like a bit of both.
Hero for revealing the illegal activities of the NSA and its stooges both inside and outside the USA.
Traitor for (allegedly) revealing information about agents, assets etc. active in "hostile" countries.
If he'd kept back the latter, he *might* have had a chance of bargaining his way back into the US, (if he wants to come; discuss).
Unfortunately, it was probably a requirement of Putin giving him shelter in Russia, despite denials from everybody to the contrary.
So, can't see this happening anytime soon.
Now that Holder is no longer in-office he can say what he actually felt as opposed to what the intelligence community demanded.
Or, since Holder has no official position, he's a good way of testing the waters where if the reaction to his statements is not good, they don't have to honor them or even acknowledge them.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
He will come back bearing gifts from the East.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The only reasonable deal would be for the US government to drop all charges, award Edward Snowden the highest national honours and hire him as a consultant to help them gain useful intelligence without the immoral and illegal practices that were revealed. At the same time, everyone directly responsible for any of the fundamental breaches of human rights committed should be put to trial, as should everyone who had the power to stop it but did not.
Anything less would be an insult to Edward Snowden and a huge missed opportunity for all victims of data theft by the American government, in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Snowden might belong in a prison cell for some of the things he's done but that "hardline opposition" definitely deserves life in prison at minimum for what they've done.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
I cared what he thought when he was able to effect anything. Now he's just another jerk on the street... like you or me or that guy over there picking his nose.
So why do I give a flying fuck what he has to say now? Useless.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Mkay, the current regime operating since the 50's in the US is not at all pissed off that they are "in a different place" now are they? Snowden, you have to realize they haven't been playing it straight so long in this country, they wouldn't know how to play it straight even if their financial circumstances allowed for it. If you come back here they will hang you while blaming you for the financial collapse.
Those bastards need to be sent to prison.
like anyone is going to trust that deal....
Obviously we need intelligence agencies as part of our national defense. But our agencies have become too dangerous to allow them to continue to exist. Maybe it is time to shut down the CIA, NSA and FBI completely and start new agencies that are required to follow much stricter and very public oversight. Our laws have become so complex that often the motive for a law is hidden while some other need for the law gets it promoted into place. A simple example is when law enforcement becomes a tax collector instead of a law enforcement agency. In many places the police force simply exists to rake in fines for the town or county. Traffic laws should be about public safety and not about raising money. Another example : You get into a shouting match with your partner. The cops come and arrest one or both of you for the loud argument. The judge fines you and orders marriage counseling weekly for two years at the public clinic at $75. per week for you and another $75. per week for your wife. Then he also fines each of you $500. for the police being involved. So you have $1000 in fines as well as $150 a week times 104 weeks for the counseling which all flows back to the county's bank account. This type of thing is happening commonly in our legal system.
Yeah, that's called a military coup. Usually doesn't turn out well for the country involved.
because of Snowden. They didn't stop collecting bulk data, they just changed the legal ownership of that data which has no effect on anyone's rights. It's all technical changes.
Also, if I were Snowden I'd consider staying away no matter what he's offered. Corrupt Russian intelligence doesn't have the MOTIVE to off him that American leaders do.
Fun fact: as of 2006, the US navy doesn't own any battleships anymore. It's all about the carriers, baby! I mean, I guess they could try and lug in a museum boat like the U.S.S. North Carolina, or something...
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Depends on the situation. If they decide to make themselves the government, definitely not. If they decide to actually honor their oath to defend the Constitution from enemies both foreign and domestic, then it could turn out quite well. What do you find wrong with them demanding that politicians who violate the Constitution step down or be removed from office? How is that any different from a politician being removed from office for say committing murder or rape? The only "issue" is that it would be most of the politicians going to jail - but again, given how poorly they've run this country for almost a century and how low their approval ratings are, that's not a bad thing either.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Political opposition in Congress is relevant. Fierce resistance from the "intelligence community" is irrelevant; government employees may advise Congress and the president, but they have no business "resisting" political decisions.
No matter the sincerity, or lack of it, from the "current administration" or any previous one, when negotiations are on-going with an entity that believes it holds all the cards (yet needs finds itself 'negotiating'), it will demand no concessions and maintain a hard line while implying that some kind of compromise is possible. Germany and Greece.
Suppose the winds change direction, those in charge offer Snowden a deal, and he accepts it. The problem here is that the winds could change again and Snowden could find himself in the US and suddenly a wanted man again. There's also the possibility that he is officially pardoned of any wrongdoing, but unofficially his life is made a living hell - if not simply ended.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
What do you find wrong with them demanding that politicians who violate the Constitution step down or be removed from office?
"Them"... Who is "them"? Who is going to make the demand? Is he a lawyer? No, what would be cool is if when the supreme court rules a law unconstitutional, they should also file contempt of court charges against the politicians who passed it, and they should be impeached, then removed from office and made to pay a fine. There you go, all nice and legal like, without firing a shot.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Deciding who broke the law and what the punishment should be is not the job of the military. A military coup involving a new election isn't necessarily any better than one where the military just directly takes over. Look at Egypt. Military stepped in because the president "broke the law." Military called a new election, which resulted in an unmitigated disaster of a government.
What makes you think the military isn't part of the same corrupt system? The nature of and the desire for power has the same effect on them as it does on everybody else. Let's face it, everything depends on the good conscience of the person who has his finger on the trigger. The documents are just a formality.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Other fun fact, both the Potomac and the Anacostia are to shallow for a battleship or really anything with any fire power. A small and unloaded destroyer can make it at high-high tide via towing. But then it would have no fuel or armament to actually you know fire.
