“Whether He Knows It Or Not”: Edward Snowden Is A Political Prisoner In Russia And Putin Won’t Let Him Go
Just in case you’re curious, or for that matter to confirm your worst suspicions, there was no way that the Russians (and former KGB agent Vladimir Putin) were about to allow perhaps their greatest intelligence windfall in history – that being NSA leaker Edward Snowden – to slip through their fingers.
So they didn’t allow it, and they won’t.
Instead, Putin gave Snowden “temporary asylum” in Russia or some other such nonsense status – and a “job,” to keep him there. Will they exploit him? Sure, and my guess is that he won’t be able to leave until they get all he knows, one way or another.
In other words, the “cover story” they put out for Snowden will change, if necessary, to be whatever it has to be until they get everything he has – or knows – about U.S. intelligence operations. In short, he’s – in a very practical sense – a political prisoner, whether he has figured it out yet or not. This is because the Russians, just like the Soviets were, are obsessed with what we know about them and how we know it, and more than anything else they seek to prevent anyone from finding out what they are doing.
In fact, it’s far more than an obsession with them – it is probably the most important thing driving Russian political and international behavior since the Czars, through the revolution, Lenin, Stalin, the Cold War and through the end of the Soviet Union itself.
But it didn’t end there, because to many, and especially the KGB, it was Gorbachev’s “Glasnost,” or “openness” that brought the old Soviet Union down in the first place, and Putin certainly has that view of what he needs to do to stay in power. He intends to keep his corrupt regime around for a long time, and has no intention of allowing any kind of Western government “transparency” to bring him down.
So, the allegedly naïve Edward Snowden is just the latest window that the Russians have into what we know about them and how we know it – the others being convicted spies Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, and to a lessor extent, Pfc. Bradley Manning. Sure, Ames and Hanssen were motivated by money, and Manning and Snowden by “principal,” they allege, but it’s all the same to the Russians.
And they’ll laugh all the way to the next summit.
By: Daniel J. Gallington, U. S. News and World Report, August 9, 2013
“A Useful Idiot In Dorky Park”: What’s Does NSA Geek Edward Snowden Do With A Year In Russia?
For centuries, foreigners have had a habit of staying in Russia longer than they intended. The European architects engaged by Catherine the Great, the tutors who came to school the 19th-century aristocracy’s children, and the businessmen who swarmed into Moscow after the fall of communism — all arrived in Russia planning on a short stay and ended up staying for months, years, or the rest of their lives, wooed by love, money, or the sheer gruesome fantastic-ness of the place.
Your case is pretty special, Edward. You only came to Moscow for a flight connection, but now find yourself granted asylum for a minimum of a year. You left Sheremetyevo Airport with a grin yesterday, with a stealth wholly in line with the opaque mystery of your five-week stay inside the transit zone. The big question now becomes: What on Earth are you going to do in Russia?
As a long-standing resident of Moscow myself, allow me to give you a few tips.
Get used to grumpiness. It’s a decent bet that a smiling Potemkin border guard reserved especially for arriving U.S. dissidents was detailed to stamp you into Russia for the first time, but for the rest of us, friendly officials are like unicorns. They don’t exist. Border guards here almost never say a word, even if you greet them with the chirpiest “zdravstvuite” (“hello”). Forget about that verging-on-annoying friendliness one gets from waiters, shop assistants, or random people in elevators in America. From here on in it will be angry glances and accusatory stares, suspicious neighbors and glum shop workers. The U.S. Justice Department might like to have a few words with you, but there’ll be punishment enough in Moscow. Show up at the grocery store without exact change to pay for your “doctor’s sausage” (don’t ask, Edward, just don’t ask) and you’ll get an earful of barking abuse.
The exception to this will be if you end up living in a building with a “concierge,” which in the Moscow incarnation is not a smartly dressed polite man in a suit and hat, but an inquisitive, squinting babushka who will use a combination of your comings and goings, the identity of any visitors you might have, and ceaseless interrogation to put together a complex psychological portrait of you and the other inhabitants of the building. Think of it as an offline, Soviet version of the PRISM program.
Moscow, of course, has spent the past two decades going through wave after wave of change, and if the angry stares get you down, you can always hire a bike and ride with the hipsters at Gorky Park, or party with the nouveau riche at Gypsy, where your newly acquired fame is sure to get you past the strict face control. Indeed, your lawyer Anatoly Kucherena has said that numerous young Russian damsels have already expressed an interest in providing you with shelter, and perhaps much, much more.
