Edward Epstein of the Wall Street Journal has put together a compelling opinion piece suggesting Edward Snowden was most likely a spy working for either China or Russia (or both), and that whistleblowing is just a public cover for this.
As usual with the WSJ I have no idea whether this article is available if you aren’t a subscriber, but since it’s an original piece of writing from them I don’t really have any non-paywall sources–here is the article in question.
Some key points that were persuasive to me:
Every official that has knowledge of the actual classified documents, including Democrats and Republicans on the Senate / House Intelligence Committees and all the professional NSA types has indicated it was espionage.
The vast majority of people who believe Snowden was an honorable whistleblower have been informed by articles written by people who basically have only seen a handful of documents, the small number of the 1.7m that actually served a whistleblowing purpose. These people (especially Glenn Greenwald and such) have a strong interest in portraying Snowden as a whistleblower because it directly increases their own fame, prestige, and presumably wealth.
Gen. Martin Dempsey has said the vast majority of the 1.7m documents relate to military capabilities, operations, tactics, techniques and procedures. These documents have never been released and probably never will–suggesting that Russia or China wanted them and obviously would not allow Snowden to publish them because intelligence that only you know is more valuable than intelligence that everyone knows. Martin Dempsey wouldn’t have much reason or motivation to say that someone had just seriously compromised U.S. military techniques and such, saying that is a recognition of weakness and it’d be strange for a General to concede it if it weren’t true.
By Snowden’s own account he started illegally taking documents in March of 2013 inspired by his disgust for NSA surveillance. However, the only two known documents he’s released about this NSA surveillance are a FISA Court Order and the famous powerpoint slide about PRISM. The FISA Court Order is the only one directly relating to spying domestically on Americans and was not issued until April 26, 2013–after Snowden had already started his operation.
I find it pretty persuasive, and while I won’t recap/paraphrase the entire article it actually doesn’t look like Snowden’s file crawler program was really working “randomly” and just grabbed a bunch of documents. Instead it looks like he got a couple of documents he could leak to the press to make it look like he’s a whistleblower then a large cache of documents that have no value in whistleblowing but are instead only valuable as intelligence to a foreign power.
To me at least this confirms that Snowden doesn’t deserve to be consider in the vein of Daniel Ellsberg who leaked basically one document that was purely political in nature in that it showed the government was lying to the public about the Vietnam war. It was not operational/tactical, it had little to no value as foreign intelligence.
I’ll cop to not having followed Snowden’s story too closely because unlike most I don’t get all hot and bothered over things like this and frankly was mostly disinterested. I wasn’t surprised the government was doing any of this stuff, and I also wasn’t all that outraged that someone leaked it. My previous opinion on Snowden was that leaking the information at least started an important public debate that we should have had before these programs were ever started.
My only real beef with him was that he didn’t go through the “process” like Ellsberg did. Ellsberg actually tried to speak directly to Congress and his bosses about his qualms, but no one would hear him. That’s why he finally leaked it directly to the press. My opinion of Snowden was that he had chosen not to do that primarily because he wanted to get famous and going through the process would have infringed on that. So while I was glad the information was out there, I didn’t have a high opinion of Snowden himself.
Now, I think the reason he never tried to go through the proper channels like Ellsberg did is because he was primarily engaged in espionage, and of course he would not want to get caught. While Snowden probably has some legitimate beefs with the United States government (and probably legitimately disliked the NSA surveillance program) I suspect his primary motivation was financial reward from Russia in exchange for being a spy. I think in retrospect this is obviously true, because honestly if you’re a huge civil libertarian (which is the public persona that Snowden tries to project) I can’t think of a more hostile industrialized country to live in than Russia itself. Further, if Snowden was smart enough to conduct this operation secretly for months (and we know he was), the way in which he fled has never made sense to me unless his ultimate goal was to actually end up in Russia.
This seems pretty much the standard tactic of “What we say is true, but all the evidence is classified so you’ll have to trust us”. A claim that more often than not turns out to be a lie by the officials in question.
Your logic is backwards. These individuals are granted access to the classified documents because they believe - or pretend to believe - the company line. Any official that stated otherwise would lose access to the classified documents at best, and at worst would become another target of bullshit charges of “aiding the enemy” like that analyst who spoke positively of Bradley Manning.
You don’t have to look at the actual classified documents that haven’t been seen to think it is espionage. Under a strict reading of the law - it is espionage to disclose the information - which he has done.