The shallow draft is why the Navy Yard in DC never really built ships like the original intention for the yard.
There's already constitutional processes in place for removing offending parties from the executive and legislative branches. The military getting involved in it is definitely NOT constitutional and reeks of the likelihood of abuse.
Why should he return? Let's even assume for the moment and for shits and giggles that the government would be honest for a change with its promises and even grant him full amnesty. Would you wanna come to a country where the media and even some of its officials spent the better part of the last decade telling every redneck that it would be a blessing for 'murrica if you were killed, preferably painfully? Where you can't even really rely on police and other legal forces to defend you if you were attacked by said rednecks?
That whole deal smells a bit like the GDR offering its fugitives to come back with no jail time waiting for them. A few were stupid enough to go. No, they were not jailed. But their life was made miserable as can be, from no job opportunities being offered to people not wanting to associate with them, fearing the same. And if you say that it cannot happen in the US, think McCarthy and his Commie list.
Or think of companies wanting government contracts, knowing that you're persona non grata.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The Potomac is 24ft deep at the mouth. The USS Wisconsin, which is the closest battleship to the Potomac, has a draft of 36ft. However it would be worth noting that DC is likely within the firing range of the mark 7 guns of an Iowa battleship located in limited parts of Chesapeake Bay. I'm not sure if those parts of the bay have sufficient depth for the battleship.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
They didn't stop collecting bulk data, they just changed the legal ownership of that data which has no effect on anyone's rights.
The data is phone bills. I'm pretty sure the phone companies already owned them. The change is that the intelligence agencies won't get a copy of them but instead will have to go through a process to get them.
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
There's already constitutional processes in place for removing offending parties from the executive and legislative branches
You mean the one where politicians decide if they're going to hold other politicians accountable? Yeah, that works as well as the bullshit that is Internal Affairs where the police decide if they're going to charge themselves with a crime.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Meaning, a hateful violent response from people whose sense of power is threatened by the truth.
"Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
- Deep Thought
I'm wondering if he could make a case for time served in Russia as part of his prison sentence?
I mean Russian Exile isn't prison, but it's no cake walk either I don't doubt.
Perhaps a way to save face. Sit in Russia awhile, come back to the US, get "convicted" of something like the inappropriate use of government IT assets with the equivalent of a NDA...
Seriously, I wouldn't trust ANYTHING from Holden, this (or probably) any administration. Snowden publicly and undeniably exposed, humiliated and embarrassed (rightfully so) the US govt -- there's no way in h-ll this would end well for him.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
And the asshole who appointed him, not to mention the idiots in the Senate who voted to confirm him.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
And the voters who elected him, and the constitution that allowed him to be elected, and the founding fathers who should have seen this coming but did nothing to stop it!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
So "listening to the will of the people" is now "flip-flopping"? Would you rather your politicians never change their stance, regardless of new information or social changes which happen in the mean time? It's called learning, and is something you should praise your politicians for doing. Only in America is learning considered a sign of weakness. It explains so much.
It's not in range. The Cheasapeake is a little over a 28 miles from DC from the closest point at Shady Side, MD. Max range of an Iowa class gun battery is 20 miles. The best it could do is shell Largo, MD.
So a Senator's career is dependent on exactly how the Supreme Court rules? Laws are not always clearly constitutional or unconstitutional, and we have the court system to sort that out. I don't want the court system being biased in a decision by which politicians are thrown out of office.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The real significance of that is that the NSA isn't allowed to data-mine without limit. I'm fine with having a formal process to get small numbers of records at a time.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The IC is comprised almost entirely of hard liners, and they hate Snowden. Vehemently. He's viewed as a traitor, like a family member airing dirty laundry in public. They will cite potential or actual damage as a rationale for why his actions were wrong, and they probably believe that, but it doesn't matter to them whether those are outweighed by the public's need to know. Indeed, they're paid not to think about the public's need to know at all. The real sin is that he broke ranks and made them look bad, and that's why they hate him (because they are good people, don't you know*.)
Personally, I think the public's need-to-know was paramount, but I recognize that his actions were illegal and I think he could and should have used other avenues to raise his concerns, both for his own personal well being, and to better legitimize the disclosure. Assuming that he actually tried to raise his concerns with his superiors first, which is dubious, he could have kept going up the chain, presented information to sympathetic and cleared elected officials, filed a FOIA request, filed a lawsuit, etc. Instead, he went rogue.
On the one hand, I'm glad that the information is public, and I believe that the information becoming public was important, but on the other hand, I feel that the way it happened gave opponents too much ammunition to label him (correctly, in a literal sense) as a criminal. It's like Malcolm X vs MLK. Civil rights was important -- probably the most important domestic issue of the 20th century -- but working within the framework of the law was both more noble and more effective. Malcolm X may be a folk hero, but MLK brought about real change.
* Actually, many of them are good people, but they're in the weeds, focused on what is a relatively small picture. Like most of us, they don't spend a lot of time balancing mission success against external societal needs. That's not their job, and it shouldn't be. It's strictly a leadership problem.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
It's adorable that you think that the military isn't soaking in politics as much as congressmen are. All the top brass wine and dine senators and representatives to get more funding for their favorite weapons programs, and they set up deals to get stuff for/from manufacturers as well. This is why we have a continuous assembly line of tanks being made when the army has said they don't need any more and is just putting all the new deliveries into storage. It's a three-way circle jerk where only one of the three has any accountability to the public, and that's tenuous at best.
Dear Mr. Snowden, don't come back to the US - we do want you here, but only to enslave you.