Anna Chapman, expelled from the United States as part of a Russian spy ring in 2010, has already proposed to you via Twitter. With the kind of glamorous life she leads now, though, you will need to have deep pockets to keep her happy. Even a coffee can cost upwards of $10 in Moscow, and at the kind of restaurant that someone like Chapman would enjoy, dinner for two is at least $250. (Assuming, of course, that she shows up to the right location for your date.) For now, you say you miss your girlfriend, the acrobatic pole-dancer Lindsay Mills. Perhaps Mills will travel to Moscow to resurrect your relationship, or perhaps you will join the long list of expats in Russia whose relationships are wrecked on the rocks of Slavic temptation.
Aside from what you get up to on a Friday night, there is also the political issue — and the rather obvious and glaring point that you have received political asylum in a country that does not treat its own whistleblowers in the nicest fashion. The most poignant comparisons have been made with Alexey Navalny, the opposition leader and blogger who leaked information about corruption in the Russian elite and was recently handed a five-year jail sentence (for corruption, ironically), which is currently suspended but will kick in if his appeal is unsuccessful. Human rights isn’t a big thing here either: your exit from the airport came on the same day that Russia’s sports minister confirmed that gay athletes at next year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi would be arrested if they flaunt their homosexuality.
Glenn Greenwald, the reporter with whom you worked, referred to those who pointed out Russia’s own treatment of whistleblowers or its new anti-gay laws as “drooling jingoists.” I understand, of course, that you were hardly laden down with options of where to go, and a case can certainly be made that staying in a country with a dubious record of its own is preferable to returning to the United States to face charges you believe are unfair.
But what Greenwald seems to miss, or ignore, is that there is a big difference between grudgingly accepting Russia as the best of a set of bad options, and actively trumpeting the beacon of democracy and human rights that is Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin. You have previously said that Russia and other countries that offered you asylum were “refusing to compromise their principles in the face of intimidation, they have earned the respect of the world.” Your father went even further, thanking President Vladimir Putin for his “courage” in offering asylum to his son.
Whatever drove Putin to offer you asylum, Edward, it is fairly clear that the former KGB man was not motivated by a principled stance of support for whistleblowers. Trust me on that one. The question now is whether you make a few sheepish statements of thanks to the Kremlin and that’s it, or whether you become one of the legion of infatuated useful idiots, the most notable being the French actor Gérard Depardieu, who has taken Russian citizenship and struck up a bromance with both Putin and Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed leader of Chechnya accused of all manner of human rights abuses.
Entering into the protection, financial or otherwise, of the Kremlin appears to induce crippling cases of myopia in many people, whether they be Gallic buffoons enjoying their alcohol-soaked twilight or Western presenters working for the Kremlin-funded television station Russia Today. You come across as a much sharper individual, Edward. I am sure you have noticed that when it comes to clandestine surveillance, Russia is not exactly a paragon of democratic transparency. But perhaps you feel that Russia’s woes are none of your business, and that your fight is with the U.S. authorities only. If so, then the perfect place for you is indeed Russia Today. The Kremlin-funded channel would almost certainly be delighted to have you. When it comes to America-bashing, nothing is too far out for this channel, which recently confidently asserted that all recent terrorist attacks on U.S. soil have been CIA “false-flag” operations, and once ran an op-ed entitled “911 reasons why 9/11 was (probably) an inside job.” The channel airs interview shows fronted by your buddy Julian Assange, and somewhat more unexpectedly, Larry King. The appearance of The Whistleblower, a weekly show fronted by your good self, is more than just an outside possibility.
But the Russian authorities may prefer to keep you quiet. George Blake, the British spy and Soviet agent who fled to Moscow in 1966, is still only allowed to give interviews when he has permission from Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, even though he is now 90 years old.
Your lawyer Kucherena claimed that you hopped into a normal taxi before heading off to an undisclosed location to meet American “friends.” Who these friends are, and how you made them, I have no idea, Edward. But there’s a fairly good chance that the Russian security services are keeping several dozen pairs of beady eyes on you.
