General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: A reminder...Snowden had NO ALTERNATIVE but to go to Russia. [View all]MADem
(135,425 posts)revoked because he lied - Lied - LIED about his educational qualifications, and he was working under that lie for an entire clearance period of several years.
He was in the process of renewing his clearance when he got to Booz, and he was told by personnel that there were issues with it. He managed to convince the PTB, locally, anyway, that it wasn't a big deal, and of course they would have re-submitted the paperwork. In time, though, that paperwork would come back (maybe in weeks, maybe months) with "Still Fucked Up--This Ain't Right" stamped on it (well, not precisely that, but you take the point...!).
He may have believed (and rightly to do so) that he would have been put under surveillance, his work product analyzed, his recent history scrutinized, BECAUSE he lied about his qualifications, even if he was able to get a 'forgiveness' chit from the authorities (they sometimes will do this, but sometimes, they won't either). Since he'd been stealing documents hand over fist for quite some time, perhaps he feared that this pattern would be discerned, and he'd be arrested and jailed without bail, as often happens when people are caught stealing stuff (Robert Hansen, Jonathan Pollard, e.g.) so he just panicked and ran.
Or it may be that he planned to leave all along, and he was going to keep playing it out until either there was no more stuff he could grab, or suspicion fell on him, whatever came first.
I'm just not buying the "Freedom Fighter Eddie" scenarios any more. There are too many questions.