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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Fable of Edward Snowden
Of all the lies that Edward Snowden has told since his massive theft of secrets from the National Security Agency and his journey to Russia via Hong Kong in 2013, none is more provocative than the claim that he never intended to engage in espionage, and was only a whistleblower seeking to expose the overreach of NSAs information gathering. With the clock ticking on Mr. Snowdens chance of a pardon, now is a good time to review what we have learned about his real mission.
Mr. Snowdens theft of Americas most closely guarded communication secrets occurred in May 2013, according to the criminal complaint filed against him by federal prosecutors the following month. At the time Mr. Snowden was a 29-year-old technologist working as an analyst-in-training for the consulting firm of Booz Allen Hamilton at the regional base of the National Security Agency (NSA) in Oahu, Hawaii. On May 20, only some six weeks after his job there began, he failed to show up for work, emailing his supervisor that he was at the hospital being tested for epilepsy.
This excuse was untrue. Mr. Snowden was not even in Hawaii. He was in Hong Kong. He had flown there with a cache of secret data that he had stolen from the NSA.
This was not the only lie Mr. Snowden told. As became clear during my investigation over the past three years, nearly every element of the narrative Mr. Snowden has provided, which reached its final iteration in Oliver Stones 2016 movie, Snowden, is demonstrably false.
This narrative began soon after Mr. Snowden arrived in Hong Kong, where he arranged to meet with Laura Poitras, a Berlin-based documentary filmmaker, and Glenn Greenwald, a Brazil-based blogger for the Guardian. Both journalists were longtime critics of NSA surveillance with whom Mr. Snowden (under the alias Citizen Four) had been in contact for four months.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fable-of-edward-snowden-1483143143
charlyvi
(6,537 posts)Paywall.
rgbecker
(4,826 posts)Who you going to believe, The billionaire's Wall Street rag or a guy who stole NSA secrets, knowing he'd be caught, and turned them over to several MSM newpapers to expose the secrets? Or do you buy the story they were stolen for billionaire Trump's buddy billionaire Putin all along and something went wrong with deal so he has to stay at the Moscow airport ?
I have to say, I never thought I'd see the whole country sit by while the Russians take over the Media and election of their buddy Trump during my lifetime. Took them 50 years as communists to try with tanks in the streets of Prague, Budapest, closing off Berlin and then in just 20 years or so to just come in and buy the place.
Or maybe the article has some other yarn to spin?
yodermon
(6,143 posts)I feel stuck in the middle. Which propaganda to believe?? Wilderness of fucking mirrors, this.