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)CIA, though, is, like I said, farty, at least when it comes to their support assets (aka office staff)--and that is what ES was when he was hired on. He wasn't a "secret agent," he was the "computer guy" in Switzerland. He didn't go out on missions, he sat in a heated and cooled office and did what he was told, by a supervisor who plainly should have been watching him more closely, and who eventually fired him.
The government pays me a pension every month--I've been around the track a time or two, I've held a high level clearance; I'm not a naif who acquires my reality from spy novels, like another poster on this thread kept rudely asserting to distract from a paucity of argument.
I do think Snowden is a bit of a liar who likes to puff himself up a bit. He fibbed about his educational credentials, he even fibbed (stupidly, really) to Greenwald about his salary. Anyone who fibs about big things and little things doesn't pass my smell test, so I am not going to believe everything, or even much of anything, he has to say about his duties or experiences without corroboration from people other than anonymous sources.