Snowden left Hong Kong for Moscow on Saturday. He was supposedly headed to Cuba and then to Ecuador, but the New York Times is now reporting that he was not on today’s Moscow-Havana flight:
So what do you think is going on now? Did he leave earlier to avoid media attention? Was this talk of going to Cuba and Ecuador just a diversionary tactic, and is he headed somewhere else? Are the Russians keeping him for their own purposes?
I can’t say, but I think it’s obvious he’s either traveling in disguise or throwing out red herrings so he can make his escape. Why the hell anyone would expect Snowden to just show up at the airport in time for a flight somewhere I can’t fathom. Really? With this manner of coverage, worldwide, 24/7, and you don’t think the guy is clever enough to NOT be wherever the feds think he’ll be? Um. Durrr?
Ramzan Kadyrov’s Instagram feed?
I’m going to bet he got into Russia , in the first place, by promising them something they wanted very much. Maybe info on something or someone. The Russians have conveniently got him in the airport but not the country, so I’m thinking something is going on. It could just be letting him get his affairs in order and make some choices, of course.
He would decide to reveal classified information the same week he was marrying Yoko Ono.
Nice OP title. ES: “I’ve got the best top secret documents in the whole world.”
Well now that song does lend itself to this situation doesn’t it? Very few lyrical changes required, in fact.
I don’t know what to make of this guy. The former intel guy in me is absolutely disgusted with his betrayal of the trust placed in him. Right or wrong, TPA is the law of the land and he needs to obey the law. But the American in me is equally frustrated with the accelerating erosion our government’s respect for The Constitution across the board. I think if he’d limited his revelations to actions taken by the US government against its own citizens I could maybe get behind him. But he strays into anti-US espionage territory when he starts blabbing about our surveillance of non-citizens off US soil (China, specifically).
He’s got the world’s attention right now. If he’s really more than an attention whore, if he really thinks our government has violated us and that Right is on his side, he should turn up stateside to face the music. Few people have a better chance of being handled “by the book” in our legal system.
And as long as he’s outside the US he’s considered fair game for a drone.
I think he’s sincere, dedicated, arrogant, impulsive and probably more than little ignorant about the full scope of what the NSA was doing outside of his narrow hedgerow. Technically I think he is pretty close to being a traitor. He has almost no legal foot to stand on for his actions.
Having said all this if he sets foot on US soil there is near 100% probability he will send the majority, if not all, of the remainder of his life in prison. Coming to the US to face the music will not end well for him in any scenario. He may be handed “by the book”, but it’s also going to be thrown at him. He’s pushed way too many buttons.
One dutch cartoon (Fokke & Sukke) mentioned it as follows:
“The best way for Snowden not to get in front up an US judge is to end up in Guantanamo.”
So says the media. In reading the NYT article, there is no empirical proof he was ever in Hong Kong because there is no empirical proof as to his whereabouts at all since the story broke.
It doesn’t matter what he did or did not do. This is Three Days of the Condor in real life. He will have to keep one step ahead of everyone all the time because he has a price on his head. What remains to be seen is whether he is publicly captured and returned to the US for trial, or becomes the NSA’s Jimmy Hoffa.
Well that’s kind of the beauty of it–he has the opportunity to be a modern application of “Civil Disobedience.” Off soil, as Koxinga points out, he’s drone bait. At home, well, he surely knew there would be consequences for blabbing. He can rightfully look the American public in the eye and ask them why they are sheepfully accepting what he protested. Or at least do so through Amnesty International who will demand and be given unrestricted access to him. Hell, if I were his jailer I’d demand two chaperones from different organizations at all times just to keep him from making something up about his treatment.
Given that his offense is all about classified material, is there a chance that the public would never learn what went on in his trial? Even if that’s not the case, I imagine he’d have no chance at all to spek to the press outside the courtroom, and inside the courtroom discussion would be strictly about his own actions, not that of the NSA. So maybe that wouldn’t be much of a platform.
In all likelihood, he has set up a logic bomb of some sort which will mail and post a bunch of really damaging stuff if he doesn’t temporarily “defuse” it every couple of days or so.
I remember reading that he posted to Ars Technica, and doubtless Slashdot. I wonder if he was a Doper as well?
His case reminds me of Daniel Ellsberg, who DID stay to face the music. Whatever else you could say about him, you couldn’t impugn his motives.
Apparently, Snowden also reminds Ellsberg of Ellsberg.