General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why did it take a Democratic administration for Snowden to become a dissident? [View all]MADem
(135,425 posts)We are talking about the CIA, which is a hidebound agency that does NOT think out of the box, and after he left NSA (where some insist he never worked during the Bush administration--but he did), he went to CIA. And they sent him to a rather jazzy posting in Switzerland.
It would not surprise me if he started out at NSA as a security guard, showed some proficiency with computers, was given a "fleet up" while working for them, in MD, back in 2004-2006, and used that "work experience" to earn a place with the CIA. From there he was off to the races.
We know he was basically fired from CIA with that derogatory letter in his file, but he managed to get hired by Dell and flitted from Switzerland to Japan without any difficulty. CIA never said anything, though. To anyone. They just left the letter in his personnel jacket, like that helps (not).
By the point in time when he was hired by Booz, he had NSA in MD and CIA in Switzerland and Dell in Japan on his record--so no need for anyone to regard him as "special" or a "whiz kid." He had a credible resume (albeit with "educational discrepancies" up the yin-yan, which were finally noticed--and that, I believe caused him to run).
The analyst on the thread is comparing a woman with an honorable military record (not a recruit training wash-out) of two years, who has a actual, verifiable MASTER's degree, with Snowden--a high school drop out who didn't even finish his courses for his GED--the comparison is just not operative. I discussed this in that subthread.
I have plenty of firsthand experience too--and I know that the CIA (where Snowden was hired in 2004, and where his adventures began in earnest) is a careful, conservative, rather farty agency when it comes to office staff. They can certainly get it wrong (see Ames, Aldrich, as an example) but their people LOOK and ACT the part. And they do have a pecking order.