I didn’t read the article - cause I’m not paying the WSJ, but some of the points are valid. It would be more persuasive if there was some sort of allegation or prof that he had contacted or attempted to contact a foreign power before.
His choice of Hong Kong originally struck me as weird, but perhaps not if what the article alleges is true.
Keep in mind the NSA/CIA and everyone else claims almost everything is super secret. Now some of the stuff we have seen is/was super secret - so the stuff we haven’t is probably even more so. It is hard to believe he is living in Russia without cooperating to some extent, but the Russian intelligence services are pretty good. They may have been able to copy and decrypt his info without his knowledge - using key loggers - hidden cameras - whatever.
It is also possible the Russians already had all this info. And of course the embarrassment this is causing the US is enough for Putin to put up Snowden for life in Russia without any pressure. They want to encourage others to do the same - so it would be bad business to put unnecessary pressure on Snowden.
I don’t believe there have been many cases with someone just showing up in your country with such a treasure trove of info.
Edward Snowden probably will have a bigger impact on information security than any other individual in history.
If this is true, then why would he claim to be a whistleblower? He didn’t need the “cover”, and going public like he did would just make it harder for him to get out of the country and reach his employers.
Much more likely, I think, is that he decided that he could use his access to turn a quick buck, stole as much stuff as he could that he thought might be worth something, and then went looking for a buyer (presumably China or Russia, but he was probably entertaining all offers). His “whistleblowing”, then, was his advertisement to potential customers that he had information to sell.
I think that if/when Snowden does return to the US he’ll be charged as being a spy given the fact that he was almost certainly debriefed by Russian intelligence and has given them sensitive and classified information as a result.It would be difficult to see where a defense attorney could frame his actions in Russia as anything other willing cooperation as he voluntarily traveled to the country.
Do I think Snowden was always a spy?
No.
Unless the media has missed something. his background doesn’t seem to have lent itself to his either having been a long-term plant or a recruit by the Russia or China. If they did indeed have him inside, it would have been exceptionally foolish for them to have pulled him out as he seemingly was gathering a treasure trove of information.
As far as I know, he gave all his documents to journalists and had nothing to give either the Chinese or Russians. Russia granted him asylum because he was/is a thorn in the US’s side. Speaking of which, isn’t his one year almost up? What’s the status of his residence in Russia after that?
First of all, the NSA is in charge of signals and surveillance, not military intelligence, that would be the DOD.
Second of all, the primary value of espionage for a foreign power is that it remains undetected. Once your target knows that it’s been compromised, it can start taking counter-measures to mitigate the breach. The last thing you want is to tell the entire world that a cache of data has been stolen.
Third of all, there’s no reason for Snowden to publicly reveal his name if he were a foreign spy. The leaks were originally anonymous, with even the journalists in question not sure of who the source was. Snowden decided, in a Hong Kong hotel room, to publicly announce his identity, precisely to counter the claims that he could be a foreign agent. By making his identity public, he has significantly less freedom than before, if he remained anonymous, he could just abscond to Russia and live it up with all of his ill begotten gains, including the ability to travel freely. Now, his movements are highly circumscribed and he has to limit his appearances in public because he’s a known figure.
Fourth of all, we have an evidence chain dating back over a decade showing his interest in civil liberties and political activism, and no evidence whatsoever that he’s ever had an interesting in Russian or Chinese ideologies.
As typical of bad conspiracy theories, pulling this off would have required a vast network of shadowy under-figures to pull off extraordinary feats of deception while also simultaneously perfoming mind-bogglingly incompetent acts, all for a result that’s not that impressive.
Fifth of all, Russia wasn’t even Snowden’s final destination. Snowden was on his way to Cuba, with the hope to eventually get to Ecuador. It was only via the US’s maneuverings that forced Snowden to become stuck at a Russian airport, by bullying European countries to not allow overflight. If the US had even any inkling of evidence at all that Snowden had Russian ties, all they had to do was to let him continue to Ecuador, there would have been no justification for Russia to keep him there. In fact, The US caused a massive diplomatic incident over searching the Bolivian president’s plane on the suspicion that Snowden might be aboard, a move that makes no sense if anyone was operating under the “Snowden is a Russian spy” hypothesis.
How,exactly, (slightly going off-track) is China an “ally” of the US?
Perhaps I am slow as I see China as a rival and the next guest on the DoD’s War Invitational Tour.
You know he could have just visited a Chinese or Russian consulate and dropped off some choice documents to show credibility. He even could have used FedEx.
It makes no sense for a spy to go public like Snowden did.