Was Snowden’s action a foreign operation?
I’m not usually a conspiracist, but I vote “yes” on this one by Edward Jay Epstein:
Edward Snowden’s massive misappropriations of classified documents from the inner sanctum of U.S. intelligence is mainly presented by the media as a whistleblowing story. In this narrative””designed by Mr. Snowden himself””he is portrayed as a disgruntled contractor for the National Security Agency, acting alone, who heroically exposed the evils of government surveillance beginning in 2013.
The other way of looking at it””based on the number and nature of documents Mr. Snowden took, and the dates when they were taken””is that only a handful of the secrets had anything to do with domestic surveillance by the government and most were of primary value to an espionage operation…
Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified to the House Armed Services Committee on March 13, 2014, that “The vast majority of the documents that Snowden . . . exfiltrated from our highest levels of security had nothing to do with exposing government oversight of domestic activities.” Time magazine on April 3 quoted Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Mich.), the head of the House Intelligence Committee, as saying Mr. Snowden was “definitely under the influence of Russian officials.”
On June 10, 2013, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, described Mr. Snowden’s theft of documents as “an act of treason.” A former member of President Obama’s cabinet went even further, suggesting to me off the record in March this year that there are only three possible explanations for the Snowden heist: 1) It was a Russian espionage operation; 2) It was a Chinese espionage operation, or 3) It was a joint Sino-Russian operation.
Mr. Snowden’s critics regard the whistleblowing narrative as at best incomplete, at worst fodder for the naé¯ve. They do not believe that it explains the unprecedented size and complexity of the penetration of NSA files and records. For one thing, many of his critics have intelligence clearance. They have been privy to the results of an NSA investigation that established the chronology of the copying of 1.7 million documents that were stolen from the Signals Intelligence Center in Hawaii. The documents were taken from at least 24 supersecret compartments that stored them on computers, each of which required a password that a perpetrator had to steal or borrow, or forge an encryption key to bypass.
Once Mr. Snowden breached security at the Hawaii facility, in mid-April of 2013, he planted robotic programs called “spiders” to “scrape” specifically targeted documents. According to Gen. Dempsey, “The vast majority of those [stolen documents] were related to our military capabilities, operations, tactics, techniques and procedures.”
Please read the whole thing.
[Hat tip: Scott Johnson at Powerline.]
[NOTE: From the very beginning of the Snowden saga I’ve been highly suspicious of him, his motives, his version of the story, and the timeline (see this).]
The weird thing is that if Snowden was an alien asset — the LAST thing that Moscow or Beijing would want is to have him exposed.
His antics go entirely against all trade craft.
Just ask John le Carré.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
He may well prove out to be as naive as Henry L. Stimson, who as you’ll recall, shut down our penetration of British and Japanese signals because he wished to be high minded about foreign affairs. (when Secretary of State)
He only wised up when he was Secretary of War — a second time.
My razor tells me that Snowden has been giving us the straight spin.
The insiders just fell victim to the EXACT same hubris shown with Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen.
The entire store is and has been run by savant idiots.
Idiot savants have one or two astounding mental gifts — but are otherwise asocial.
Savant idiots have many astounding mental gifts — but are crippled by hubris and group think. They can NEVER wrap their minds around the idea that their fantastic powers will be unavailing; that their epic self conceits will do them in.
For such intellects the ego crafts alternate realities to hide a basic truth: They screwed up. They trusted Snowden.
I’m reminded of my old Rolling Hills High School (gym) classmates, Christopher Boyce and Daulton Lee. They were OBVIOUSLY antisocial and had daddy issues (Boyce) or drug issues. (Lee)
EVERYONE in the gym class knew that — and we were just sophomores in high school. (Spring 1968)
Boyce and Snowden were sitting on top of major nodes in the NSA network.
That’s all there is to the matter.
All though the NSA experts were paid to imagine and frustrate the worst damages that America could suffer in cyberspace — they actually enabled Snowden.
This, their failure, is something they can’t admit to themselves.
Consequently, we’re being bombarded with fancy scenarios.
May I remind you of what Bradley did?
BTW, Bradley is an exemplar for why no-one wants to permit homosexuals to work in the military secrets arena. Going back into the mists of time, gays have proven to be THE emotional weak link into every manner of state security.
(The Cambridge Ring, anyone?)
(The Dreyfus Affair, anyone? — The actual leakers/traitors were gay (gentile) lovers, money was not changing hands, it was true (gay) love.)
