I wonder…
…about this:
[Glenn Greenwald] also wrote he had been “working with” Snowden since February…
That’s part of a lengthy article about a feud between Greenwald and WaPo writer Barton Gellman about who spoke to Snowden when and about what. I’m not quoting it to delve into that brouhaha; I’m quoting it because it has also been reported that Snowden left his employment at Booz Allen Hamilton in late May (the 20th) after working for them for less than three months.
That means that if you count backwards, he had to have started work for Booz no earlier than February 20 and probably significantly later. So, if he was already speaking to Greenwald in February, does this mean he took the Booz job with the purpose of gaining access to the documents and leaking them?
If that’s true, does that change anything in the equation?
[ADDENDUM: Documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, who was also involved in helping publicize the Snowden leak, says that Snowden contacted her (anonymously) back in January. Again, that would have been before he started working for Booz. Interesting.]
Those journalists. Wouldn’t trust them farther than I could throw them.
Although that might be farther than I could jump actually.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning#Deployment_to_Iraq.2C_discussion_with_counselor
Reading manning’s biopic is… interesting. This is a very broken person. And like Hasan, the Army didn’t do a damn thing about em.
Yeah, that old “diversity” thing again.
Snowden seems like a much smoother operator, in more ways than one. Smooth as in “sane”, at least. Certainly “competent” is another way of looking at it.
Perhaps Snowden being ejected out of Army life actually improved his maturation process. He might never have decided to do what he did, if he was beholden to Army unit discipline, even SF unit discipline. He certainly wouldn’t have been given the freedom to analyze stuff that was “non-military” in nature.
It does suggest that Snowden’s articulateness may be words put in his mouth. It also suggests he (they) had plenty of time to prepare for when to release the information for maximum political effect. Finally the decision to reveal his identity was likely calculated too. He had plenty of time to think about where to be, etc. It all sounds like the kind of hit job the left would pull, doesn’t it?
The thought has occurred to me that revealing the IRS and NSA information was done deliberately, in order to demoralize and paralyze the right. It seems to have had that effect.
Snowden’s motivations are entirely irrelevant. What is relevant is that the government has put together an entirely totalitarian system of spying, no different then what existed in the Soviet Union, East Germany etc. Minders, watchers, listeners everywhere, always listening always watching.
Snowden is a sideshow; the programs are the issue. Everyone’s freedom is at stake here.
So now it looks like Snowden may have taken the Booz Allen job specifically to steal intel. I honestly don’t know what to make of him, but at this point his motivations are secondary.
Especially in light of the latest revelation from the Guardian: slides shows NSA has direct access to servers of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple and others.
http://tinyurl.com/luoj3al
I think Snowden is the mother of all distractions. Conservatives are being beaten into non-existence and we imagine these scandals will save us. Focus on policy, issues: the debt clock still ticking away, the 30 million new dependent voters the gang of 8 want to create. Do we even have a budget yet?!?
Harold: “Snowden’s motivations are entirely irrelevant.”
I disagree. His motivations are relevant because the other competing interests are still relevant.
Snowden might have been working for a different DoD contractor, doing much the same work, before starting work for Booz Allen Hamilton. It’s not clear from the reports.
Henry Bowman:
Very very little is clear from the reports.
He may have been doing similar work earlier, but when and what is a mystery, as well as his level of responsibility both earlier and recently. Was his Booz job at a higher level, and did he accept it knowing he would have access to more information that he would then leak? It’s impossible to know, but the timeline indicates it’s very likely that he got the Booz job with the idea of leaking the information already pretty well formed, and he had already started to make arrangements with those who would help him publicize the leaks before he got the job.
Or did he take the Booz Allen job with the purpose of providing a useful cover story legitimizing the release of documents obtained by other parties by other means?
Perhaps someone already in possession of some or all the secret documents persuaded Snowden to take the Boss Allen job.
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You are assuming he started working with the NSA at Booz which is not true. Before that he was working at Dell also as an NSA contractor with top secret clearance.
Alex:
First of all, where he worked before Booz has not been documented. You are going on Snowden’s own report of when and where he worked before Booz. We also don’t know what he did wherever it was, or what information he had access to there.
Actually, we don’t even know what he actually had access to at Booz—again, except by his own words and the four documents that have been released by the paper. And he appears to have lied about various things already about his job there (his salary there, for example). We don’t know if these are documents he officially had access to there, if he hacked them, or if he got them through other means.
But my point was not that he did not have access to NSA material before Booz, although it remains to be seen whether he did, and if so to what material. My point is that he took the job at Booz knowing he would (or at the very least planning to) leak whatever he could from there.
I see the “definition” of lie has been remodified to mean what they said about Bush. That any mistake or difference of opinion that can’t be explained to fit a narrative is a “lie”. Whatever that means.
So Obama and Snowden lies, Petraeus and Congress tells the truth, and so does Greenwald and Booz, Pentagon and NSA.
Just flip the options and it all produces the right results. Or maybe not.
When the NSA and Booz tells me the sky is blue, I’m not making any decisions with that information until I get 3 independent confirmations that are actually… independent.
So no, Booz’s confirmation of Booz or whatever, isn’t even a single confirm. Of anything. In point of fact, They’re all connected still.
I do not trust Obama…but I don’t trust Snowden either. There is something off about this guy.