If you feel comfortable enough to walk the streets, and are allowed to, there is much for you to see and do. There is Red Square and the Kremlin, not to mention Lubyanka, the imposing building that serves as home of the FSB security services (formerly, the KGB). But you probably know all about them already. Then there are the museums, the nightclubs, the delicious Georgian food, and the all-night bars and clubs. Even a kind of nerdy guy can have a lot of fun on his first weekend in Moscow.
A word of advice, however, Edward. If you are approached by a man in a blond wig who suggests meeting for a coffee in the area of Novinsky Boulevard, you should decline politely. And run away, fast.
By: Shaun Walker, Foreign Policy, August 2, 2013
“I Love The Russian People”: Edward Snowden Savors The Taste Of Liberty In Russia
Sweet freedom, at last!
I thought I’d never get out of that crummy terminal. After a month of gagging on Cinnabon fumes, even this sooty Moscow air smells like daisies.
Today I walk the streets a free man, accompanied by my two new best friends, Anatoly and Boris. They do NOT work for the KGB, OK? They’re professional tour guides who came strongly recommended by President Vladimir Putin.
By the way, Vlad (that’s what he told me to call him) has been a totally righteous dude about this whole fugitive-spy thing, unlike a certain uncool American president, who keeps trying to have me arrested and prosecuted for espionage.
The Russians have generously given me a Wi-Fi chip and free Internet, so I can go online anytime I want and see what the world is saying about me. A recurring theme in many blogs and chat rooms seems to be: What was that kid thinking?
First of all, I believe with all my heart that Americans have the right to know about the far-reaching surveillance tactics employed by our government to monitor its own citizens. I also believe I’ve restarted an important debate about national security and privacy.
Could I have handled this whole thing differently? Sure. In retrospect, there’s definitely something to be said for anonymity.
But, hey, cut me some slack. I’m only 29 and this was my first time leaking classified intelligence data.
I’ll be the first to admit that my plan wasn’t 100 percent seamless. For example, I should have figured out what new place I wanted to live in before I revealed my identity as the leaker. Clearly, I underestimated how difficult it would be to find a country that would welcome me, especially a country as free and open as the United States.
“I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong,” I declared in a video interview.
This was weeks after I’d left my place in Hawaii and flown to Hong Kong to meet secretly with reporters. The hotel was nice, but after the stories broke I couldn’t go out anywhere.
How do you like your accommodations, Mr. Snowden? Can we bring you another pitcher of green tea? More noodles, perhaps?
I found another place to crash in Hong Kong and gave a new interview revealing that the U.S. National Security Agency had hacked government computers in China. I assumed that in gratitude for receiving this heavy-duty info, the Chinese authorities would let me stay as long as I wanted. Wrong.
No problem, Eddie Boy, says some WikiLeaks dude. We’ll get you into Cuba.
Now I was seriously jazzed because Cuba’s supposed to be a lot like Hawaii — sunshine, great beaches, good surf, a chill music scene.
First connection (or so I thought) was at the Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow. There I scored a ticket to Havana on Aeroflot (which is sort of the Russian version of Jet Blue, minus the TVs in the seatbacks), and I’m ready to roll. Load up my iTunes with the Buena Vista Social Club but then . . .
More bad news. Apparently the Cuban regime wasn’t super excited about me moving there. I never really got the whole story. The plane left without me is all I know.
So I was stuck in the Moscow airport’s “transit” area, feeling not-so-great about how this whistleblower stuff is playing out. The security guys wouldn’t even let me into the main terminal to hit a Starbucks and check out the Sharper Image.
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama kept bugging the Kremlin to hand me over. Putin basically flipped him off, which bought me some time to scout other destinations that had fewer ice storms.
The Bolivian government has offered me asylum, but I’ve been thinking about what happened down there to Butch Cassidy and Sundance. I might take a pass.
Venezuela also said I could come down, and maybe that’s where I’ll end up in a few months. At least it’s warm there. Ecuador sounds pretty sweet, too.
Don’t get me wrong; I love the Russian people. Anatoly always insists on carrying my laptop for me, and Boris gave me a cell phone with unlimited minutes.
The coverage here is so amazing that somebody usually answers even before I finish dialing!
By: Carl Hiaasen, The Miami Herald, August 3, 2013
“A Shared History”: Edward Snowden Walked Right Into A Bizarre Alliance Between Wikileaks And Russia
One thing that has become clear as the Edward Snowden saga unfolds is that WikiLeaks and Russia have both been integral to the NSA leaker’s arrival and extended stay in Moscow.