(Gay/ Lesbian honey pot stings are endlessly pursued by the spy masters. The top ten porn queens — all of them — are out of the closet lesbians. Consequently, spy masters want homosexuals as attack assets — and absolutely no homosexuals as conventional line officers.)
(Gays just can’t stop hopping from bed to bed. In very short order, the opposition has the officer compromised.)
Snowden’s heist has shown that our security operations are some of the least secure in the world. That he was able to become an employee of an NSA contractor is prima facie evidence of sloppy vetting and sloppy procedures.
His post theft activities most certainly point to influence by a foreign entity. He is the type of amoral IT employee who could be easily compromised by a slick agent from the FSS (KGB).
If we ever get our hands on him, he should be debriefed until he has come completely clean. (Waterboard? If necessary.) That should be followed by a long vacation in a Federal Prison.
I don’t like what the NSA is doing, but the corrective action was surely not providing Top Secret information to our competitors/adversaries/enemies.
Don’t overanlyze this, musing about fieldcraft and all. Putin is convinced he can run rings around us and there’s nothing we can or will do about it. And with us stupid enough to elect Obama to two terms despite the fact Obama is a failure, who’s to say he’s wrong. So Putin doesn’t care if he advertises in a round about but open way that Snowden has been working for him all along. What do you think that little choreographed stunt they pulled month was about?
Snowden called in to the “ask Putin” TV show, and doesn’t just ask a question. First he gives an anti-US, anti-NSA speech, then asks if Russia similarly violates their citizens privacy.
Putin’s answer was simultaneously ridiculous and revealing. He gave a speech about how Russian domestic surveillance was governed by law. Ludicrous because Russian law allows any and all surveillance of its citizens. The Russian government can’t violate their own laws because their own laws give the government free rein. Russians have no legally recognized right of privacy to be violated.
Revealing because Putin finally said that they don’t do it because they can’t afford the same capabilities as the US. It’s simply out of their reach.
Bingo! This was a Russian operation all along. This explains why the majority of the information Snowden stole has nothing to do with domestic US surveillance but it’s foreign surveillance. Specifically our cooperative agreements with foreign governments; look at how embarrassing the revelations have been for Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). Look at all the embarrassing information Snowden’s accomplices at The Guardian have printed about the NSA’s and GCHQ’s activities surrounding that London economic summit a few years back. They even printed a story about how the NSA had found a vulnerability in Russian leadership microwave comms!
(Guess who could really use that now, what with Russia having already taken the Crimea?)
None of that had anything to do with domestic surveillance. It had everything to do with making all our partners run for the long grass. Russian can’t afford the capability, and now we don’t have it either. Snowden compromised it, evening the playing field.
And in fine KGB tradition, Putin’s government has scripted a cover story for Snowden so that most of America is convinced the greatest traitor/spy in the history of Soviet/Russian espionage is an American hero.
Putin is gloating. He’s never punked an entire country before; why not in Obama administration parlance “spike the football?” He wants to rub our noses in it. Every question, every caller to that call-in show is screened. Snowden didn’t just call in. The fact that Snowden was a caller is a message in its own right. He was earning his keep. He’s been earning his pay from the start.
Go back and re-read that Putin op-ed piece. He has contempt for Obama, and by extension for this country. He wants us and the world to know it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html?hp&_r=1&
“…The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not. Under current international law, force is permitted only in self-defense or by the decision of the Security Council. Anything else is unacceptable under the United Nations Charter and would constitute an act of aggression.
…It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States.”
Remember, Putin is an old KGB agent. They were trained to know exactly what buttons to push to get naive western leftists (among others) to work for them. He’s speaking their language. Is there anything that he said in that op-ed that you can’t imagine Obama saying about America? Is he saying anything that Obama or someone else in the dorm at Columbia hasn’t said.
When you compare the language in the above passages, indeed the entire op-ed, to Putin’s actions in Ukraine and increasingly the Baltics the mockery is unmistakable.
+10 Blert, he knows whatfor he writes
I think Epstein’s case makes sense, especially when you think that he collected the foreign intelligence info in such great quanties and before he bothered with the NSA stuff. People like Snowden have a tremendous ego and the spies know how to feed it to get what they want.
