I saw Snowden interviewed and he asked a simple question: If he (Snowden) was so dangerous regarding all of the secrets he had, why didn’t Obama simply drop charges in order to get him out of Russia and back to the US? After all, if you’re loaded with US top-secret information, the LAST PLACE any US leader would want to see you is spending years deep in the (perceived) enemy’s camp, meaning Russia, in this case.
Something doesn’t add up regarding our treatment of him.
He’s already told the most “dangerous” information: that US intelligence agencies sweep up and record every phone call and much of the Internet traffic in the US. So now they want to keep him out of the public eye so people don’t think about that or ask questions and to serve as a warning to any other whistle blowers.
If he (Snowden) was so dangerous regarding all of the secrets he had, why didn’t Obama simply drop charges in order to get him out of Russia and back to the US?
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No point in bringing him back, Bob. The SCI/SAP/Eyes Only data had already been disseminated to China, Russia, Iran and AQ.
All they could do, if they went to the expense & political capital to get him back, would be to sentence him to life with Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen.
All the cats were already out of the bag and the bag burned. All the named operatives in the above countries were already dead. It was a thorough and complete exsanguination of all of NSA’s deepest secrets.
Obviously, the Russians weren’t going to let him return to the US regardless of anything Obama did, and they weren’t going to allow him to return even if he wanted to.
They aren’t going to evict or render their spy.