Well, if Oliver Stone portrays it that way, it must be accurate. I mean he’s practically a documentary filmmaker!
Oliver Stone is good at directing “Parallax View” style paranoid thrillers. Unfortunately, life in the US has actually become a dystopic paranoid thriller...
Snowden, traitor or patriot?
Compared to Hitlery’s email mess, he’s more patriot than traitor.
Why is someone on FR pimping Hollywood leftists. I’ve pretty much given up on Hollywood movies.
Oh Hollywood is noted for its truth telling ways. Recently I watched a clip that stated that “Navy Seals are recruited from socipaths in prison for murder serving life sentences”
F#/^ Hollywood.
I see both sides of the Snowden debate. I see how he can be called a traitor, but he is also revealing some frightening things about the power of the massive, progressive-left government and the crony, corrupt, insiders who run it.
As for Oliver Stone, his movies are pure propaganda, and his characters ridiculous caricatures. I wouldn’t count on him portraying things accurately.
I scored 155 on my GT for the USA in '69.
They didn't make a movie about it!
They did chase me around for several weeks, and occasionally thereafter, trying to get me to sign up for OCS.
I'm glad I resisted that crap!
I would've went straight to VN as a shave-tailed 2nd Looie and been dead within a month.
As it was, I went as a shaved-head PVT and only got shot three times and blown up once.
It pays to ignore your intelligence, sometimes!
And Snowden may be intelligent, but he is still stoopid.
Oh, oh. I wish someone had done this besides Rodger Stone. His command of the facts is tentative at best. This shows he is taking the Marvel Comics superhero approach rather than sticking to the facts....
What Stone it attempting to do is soften Snowden’s image so that there might be an upswelling of public sympathy, possibly leading to his return to the US without a stop-over at Gitmo. There has never been any question about his intelligence, the issue always has been whether the information he released compromised ongoing intelligence operations, exposed US field operatives and put lives of American citizens and allies at risk. That he violated the terms of his security agreement, which he swore an oath to uphold, is a given.
Snowden himself has been conducting his own image-softening campaign since he landed in the USSR ...I mean Russia. He claims he was motivated by patriotism and denies his leaks caused any significant damage because he personally filtered them before release. But he could not have accurately made that assessment unless he was intelligence-trained. As part of his propaganda, he consistently has exaggerated his own qualifications by making vague claims to having had such training, always avoiding concrete terms or otherwise offering details that would be either confirmable or refutable by the average citizen. Because if he lacked this training and experience, then the entire basis for his analytical claims (and altruistic motives) falls to pieces and he becomes just another disgruntled worker lashing out at his employer.
Snowden had no such training. Sure, he picked up a lot of Intel lingo and spook-speak, but that’s only natural, considering his work environment. People who work in clerical jobs in hospitals also tend to pick up a lot of medical jargon, but that’s hardly a fit substitute for a medical degree. He was an IT geek, nothing more. CIA/NSA also employs janitors and cafeteria workers, but the mere fact that they work within the intel community does not equip them to make decisions affecting national security.
And the only proof Snowden offers of his claims that he’s done no harm is that no intelligence officials have come forward to refute them. But he knew full well before he said it that that was never going to happen — under any circumstance — because as a matter of policy, the Intel community never publicly discusses operations, much less defends itself. Because whenever it is exposed, their first priority always Always ALWAYS is damage control. The simple fact of addressing Snowden’s claims could only worsen their exposure. And to refute his claims by offering concrete details as to what damage those leaks might have caused would only compromise operations even more. So despite Snowden’s claims to the contrary, their silence means exactly nothing.
But one unfortunate outcome of Snowden’s leaks we DO know about is that he gave ISIS a blueprint for tightening their online security. One of the documents he released addressed the specifics of their slapdash online security in great detail. As a consequence, ISIS revamped their entire communications network, going so far as set up a (traditional, tiered) 24/7 help line to aid their Jihadi brethren in making their online communiques more secure. After which, ISIS “went dark.” Where they used to nonchalantly post information in open-source social media, after, their operations essentially vanished from the ‘web. Thanks to Snowden. Which law enforcement officials count as a key reason the November, 2015 Paris night club attacks were so effective. Before, at the very least, there would have been an increase in nonspecific “chatter.” Which could have been enough to signal the French to increase their alert level. After, there was nothing. Not hint of a warning. Because of Snowden.
So if ISIS eventually manages to pull off a large-scale terror attack on US soil, you can list Edward Snowden as one of the indispensable assets contributing to their success.