It’s also interesting that his main defender in Germany is Hans-Christian Stré¶bele who was a legal defender of RAF (Red Army Fraction) terrorists. He smuggled info between members in jail and those outside. For this, his law license was suspended for a time. Since then he has been a Green activist/parliament member. He has appeared at every atomic energy protest and opposed every depot for atomic waste., which, of course, must make Gazprom happy.
Stré¶bele has been the main critic of NSA data collection and has certainly taken Germans to the nth level of hysteria on this. He visited and interviewed Snowden in Russia and is pushing for the government to let him come to Germany to testify about the NSA. Merkel and others are unwilling to do this. Between Stré¶bele and Gerhard Schré¶der, Putin has some real friends over here.
Obama’s shenanigans needed to be exposed. Snowden did this more effectively than anyone else. He probably also damaged U.S. intelligence to some extent.
I don’t trust the assessment of the damage to be left in the hands of the intelligence community, who obviously have a conflict of interest.
I only partially trust the courts, since the FISA courts have been shown to be a rubber stamp.
The only thing that seems certain is that Snowden’s actions were a trade-off. If he were in fact a foreign agent, I don’t see how that would change the calculus.
Doom, no offense, but that’s exactly what Putin is counting on. He can practically put up a neon sign that says “Look at what I pulled off” and we’re supposed to look at and say, “Naw, couldn’t be it.”
Let’s face it, we’re idiots. Nidal Hassan gave a powerpoint presentation that, if you’re the least bit aware of what the Koran and the ahadith has to say on the subject was a clear threat. Yet we ignored that.
We looked at that, too, and said “Naw, couldn’t be.” And later still refused to acknowledge, “Yeah, it was.” Instead the Army issued a report about work place violence because WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THAT COMING?
The Russians have been fighting Islamist insurgents for how long now? Do you think they haven’t noticed how in denial we are? Just how slick do you imagine they feel they need to be?
Bonus questions. Whenever Muslim apologists insist their’s is a religion of peace, they quote this or some variation from the Koran:
“Whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land – it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one – it is as if he had saved mankind entirely.”
Does anyone believe this? And if so, why?
Steve57:
Jews believe it.
That is from the Talmud, which predates Islam:
Snowden was questioning Putin as if Putin was Hussein O, concerning surveillance of the FSB on people.
Yes, I know. That was the commandment given to the Jews. But why do you think that means it’s something that’s valid for Muslims?
That’s the question. The Koran is discussing a law that was valid under a previous revelation that as far as Muslims are concerned is no longer binding.
Here’s what the Koran has to say on the subject.
Surat Al Ma’idah 5:32
“Because of that, We decreed upon the Children of Israel that whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land – it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one – it is as if he had saved mankind entirely. And our messengers had certainly come to them with clear proofs. Then indeed many of them, [even] after that, throughout the land, were transgressors.”
The next verse lays down the law for Muslims:
5:33 – 34
“Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land. That is for them a disgrace in this world; and for them in the Hereafter is a great punishment, Except for those who return [repenting] before you apprehend them. And know that Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.”
I was put in mind of this when the Imam recited part of 5:32 at the memorial for the victims of the Boston bombers. When in fact the Boston bombers were acting in accordance with the Koran and the ahadith. The Koran doesn’t draw a distinction between the actual soldiers who engage in combat against “Allah and the Prophet” and those who send them.
Hasan cited chapter and verse in his powerpoint. But when Michael Adebolajo gave his video recorded testimony with Drummer Rigby’s blood still on his hands it was the same exact justification as Hasan’s.
Ironic, isn’t it neo-neocon, that the most peaceful partial verse in the Koran isn’t directed at the Muslims but the Jews.
But they can use that to mislead us because we won’t even look to see what they’re referring to. So again how slick does Putin have to be to get away with something right under our noses?
If Moscow was running Snowden I can imagine absolutely no scenario wherein Snowden heads straight to Red China with all the trimmings.
I don’t buy it.
As Boyce demonstrated, as Walker demonstrated, as ….
These fiascos are NOT being crafted by Moscow.
Time and time again, the perps were the initiators. They had to go out of their way to establish contact with Moscow.
My razor says that these tales are ego defensive fantasies.
Snowden was a “True Believer” who fell out of the charm.
ALL of these players have major NPD issues.
Snowden is just NOT the kind of asset that Moscow can craft.
The word on the street is that he’s ultra-bright and idiosyncratic. He fits the psychological profile of a traitor/ defector to a TEE.
In which case, the NSA looks even worse than first glance.
BTW, it’s almost impossible to ‘develop’ a genius level intel asset.
