Posted on 07/03/2013 2:25:52 PM PDT by Kaslin
Fugitive Edward Snowden, wanted on charges of espionage against his own country, is caught in a trap of his own making.
He finds himself stranded at an airport in Moscow where he's been promised political asylum by Russian President Vladimir Putin who says he will never turn Snowden over to the United States to stand trial on criminal charges of exposing national security secrets to our enemies.
"Russia has never given up anyone to anybody and does not plan to," Putin said this week.
But the former Soviet KGB agent's offer of a safe haven comes with one condition. "If he wants to stay here... he must stop his work aimed at harming our American partners, as strange as that sounds coming from my lips," he told reporters at a gas exporters' conference in Moscow on Monday.
It sounds more than strange from the lips of a man who ruthlessly rules Russia with an iron hand, crushing his political opponents, jailing people who dare to criticize his autocratic government that has led his country back into a dark era of political corruption, skullduggery and fear.
It is more than likely that the Russians have debriefed and interrogated Snowden by now, and no doubt made him enticing offers of asylum that they hoped he could not refuse. Many secrets are still hidden in his laptop, but can anyone really believe Putin's intelligence apparatchiks have not seen them?
There are those who suspect that Snowden is or was a Russian agent who sought jobs in the CIA and the secret National Security Agency that ran PRISM, the telecom surveillance program he exposed to the world.
Putin flatly denied that again Monday. "As for Mr. Snowden, he is not our agent and he is not working with us," he insisted. Sure.
Snowden has been in Moscow for nine days in a transit area of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, plotting his next move, even as he declares that he would not accept any demand by Putin or anyone else that he stop revealing more secrets about U.S. intelligence activities.
U.S. intelligence officials here believe that Snowden has a large cache of information about American surveillance programs that he intends to reveal over the coming weeks and months in an effort to further damage U.S. security on the international stage.
In a letter to Ecuador's President Rafael Correa seen by the Reuters news agency Monday, Snowden complains he is being wrongly persecuted by the U.S. for revealing its surveillance methods, but says he will not be silenced.
"I remain free and able to publish information that serves the public interest," he wrote in a bizarre, delusional, far left manifesto of his larger, longterm goals.
"No matter how many more days my life contains, I remain dedicated to the fight for justice in this unequal world," he wrote in an appeal to Correa, the leftist leader who has launched his own campaign against the right of a free press to criticize his administration.
At times, Snowden's self-serving writings veer off into the psychotic, accusing the U.S. of unfairly conducting "an extrajudicial man-hunt costing me, my family, my freedom to travel, and my right to live peacefully without fear of illegal aggression."
In a statement released by the anti-secrecy web site WikiLeaks, Snowden said the Obama administration had used tactics that had turned him into "a stateless person."
Indeed, he seemed naively and peculiarly surprised that the U.S. revoked his passport in its efforts to bring him to justice. Why on earth does he think WikiLeak founder Julian Assange, his hero and role model, who published reams of classified U.S. documents, is holed up in the Ecuador embassy in London?
President Obama, while traveling in Tanzania, said the U.S. has been working through law enforcement channels and at other high diplomatic levels with the Russians "to find a solution to the problem."
But Putin, enjoying any opportunity to stick it to the U.S., was not budging from his conditional offer of a safe harbor, even as he acknowledged that Snowden isn't going to buy it because "he feels himself to be a human rights activist." If Snowden will not agree to his conditions, Putin said, well then "he must choose a country of destination and go there."
Snowden wants to do just that. The Los Angeles Times reported Monday that he's given Russian officials a list of 15 countries to whom he plans to apply for asylum.
Snowden is a young, naive, undereducated computer hacker and political zealot who is under the simple-minded delusion that America's government shouldn't have any secrets; that it should conduct no surveillance programs to protect Americans from deadly terrorist attacks; and that a free society means that law enforcers should not conduct precautionary inquiries into people here and abroad who are, with just cause, suspected of plotting to kill as many of us as they can.
This week, evidence was presented in the court-martial trial of Bradley Manning who leaked classified U.S. documents to WikiLeaks that showed al-Qaeda leaders reveling in the secret information that they said will help them to attack our country.
"By the grace of God the enemy's interests are today spread all over the place," said Adam Gadahn, a member of the terrorist group, in a 2011 al-Qaeda-produced video. The video urged its terrorist members to study the material revealed by WikiLeaks, whose release was applauded by Snowden.
