Officials alert foreign services that Snowden has documents on their cooperation with U.S.

Washington Post ^ | October 24, 2013 | By Ellen Nakashima

[Brad from Tennessee]

U.S. officials are alerting some foreign intelligence services that documents detailing their secret cooperation with the United States have been obtained by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, according to government officials.

Snowden, U.S. officials said, took tens of thousands of military intelligence documents, some of which contain sensitive material about collection programs against adversaries such as Iran, Russia and China. Some refer to operations that in some cases involve countries not publicly allied with the United States.

The process of informing officials in capital after capital about the risk of disclosure is delicate. In some cases, one part of the cooperating government may know about the collaboration while others — such as the foreign ministry — may not, the officials said. The documents, if disclosed, could compromise operations, officials said.

The notifications come as the Obama administration is scrambling to placate allies after allegations that the NSA has spied on foreign leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The reports have forced the administration to play down operations targeting friends while also attempting to preserve other programs that depend on provisional partners. In either case, trust in the United States may be compromised. . .

[Brad from Tennessee]

I've wondered for some time if Snowden might have been recruited by the Russians when he was posted to Switzerland around 2007.

[yldstrk]

US government

YOU ARE SO SCREWED

Your overreach has hoisted you on your own petard!

UN is going to embarrass you

Merkel is livid

Couldn’t happen to a bigger bunch of dolts if you ask me

[mikey_hates_everything]

Snowden is the gift that keeps on giving.

[usurper]

YOU ARE SO SCREWED

You might as well include WE in that statement.

This is going to harm us for years to come long after Obama and his team of miscreants are long gone.

[pepsionice]

Snowden will continue on for decades unless someone puts a contract out on the guy and gets to him. Any president...even a President Hillary in 2016...could wake up and find some disturbing news on her operations.

[SatinDoll]

The United States spies on everyone.

We’ve been doing it for years (since at least the 1950s). The exception was spying on U.S. citizens, a practice that seems to have been initiated during the GWBush presidential terms.

[cripplecreek]

Yup.

Its going to keep happening because our government is populated by arrogant morons.

[yldstrk]

harm us how

it’s the same in discovery in a legal case

you get flooded with 50,000 pages of crap and can’t even see straight trying to go through it

these bozos, instead of profiling and targeting are collecting a billion phone calls a month. How is that useful?

I am glad Snowden did what he did and warned us about how depraved our government has become

[SatinDoll]

I suspect that was the purpose behind this WAPO article. Now Snowden has a number of crosshairs on him, and not all are U.S.

[Paladin2]

It's really just MetaData.

Nothing to worry about.

[Gaffer]

Is it so hard to believe that a citizen can come to abhor the absolute violation of our (and others’) basic rights that he/she has to do something about it, irrespective of Russian recruitment or not?

Personally, I believe our intelligence community consisting of 16 publicly acknowledged agencies received a boon in the form of post 9/11/2001 which was mainly focused on terrorism throughout the Bush years.

Unfortunately, this same community came under the command of Team Obama in 2009 and drastically departed its mission and activities since then.

I actually welcome these revelations and I hope they continue because we are not a nation of revenge and internal coercion as has been evidenced by Obama's manipulation of the IRS, State Department, et al, nor should be externally.

Until this government actually starts using valid intelligence information to create some substantive public good, like actually preventing some terrorist act instead of lying about it, then I hope worldwide attention is brought to this President's activities that are only focused nefarious intention.

[sarasota]

This “gathering” is only useful after the fact. It’s a farce.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Cluster.

[MissMagnolia]

So the government can’t keep their own top secrets ‘secret’ ... and people are entrusting them with their most personal and private medical information .... why? This is not going to end well on SO many levels, especially when the thugs in government start USING the info to force compliance with their latest ‘take-it-away-from-you’ scam and ‘we-now-totally-control-you’ scheme.

[BenLurkin]

[SubMareener]

Only the scale changed under GWB.

[cripplecreek]

Snowden is just a distraction from the real culprits.

Personally I’m a lot more concerned about these companies that seem to exist for no other reason than to collect taxpayer dollars on make work projects. I’m also concerned about how people like James Clapper and many others can slip back and forth between executive positions with these companies and official government positions.

[LowTaxesEqualsProsperity]

I don’t want to live in a Fascist state. NSA is enabling this by spying on us.

[Brad from Tennessee]

I appreciate your viewpoint and hope you’re correct.

[The_Reader_David]

The headline is misleading a lie. Glenn Greenwald almost certainly has such documents, given to him by Snowden, but Snowden doesn't have them any more.