They only occur by walking in the front door.
Similar assets have fallen into America’s lap during the Cold War.
We NEVER developed ANY of these critically important assets.
And, at such nodes, these players are IMPOSSIBLE to ‘run.’
Stalin and Coy were able to steal the atomic secrets — because the critical atomic scientists wanted to give them away. Post Cold War evidence clearly indicates that Oppenheimer was their top asset. His ENTIRE family were CPUSA members. He dutifully did not obtain his own card — per orders.
We also now know that Harry Hopkins was a Red. FDR gave him plenipotentiary power over Lend Lease transactions.
Post Cold War Internet uploads by Russian kids clearly show that HH had shipped over ALL of the critical materials required to build a Hanford, Washington, style converter reactor.
The atomic materials were highlighted at the very end of a vast list of American aid to Russia. Though listed as being atomic in nature, the kids didn’t even recognize the significance of the particular materials detailed in their database dump.
The ONLY way that this particular material could’ve been shipped is if the blue prints for the atomic pile went with them.
Just even having these items in this database is a ‘tell’ that it’s the real deal and that HH HAD to be signing off on the transfers. At the time, FDR was so ill he basically wasn’t doing ANYTHING. HH was, de facto, the sitting president.
In this he replicated the status of Hamilton and Mrs. Wilson.
De facto, both took over the day to day running of the nation, without the general public being the wiser.
HH’s role in running the White House in early 1945 is repressed history. Even Truman was being screened out. The nation was being run on automatic pilot.
THIS was the reason why Truman was staggered when he attained the presidency. Literally months of critical decisions had been ‘can-kicked’ down the road.
Harding faced the same toil when he took office. Mrs. Wilson shunned policy shifts/ decisions at every turn. This made her tenure in the oval office politically acceptable. So Harding had to start cutting the Federal budget with a fury. He cut taxation, too. This terminated the intense recession and kicked off the Roaring Twenties.
Steve57:
It’s not directed AT the Jews. It’s taken from the Jews.
“BTW, Bradley is an exemplar for why no-one wants to permit homosexuals to work in the military secrets arena. Going back into the mists of time, gays have proven to be THE emotional weak link into every manner of state security.
(The Cambridge Ring, anyone?)
(The Dreyfus Affair, anyone? – The actual leakers/traitors were gay (gentile) lovers, money was not changing hands, it was true (gay) love.)
(Gay/ Lesbian honey pot stings are endlessly pursued by the spy masters. The top ten porn queens – all of them – are out of the closet lesbians. Consequently, spy masters want homosexuals as attack assets – and absolutely no homosexuals as conventional line officers.)
(Gays just can’t stop hopping from bed to bed. In very short order, the opposition has the officer compromised.)”
wow, that’s quite a broad brush you have there blert.
Charles…
Please review the Fourth Protocol.
Compromising intelligence officials via sex is at the top of the stack.
‘Cause it keeps working.
The secrets of the V-2 were totally compromised by pillow talk.
As Klute could tell you, even kinky sex can be quite compromising.
Sex works even better than money issues. (Compulsive gamblers…)
Entire video histories have been dedicated to sex-war spies.
Apparently you’re understudied on the Cambridge Ring.
If Snowden were really a patriot, he would not have fled to Hong Kong and then tried to get asylum in China, and he would not have ultimately gone to Russia. Despite his denials, every source I am aware of on this side of the Pacific believes that all of the material he “borrowed” ended up in the hands of the Chinese government. And, if the Chinese government has the info, it is hard to believe that the Russians do not have it as well. The question then remains, is Snowden a traitor, or just a witless dupe? He seems to intelligent to be a dupe.
neo-neocon,
Most of what is in the Koran is taken from someone, somewhere. Sometimes incorrectly, so rather being credibly “divinely inspired” it’s possible to track down the exact origin of the fable.
For instance, in Genesis 15:7, God brought Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldeans. In Babylonian Ur just means city.
” He also said to him, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.””
It is my understanding that the Torah also teaches that Ur is a place; a city. Sometimes called Ur Kasdim.
In the 1st century Rabbi Yonatan ben Uzziel was translating Genesis 15 into Aramaic and he didn’t know what “Ur” meant. He confused it with the Hebrew word for fire. Muhammad records the mistranslation in Surah 21.
