It's far more likely that it was Obama who wanted to protect Snowden. Consider the following:
- Snowden leaves HK and takes a flight to Latin America. He has a layover in Moscow.
- At exactly that moment his passport gets cancelled by Obama. Why would Obama do that? It was in NSA's interest to let Snowden continue to Venezuela, or anywhere else except Russia. It would be imperative to remove him from Russian territory. Snowden would have been accessible anywhere else; even in China, if it had to come to that. But TLAs do not operate freely in Russia; Snowden is safe there. If only he made it to Caracas, he could have been just shot dead in the street, or abducted.
- Further, Obama makes several very specific moves designed to support Snowden's asylum request. Per UN rules, an applicant has to prove that his government is after him for political activity. Obama promptly gave a speech, and then they diverted an airplane of a foreign diplomat. Asylum case open and shut.
This leads us to an obvious conclusion: Obama cancelled Snowden's passport at a carefully calculated moment, to make sure he remains in Russia, away from reach of the USA. As an alternative, we can think that Obama is just so incompetent that even his mistakes are lining up in such way as to cause the most damage.
“It’s far more likely that it was Obama who wanted to protect Snowden. Consider the following:”
Incredibly unlikely, considering how much damage it has done to his credibility. Though, there are those who say that Obama has always been a stooge of the Russkies.