The prosecution at Manning's trial offered excerpts from the winter 2010 issue of al-Qaeda's online magazine "Inspire," which said, "Anything useful from WikiLeaks is useful for archiving."
The government also submitted evidence that al-Quaeda leader Osama bin Laden obtained Afghanistan battlefield documents published by WikiLeaks that were discovered during the May 2011 raid in his Pakistan compound where he was killed.
This is what's at stake in Snowden's unconscionable theft and disclosure of vital national security information that has terrorist leaders cheering his evil acts. He is not a hero. He's a criminal who is helping terrorists wage war on Americans and our homeland.
How is bugging bureaucrats’ offices in the Hague protecting us from terrorists?
Not nearly as good a friend as Obama who among other crimes allowed them to take the consulate in Benghazi, when the Navy SEALs took Osama, President Obama leaked details of how the US
discovered Osama’s hiding place and even warned al Qaeda leaders to change their phone numbers because the US had the old ones.
” President Obama, while traveling in Tanzania, said the U.S. has been working through law enforcement channels and at other high diplomatic levels with the Russians “to find a solution to the problem.” “
Simple....RESIGN.
This article is crap.
What a LOAD —Pooty Pute might be honest when compared to MorrcoBomber, sure, but let’s not be foolish:
Putin the ex-KGB understand leverage, and he wants Snowden’s trove for Russia ONLY —he has no interest at all in educating the American public about how they’ve been hoodwinked for decades by flag-waving charlatans with a predilection for the finest in spy tech.
The fact that Snowden consented to being turned away attests to his own honorable motives, namely putting on the brakes as the American Express clackety-clacks it’s ambivalent way down the tracks and into the Grand Canyon of dictatorship.
STUPID REPORT, a bootlicker’s delight.
BUMP
But....But.....But.....the terrorists will win. LOL
Wonder what this Lampkin guy got or got promised to run the administration’s and John McCain’s talking points.
Not sure of dollar amount : )
Snowden could have made it ballerinas and borscht forever by pandering to KGB whims and keeping mum to America’s Joe Six-Packs *BUT HE DIDN’T*.
He could have given Putin The Full Monica and been safe there.
But no, he is taking the high, hard road.
Establishment-praising dreck like this is nothing unusual at something like WaCompost, but I expected more from TownHall, where they usually have good writing.
I guess they “want to go legit” by sucking some beltway d*cks, as we see here.
“Snowden is a young, naive, undereducated computer hacker and political zealot who is under the simple-minded delusion that America’s government shouldn’t have any secrets; that it should conduct no surveillance programs to protect Americans from deadly terrorist attacks; and that a free society means that law enforcers should not conduct precautionary inquiries into people here and abroad who are, with just cause, suspected of plotting to kill as many of us as they can. “
I think this is hyperbole.
Surveillance based on probable cause is one thing. Surveillance of 300 million people without probably cause is the largest violation of our Constitutional rights in history. It violates the freedoms they claim they are protecting.
Many secrets are still hidden in his laptop, but can anyone really believe Putin’s intelligence apparatchiks have not seen them?
++++++++++++++++
No doubt that the Russians have copied Snowden’s files. That doesn’t mean they can read them. While it is clear that Snowden hasn’t thought things through all that well it would surprise me greatly to find that he failed to encrypt his documents and leave the keys with Wikileaks.
With his NSA and CIA background he would know what level of encryption would be required to make the decryption process impractical in the near term. If indeed it is Wikileaks holding the keys then there is little that the Russians are going to get out of Snowden or his documents.
I agree. I’ve yet to see anything revealed that even remotely affects terrorists. Everything revealed to date has been domestic and political spying on non-terrorists.
“U.S. intelligence officials here believe that Snowden has a large cache of information about American surveillance programs that he intends to reveal...”
I’ve been assured by our President that this can’t happen without the approval of all three branches of govt.
Article has the same ‘I wish I could just smother you’ tone a lot of freepers have for us when bootlicking.
It sure would solve a lot of problems
“Snowden is a young, naive, undereducated computer hacker and political zealot . . . “
I think that Snowden just lacks sufficient political ‘nuance’ for some people.
They'd probably hate this idea then: link.
We can’t reason with people who believe the 4th Amendment is a “simple-minded delusion”.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.