Surat Al-Anbya 21:68-70
“They said, ‘Burn him and support your gods – if you are to act.’ Allah said, ‘O fire, be coolness and safety upon Abraham.’ And they intended for him harm, but We made them the greatest losers.”
Please understand, though, to a devout Muslim there is nothing in the Koran that is “received” from the Jews. The Koran in its entirety is the received word of God. It has existed for all eternity and is recorded on a tablet in Heaven. It is an entirely separate and complete revelation. It takes nothing from any prior revelation. To say that anything is “received” from a previous revelation is in fact blasphemy.
From the perspective of the Koran the admonition that if anyone takes a single life it is as if they have killed all of humanity, but if they save a single life it is as if they saved all of humanity, was a commandment directed at the Jews. But according to the Koran there was a clear exception to that rule when killing was mandatory.
Clearly, Allah was disappointed with the Jews since they allowed too many “transgressors” to spread corruption in the land despite “messengers” providing them with “clear proofs.”
So the Allah directed a new and improved commandment at the Muslims.
The lofty words about the sanctity of a single life has nothing to do with Islam.
Well, it’s not true that admonition has “nothing” to do with Islam otherwise it wouldn’t be in the Koran. It is in there because Allah is teaching the Muslims about the errors of the Jews. It is not a law for Muslims, though.
blert, all I can say is that Russia and China have been increasing bilateral ties and engaging in confidence building measures in a host of areas, ranging from economic to strategic cooperation, specifically to counter US hegemony, since the mid 1990s. It began as an initiative the Chinese call the New Type of Great Power Relationship (NTGPR). That led to the Russians and the Chinese signing the Treaty for Good Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation in July 2001. This was the first such agreement between the two countries since Mao and Staling signed a treaty in 1950, four months before the Korean war kicked off.
They have certainly been cooperating on, and exchanging intelligence on, the problem of the rise of militant Islam in Central Asia.
I can see no problem at all with Russia and China cooperating on Snowden. In fact, I’d see such cooperation as practically essential.
The Chinese tend to target ethnic Chinese, either born in China or first generation, when they look to recruit foreign spies because they don’t trust outsiders. They simply don’t have the usual levers of control, i.e. subtle threats to remaining family members and appeals to Chinese nationalism, with non-Chinese.
Something like this is a classic Chinese espionage operation.
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jul/17/local/me-espionage-verdict17
They will on occasion turn to non-Chinese foreigners to gain access to information they can get no other way, and they will use sex to entrap them.
http://www.hawaiinewsnetwork.com/honeytrap-snares-defense-contractor-in-alleged-hawaii-china-espionage-case/
But these cases are much, much rarer. And the Chinese have to develop these sources themselves.
Without something like prior coordination with the Russians, had Snowden just waltzed into Hong Kong looking to sell US secrets, the Chinese would have been supremely suspicious. They would have immediately considered him the most obvious and clumsy of double agents.
But far be it for me to argue with your razor.
wow, that’s quite a broad brush you have there blert.
Says the person walking around with a billboard about abortion for everyone, payment by all.
The US government has no evidence about what Snowden gave anyone, because the US government doesn’t even know What Snowden has, only what the web bots copied.
They can only break this deadzone by interrogating that person in Britain. Which, human intel wise, they don’t want to do or can’t do.
So all these “sources” talking about as if they know, don’t know.
Blert: “Compromising intelligence officials via sex is at the top of the stack.”
Sure, but what does that have to do with gays?
Aren’t straights also targets of such blackmail?
Perhaps, we should ban straights as well. Hire only eunuchs.
Ymar; you’ve really have no clue as to what you’re saying about me. Not the first time you’ve put words in my mouth.
With regard to Snowden, I still can’t shake the feeling that he was somehow “allowed” to get loose with what he had.
I haven’t heard anything about heads rolling at the NSA or the contractors. I think that’s pretty telling.
Ymar; you’ve really have no clue as to what you’re saying about me. Not the first time you’ve put words in my mouth.
Sooner or later you’re going to explode on here with your talk about pro-life crowds. You know it, I know it.
On June 10, 2013, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, described Mr. Snowden’s theft of documents as “an act of treason.”
Anyone using Feinstein and her husband-nepotism of defense contracts as the authority on treason, is perhaps too weak to consider sound judge of anything.
If that is the source of their belief.. their belief is rather weak and unsound.
ricki said:
“With regard to Snowden, I still can’t shake the feeling that he was somehow “allowed” to get loose with what he had.”
