Posted on 06/10/2013 3:14:09 PM PDT by Fred
The UK Guardian revealed the source for its stories on the NSA phone-monitoring story (and, evidently, the Washington Post story about the PRISM Internet snooping program) is a 29-year-old IT specialist for defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton named Edward Snowden.
He says he enlisted in the Army with an eye towards fighting in Iraq because “I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression,” ended up spending three years as a CIA security technician, and voted for Barack Obama. He now claims to be deeply disillusioned about Iraq, the CIA, and Obama. He might be one of the most disillusioned people in the whole world.
He’s also dishonest, having lied to his supervisors and claimed he needed time off for epilepsy treatment, when in reality he was copying classified documents and preparing for a flight to Hong Kong, abandoning his family and girlfriend in Hawaii without telling them what he was up to. He’s holed up in a posh Hong Kong hotel now, supposedly because he knows the U.S. government can’t get him there, and because Hong Kong has “a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent.”
Yes, when I ponder the spirit of free speech and dissent, China is the first world government that pops into my mind. Snowden is evidently thinking about defecting to China, insisting that Americans have that wonderful nation all wrong, and it’s not really our enemy. He also talks about seeking refuge in Iceland, and while he makes that sound like a wistful daydream, NBC News says activists in Iceland are pressuring their government to grant him asylum, while Snowden may have underestimated the willingness of authorities in Hong Kong to hand him over to American law enforcement. There has been some speculation that he might have been working as a Chinese espionage agent all along.
Here comes the obligatory character assassination of a guy who may single-handedly force a decision about whether the 4th Amendment means anything.
So, the leaks about Prism were a smokescreen? Could well be...
Hello..you in the office of smeardom, we do not care that this guy got his GED and then got a job in the government making six figures...we already knew that was happening everyday...But thanks for trying to protect the old “motherland”. Salute.
Does the author believe the leaks to be false information?
It seems like the author wants me to be upset at the leaker instead of the unconstitutional practices of the US government.
Where was Snowden during the 2012 presidential election??? Why was he not OUTING the corrupt Obama regime at that time when it would have made the most difference?? He has had all this intel for years and sat on it.
Earlier reports had him voting for Ron Paul. Hmmmm.
Nothing in any of the articles Human Events links to says he voted for Obama. Where did they get that?
All those who think that the Patriot Act was a great idea NOT!!! I never supported it!! And FISA expansion, I never supported any FISA, need to take a hard look in the mirror, there were plenty on FR who thought these liberty sucking laws were great ideas
Time to demand repeal of both!!!
Supposedly he didn’t want to hurt Obama before the election.
Despicable, yes.
But it doesn’t mean that we should ignore the revelations now. The threat to liberty is clear and present, and there is evidence of this now, not merely accusations and suspicion.
I do not agree with the author that for my so called protection I am suppose to give up my liberty. These govt programs are nothing but taxpayer money funneling to fat cat corporations who survive on OUR BACKS.
We need to get to the bottom of Snowdens’ REAL movtives... in spite of whistleblowing, the Patriot Act and FISA must go away FOREVER!!!
This is the honest government workers exodus. The time is now for all who have any conscious left. Come clean...
Agreed on both points.
He voted for Obama in 2008, donated to Paul in 2012 and voted 3rd party.
Interestingly, after voting for Obama in 2008, he donated $500 to Ron Paul in 2012.
That would have been in the PRIMARIES!!! we are talking abut the general 2012 election!!! Pauliban are agent provocateurs of the uberliberals.
AND HE NEVER quit his job either!! What took him so long to out this radical violation of Americans civil liberties?
Where are people getting that he voted for Obama? It isn’t in any of the articles Human Events links to, and the only statement I’ve seen from Snowden is that he voted for a third party candidate in 2008 but hoped Obama would do what he said.
Even if that’s so, the message is what matters, the messenger matters not.
I don’t care if he’s lefty, right, innie, outie.
With tens of thousands of NSA employees, and NOTHING revealed to the public, and a simple “everything’s ok” to Congressional closed-door hearings, with a little “there will be disaster if we shut this program down”, with some prepared charts and graphs, and no one ever - even from the intelligence committees of Congress - being allowed to walk the halls of NSA, to look at its records, to investigate it...
it has, effectively ZERO oversight.
By definition.
It can’t have oversight.
Cuz it’s all related to national security.
Not to mention, the agency is so dang huge, anything that those in the know at the agency wanted to hide, they easily could.
“Earlier reports had him voting for Ron Paul. Hmmmm.”
Actually, giving money to Ron Paul. But now guess who benefits, BIG TIME, from all of this - right, RAND PAUL. If he can get past his Amnesty kick, he’s got a straight shot into the White House, with a HUGE turnout of younger voters making the difference.
I’m no fan of his (because of Amnesty, and some of his father’s kookiness) but I CANNOT THINK of a better stroke of luck than having this fall into his lap.
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