Silent movie made by WikiLeaks. There's the four from the "Treason Convention" from L to R in the foreground; on the opposite side is Snowden and Sarah Harrison to his right -- and then Kucherena and his interpreter to his right. So who is the woman next to Sarah with the black hair whose face is obscured? Poitras? Or? That American in Moscow helping? And who is the WikiLeaks cameraman? Dmitry Velikovsky?
This was just nauseating -- My Visit With Edward Snowden by Jessylyn Radeck in the Nation.
Radeck is one of the self-described "Treason Convention" -- the four former US officials from the FBI, CIA and NSA (!) who travelled to Moscow to take part in a very scripted and choreographed meeting with Edward Snowden, the fugitive hacker of the NSA.
You know, I am still trying to wrap my mind around these four people and their antics -- I hardly know what to think about our intelligence services that have such people in them -- except I have seen people like this occasionally in the State Department or US embassies abroad, and I know it's a "type" -- like the "adversarial journalists," as Greenwald now calls his anti-American clan, so there are "adversarial agents" who seem to acquire a chip on their shoulder or even to go to crazy town with the 911 truthers and such.
Fortunately, I can take the rest of the day off and I don't have to blog about this, because it's already been done 10 times better than I could do it at the blog The War Wroom by Tom Nichols, who is a professor at the US Naval War College.
I'm so glad there are others to do these public services!
Tom adds to my list of rebuttals for Snowden's "the US closed off all my exits so I just had to go to Russia" cover story, this:
So why didn’t he just get on the regular Aeroflot flight to Havana? No one can possibly think that the United States would have interfered, militarily or otherwise, with a Russian flag carrier, anywhere. The U.S. wants Snowden arrested, but Washington wasn’t going to start World War III over this guy. If Ed had wanted to go to Cuba, he could have gone to Cuba.
Remember how several journalists even though that? I think some of them even boarded the flight and went all the way to Havana, peering at everybody who might be in disguise? And Snowden wasn't on board.
I think Snowden indeed could have gone to Havana, and then switched to some other Latin American destination from there -- and there's again, the question of why this didn't happen during the three weeks in May before he left for Hong Kong and blew his own cover.
My only disagreement with Tom's otherwise perfect piece -- which shreds each line of Jessylyn's air-headed apologia for Snowy is related to this:
The more likely reality is that Snowden was told by his Russian handlers — professionals who are a lot better at this than a dysfunctional high-school dropout — that there was no way to guarantee his safety or freedom outside of Russia.
And they’re right: I doubt Snowden would have lasted long on the streets of Caracas or Havana. Either he’d have ended up in American custody, or he’d have been at the mercy of any number of people from any number of countries or organizations who would likely be glad to test Snowden’s own theory that his secrets can’t be tortured out of him.
The handlers in the Russian Embassy in Hong Kong -- and there may have been Russian handlers long before all that, starting in 2009 in Geneva, for example -- may indeed have said something like that so they could get Snowden to come to Russia. Far from seeing him as a liability, surely they saw him as an assest to play in their endless game of payback time for Magnitsky and everything else they hate that America has done.
But it's funny for Tom to have bolstered the Russians' own case for them by claiming that Russia is the only place where you can be safe from American kidnapping. Really?
As for the next paragraph, about how Snowden wouldn't have been safe in Havana or Caracas, I'm afraid that helps not only Snowden but the Russians make their case for "Moscow the Impenetrable" as well.
I don't think it's the case, in fact.
The US intelligence agencies, having been embarrassed terribly by the Snowden affair -- following WikiLeaks and Manning -- would hardly want to add insult to injury and be seen grabbing Snowden and forcing him back on a plane to the US into certain jail -- that would cause an uproar. Can you IMAGINE the uproar? Surely Tom can imagine the uproar!
Jacob Appelbaum gets questioned and gets his cell phone fluttered at the border and he makes it seems as if he has been the worst victim of torture and has to remain in exile in Germany, because he can't go back to the States for "fear of reprisals". This plays into that whole paranoid meme of theirs.
I don't think the US would in fact grab him although they might try to talk to him and make a deal.
As for the theory that there might be other opportunistic bounty hunters who would grab him to then sell him back to the US or the highest bidder, well, I suppose that's always possible, but say, could you name even one example of that for me? I just don't recall any other case like that. Let's be realistic.
I think Snowden went to Russia not merely because it was "safe" from American grabbing, but because Julian Assange and Sarah Harrison -- with whom he hooked up logistically and morally -- had long-time ties and a logistical base there with real support from persons who appear to be close to Russian intelligence.
You don't stage a movie like Mediastan without such ties as I've explained in critiquing the movie and explaining the Russian journalists involved in it (for extra bonus, read the comments and see none other than Wahlstrom himself show up to complain about a mistake I made in the blog, but also to disclaim his involvement in a series of antisemitic articles, which of course is lame as it they were amply on the record and widely reported at the time and since.)
Snowden is in Russia because he made the decision -- after the Russians helped him to think about it more starkly in the consulate in Hong Kong -- that the Chinese would likely send him back or that Hong Kong was open enough, that the CIA could get to him more easily. He needed a place with friends -- and may have become emotionally tied to Harrison with the gosling complex that any defector can develop to whatever Mother Goose takes care of him.
So he went to Russia perhaps misled by the Russians or Harrison that they'd help him get to Latin America incognito -- but then maybe they betrayed him. Or maybe it got messed up somehow. Or maybe they were told to "wait."
We may never know.
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