The Kremlin and the renegade publisher haven’t overtly coordinated moves in regards to Snowden, but they certainly haven’t been working against each other.
And the two had a shared history before Snowden arrived in Moscow.
Here are a few notable details from a tentative timeline of Edward Snowden and his associates created by former senior U.S. intelligence analyst Joshua Foust:
- November 2, 2010: An official at the Center for Information Security of the FSB, Russia’s secret police, told the independent Russian news website LifeNews “It’s essential to remember that given the will and the relevant orders, [WikiLeaks] can be made inaccessible forever.”
- December, 2010: Israel Shamir, a long-standing associate of Wikileaks traveled to Belarus, a close ally of Russia, in December with a cache of Wikileaks files. Belarussian authorities published the cables and cracked down, harshly, on pro-democracy activists.
- April 17, 2012: Government-funded Russian TV station RT gives [WikiLeaks founder] Julian Assange his own talk show.
- June 23, 2013: Izvestia, a state-owned Russian newspaper, writes that the Kremlin and its intelligence services collaborated with Wikileaks to help Snowden escape from Hong Kong (Wikileaks did not mention any official involvement in Snowden’s departure from Hong Kong in their press statements).
Ever since the 30-year-old ex-Booz Allen contractor got on a flight from Hong Kong to Moscow, Russia and WikiLeaks have been working parallel to each other.
On June 23, after the U.S. voided Snowden’s passport while he was in Hong Kong, WikiLeaks tweeted that the organization “assisted Mr. Snowden’s political asylum in a democratic country, travel papers ans [sic] safe exit from Hong Kong.”
That was followed by the update that “Mr. Snowden is currently over Russian airspace accompanied by WikiLeaks legal advisors.”
It turned out that Assange convinced Ecuador’s consul in London to provide a travel document requesting that authorities allow Snowden to travel to Ecuador “for the purpose of political asylum.” The country’s president subsequently said the document was “completely invalid.”
When Snowden arrived in Moscow with void travel papers, all signs suggest that Russia’s domestic intelligence service (i.e. FSB) took control of him.
That day a radio host in Moscow “saw about 20 Russian officials, supposedly FSB agents, in suits, crowding around somebody in a restricted area of the airport,” according to Anna Nemtsova of Foreign Policy.
WikiLeaks, meanwhile, insisted that Snowden was “not being ‘debriefed’ by the FSB.”
Snowden’s FSB-linked Moscow lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, has been speaking for Snowden ever since Snowden accepted all offers for support and asylum on July 12.
On July 11 WikiLeaks had said that Snowden and it had “made sure that he cannot be meaningfully coersed [sic] by either the US or its rivals,” even though that cannot be guaranteed when Russian intelligence is in play.
On Thursday Kucherena announced that Russia has granted Snowden temporary asylum — giving him “the same rights and freedoms possessed by [Russian] citizens” — and led him to a car that would take him to a “secure location.”
PHOTO: #Snowden leaving Moscow airport today after granted 1-year temporary asylum in Russia http://t.co/Ku8SQlG3MB pic.twitter.com/IuMY1AgZeJ
— RT (@RT_com) August 1, 2013
WikiLeaks then announced that Sarah Harrison, Assange’s closest advisor, “has remained with Mr. Snowden at all times to protect his safety and security, including during his exit from Hong Kong. They departed from the airport together in a taxi and are headed to a secure, confidential place.”
And it tweeted this:
We would like to thank the Russian people and all those others who have helped to protect Mr. Snowden. We have won the battle–now the war.
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) August 1, 2013
(WikiLeaks’ spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson told RT that the “war” is “a war against secrecy … a war for transparency, [and] a war for government accountability.”)
All in all, the organization’s gratitude for those “who have helped to protect Mr. Snowden” — which primarily includes the FSB and Harrison — raises the question of how much the WikiLeaks and the Kremlin have coordinated during the Snowden saga.
By: Michael Kelley, Business Insider, August 2, 2013
“Dead Man’s Switch”: Is Edward Snowden Blackmailing America?
Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who has spent the last several weeks disseminating Edward Snowden’s revelations about National Security Agency eavesdropping practices, caused a stir this weekend with an interview he gave to Argentina’s La Nación.