Yes, it’s almost as if someone had more flexibility after he was reelected.
“A former member of President Obama’s cabinet went even further, suggesting to me off the record in March this year that there are only three possible explanations for the Snowden heist: 1) It was a Russian espionage operation; 2) It was a Chinese espionage operation, or 3) It was a joint Sino-Russian operation.”
Wait, Wait. I thought the Soviet’s were gone and Russia is no longer ideologically opposed to us but now merely another nation that puts their national interests first. Similarly, the Chinese are no longer motivated by ideology but by the almighty dollar, greedy capitalists all…
Rickl: “I haven’t heard anything about heads rolling at the NSA or the contractors. I think that’s pretty telling.”
Amen to that. Often what did NOT happen is the news; it just isn’t reported.
Charles…
I’ll slow it down for you, just you:
Homosexuals are staggeringly more promiscuous than heterosexuals. Even up to recent hours, most homosexuals disdain marriage and monogamy, and that’s putting it mildly.
A die hard monogamist is impossible to ‘turn’ via a sex trap. Duh!
Whereas a roaming bachelor/ homosexual is extremely prone to falling for some femme fatale. (Don’t worry, the spy master will have top notch sexual talent on tap.)
If homosexuality didn’t always carry with it raging promiscuity then intelligence services wouldn’t be so obsessed with its prospect.
Further, even in hyper-liberal societies, homosexuality is never universally accepted. This latest (GLTF) effort to normalize homosexual erotica is doomed, of course. One would have to operate a totalitarian state such as Sparta to attain normalization.
Because of homosexual ‘roaming’ for new partners — and in tightly knit sub-circles — any homosexual intelligence officer is extremely prone to rapid detection. The more conservative the society — the tighter these circles tend to be — and the more social leverage the attack agent would have on the target.
It’s not without significance that it is among the peerage that homosexual tolerance first arose. Being at the top of the social pecking order, peers were in a position to screw, and screw over, just about everybody.
The bizarre sexual ‘conquests’ of Caligula come immediately to mind. He was able to operate under a completely separate rules book.
This is in studied contrast to middle class America, still larded with Puritan social mores.
&&&
It’s hard to imagine any hetero male pulling a Bradley. He’s a poster boy for why homosexuals are shunned where (military, diplomatic) secrets are kept. Such a player is a self-launching leaker.
&&&
As for intelligence: the profile of a traitor is that of a bright soul that feels, in an NPD way, that they’re under-appreciated and under-promoted.
Ames, Hanssen, Bradley, Snowden, Walker, Arnold, … on down the line … ALL fit this profile.
EVERYONE of the above self-initiated their treason.
They were never developed as enemy assets.
If you sit down and take a drink, really reflect on the matter, such players are IMPOSSIBLE to develop.
NO-ONE sees them coming. Washington was staggered upon the tales of Arnold. It took hours and evidence for Washington to accept the truth: his buddy had gone over — with the explicit intent of delivering Washington, himself, to the British — along with West Point. The American Revolution would’ve collapsed. It was a very close run thing.
As for Snowden’s arrogance. It’s a pretty good bet that he thought that he could encrypt data on his hard drives and stash them away as insurance. You just know he did.
Yet he was dumb enough to think that Hong Kong had any separation from Beijing. Again: the Savant Idiot. That’s what you’re looking at. (Where ever he stashed his insurance — it promptly fell into Chinese hands. Duh!)
Then Beijing ejected their lotto asset off to the west. They HAD to be concerned that Britain still had GCHQ assets in Hong Kong that might grab him. Macau is just too close.
So, our boy magically disappears within Moscow’s international airport. (Everything about his hours there reeks.)
Getting sloppy seconds from Snowden’s hard drive was hard for Central to take. My guess is that Snowden had encrypted his drives well enough that Moscow had to get the keys from Beijing. (The keys were with the insurance. At no time did it make any sense for Beijing to inform Snowden that his insurance contract had been voided.)
The entire affair bonded Moscow to Beijing as never before. One HAS to assume that these two have decided that they HAVE to replicate Echelon.
(The NSA-GCHQ tag team that won WWII.)
{ To retread history:
Echelon was established between late 42 early 43 — with America as party #1 and Britain as party #2. Other, lesser ranked parties were pulled in: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Holland and China. (not the Reds)
1) This network was able to pull together all of the naval transmissions of the enemies. Due to technical reasons, each nation commonly only had a piece of said transmissions. Until the whole transmission was pulled together, the message was unrecoverable. (Remember that the enemy is using codes with in cyphers; in turn, compounded.)