“Snowden has enough information to cause more damage to the U.S. government in one single minute than any other person has ever had in the history of the United States,” Greenwald told La Nación‘s Alberto Armendariz (my translation). He goes on to talk about how Snowden has to avoid landing in the custody of the “vengeful” U.S. at all costs, how Russia is a good place for him for now, and how Snowden’s objective is letting the world know how the NSA is violating privacy rights. Snowden is not out to destroy the U.S., Greenwald says. If Snowden dies, however, Greenwald adds, watch out:
He has already distributed thousands of documents and made sure that various people around the world have his complete archive. If something happens to him, these documents would be made public. This is his insurance policy. The U.S. government should be on its knees everyday praying that nothing happens to Snowden, because if anything should happen, all the information will be revealed and this would be its worst nightmare. [La Nación, my translation]
In an interview with The Associated Press, Greenwald elaborated on what Snowden is sitting on: “In order to take documents with him that proved that what he was saying was true he had to take ones that included very sensitive, detailed blueprints of how the NSA does what they do.” These documents, Greenwald added, “would allow somebody who read them to know exactly how the NSA does what it does, which would in turn allow them to evade that surveillance or replicate it.”
Greenwald’s interview with La Nación reached the U.S. largely through a Reuters article that reported the quotes in English. Greenwald was annoyed enough by this act of translational journalism that he responded in a blog post at The Guardian:
Like everything in the matter of these NSA leaks, this interview is being wildly distorted to attract attention away from the revelations themselves. It’s particularly being seized on to attack Edward Snowden and, secondarily, me, for supposedly “blackmailing” and “threatening” the US government. That is just absurd. That Snowden has created some sort of “dead man’s switch” — whereby documents get released in the event that he is killed by the US government — was previously reported weeks ago, and Snowden himself has strongly implied much the same thing….
That has nothing to do with me: I don’t have access to those “insurance” documents and have no role in whatever dead man switch he’s arranged. I’m reporting what documents he says he has and what precautions he says he has taken to protect himself from what he perceives to be the threat to his well-being. That’s not a threat. Those are facts…. The only people who would claim any of this was a “threat” or “blackmail” are people with serious problems of reading comprehension or honesty, or both. [Guardian]
That explanation didn’t impress Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein, who said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Monday that the comments from Greenwald (or “that reporter”, as he calls him) about the U.S. getting on its knees are “out of line.” Despite the considerable respect he has for The Guardian, Bernstein added, “that’s an awful statement, and the tone in which he made it.”
It’s one thing to say that Mr. Snowden possesses some information that could be harmful, and that could be part of the calculation that everybody makes here. It’s another to make that kind of an aggressive, non-reportorial statement [that] a reporter has no business making. [Bernstein on Morning Joe]
That, too, prompted a response from Greenwald: “I realize Carl Bernstein hasn’t done any actual reporting for a couple decades now, but he should nonetheless take the time to read what he’s opining on.” Reuters gave “a complete distortion of what I actually said,” Greenwald told Politico. “The point I made is the opposite one: That Snowden has been as responsible as a whistleblower can be in ensuring that only information the public should know is revealed.”
Let me get this straight, said Elaine Radford at The Inquisitr. Snowden is sitting on the documents that would cause the worst damage to the U.S. in its entire history, and he’ll unleash them if anything happens to him — nice government there, pity if anything should happen to it — but it’s not blackmail?
First, “considering that the United States wouldn’t go on its knees to Nazis, Nikita Khrushchev, or Osama bin Laden, Greenwald seemed to be expecting a bit much,” Radford said. Second, if he’s trying to make Snowden more sympathetic to Americans, asking America to get on its knees is pretty counterproductive — “most of us think we settled that one sometime around 1776.” But the big point, is “I don’t see how you can take the claim as anything other than a threat of blackmail.”
Like any other reporter, Greenwald is entitled to report what his source has claimed. Greenwald may even have a duty to report it if Snowden is in fact trying to blackmail the United States into dropping its criminal case against him. That in itself seems perilously close to the crime of extortion to me….
The Snowden “worst damage” dead man’s switch threat seems to suggest that Snowden has plans to destroy America by some sort of hacker attack or release of harmful information if he doesn’t get his way. You know, I don’t want to hang a guy because a reporter gave a bad interview. But c’mon. If the Snowden “worst damage” comment actually reflects how Edward Snowden thinks, it’s way past time to stop calling this man any kind of hero. [Inquisitr]
By: Peter Weber, Senior Editor, The Week, July 15, 2013
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