2) Shortly after the system booted up, German U-boat loses exploded. These Allied victories were then, and NOW, put down to all of the wrong reasons/ devices: sonar, clean windows, better aircraft, new and more ships, etc. These tales are all false. The big swing was when Echelon was able to start reading a high fraction of German naval transmissions — even after Enigma was enhanced by an extra rotor and wheel.
3) None of these critical war events is yet admitted to in popular histories. Once the transmissions were re-assembled, it was possible to build a meta-picture of U-boat deployments. German operational rhythms could finally be spotted. The result was that the RAF could — and did — saturate the Bay of Biscay with patrol aircraft in synch with U-boat transits. It was THESE transits that constituted the leap in German loses.
4) Tales of counter U-boat successes near the convoys operated as misdirection. Though true enough, and notable, these tales buried the larger truth: Britain was able to operate in rhythm with the Kriegsmarine. Aircraft were no longer sent on wild goose chases. Though never mentioned in the histories, counter-U-boat flights started to be run as co-ordinated sweeps with up to twelve aircraft working a single sweep. In this way, they could sweep the ocean clean of any U-boat as they’d be sure to cross its path. No luck was needed. There was a time when Donitz was losing every U-boat he sent out. None reported being on station!
5) So Donitz shut down U-boat operations altogether. The Echelon gauntlet was too much.
Blert:
“Charles…
I’ll slow it down for you, just you:
Homosexuals are staggeringly more promiscuous than heterosexuals.”
Slow it down all you want Blert, you are still just repeating your ignorance.
I’ll repeat that for you. Ignorance, no matter how many words you type, is still ignorance.
Heh.
blert said:
“If homosexuality didn’t always carry with it raging promiscuity then intelligence services wouldn’t be so obsessed with its prospect.”
No, that’s not it. They weren’t targeting gays in order to blackmail them. They targeted gays in order to find willing spies they didn’t need to blackmail into working for them.
The Soviets and Eastern European spy services targeted homosexuals (along with other disaffected subcultures) because there was a higher likelihood of finding people who were hostile to their own societies.
Think Bradley/Chelsea Manning. Nobody had to blackmail him/her/it. Expropriating all those documents and sending them to Wikeleaks was Mannings way of “getting back” at the US and the Army for slights real and imagined.
The Soviets and their subject states’ spy agencies were always kind of amazed that so many homosexuals would willingly spy against their own country for a system of government that imprisoned gays, but then we see a similar dynamic at play today where people march in gay pride parades wearing keffiyahs in solidarity with the Palestinians. Meanwhile in Gaza, the authorities with the approval of the people execute gays by throwing them off the roofs of tall buildings.
This is something that the intel community has knew why communist bloc spy agencies targeted homosexuals for quite some time from a steady stream of defectors. The reasons were confirmed with even greater authority (if more was needed) after the Berlin wall fell, the Soviet empire dissolved, and we gained access to various formerly secret archives. As well as new first-hand sources who were suddenly out of a job and looking to make a buck to keep body and soul (formerly not permitted behind the Berlin wall) together in the post-communist era.
The promiscuity/blackmail notion is a red herring. It appealed to and was advanced by the gays-in-the-military advocates because then they could claim to have solved what never was the security issue by introducing a non-remedy; allowing gays to serve openly. This is the personnel security equivalent of looking for your keys out under a street lamp because the light is better as opposed to the dark alley where you know you dropped them.
I have no idea why anyone would even bring this up, but I though I’d inject some reality into the discussion so we can drop it. As for me this is about as far down this road I intend to travel.
“This is something that the intel community has knew why communist bloc spy agencies targeted homosexuals for quite some time from a steady stream of defectors.”
Illustrating the importance of previewing a comment after editing it.
The Communists put a bunch of homosexuals into priest training, which is why when certain people got to the highest level of power in the Catholic Church, various “stuff” started happening and it wasn’t corrected.
Excellent report on Snowden as well as your earlier reports.
Snowden is a tool for those who are the enemy of the U.S.
The Neo Marxists and Libertarians hold up Snowden as a hero.
Taking time to vet Snowden and his go to guy Greenwald who is active in Radical Left organizations, a 9/11 Truther, and believes America should be weaken among his many agenda views.
Appreciate you stand on the facts on Snowden and Greenwald