General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: This Snowden guy has a few cracks in his resume. [View all]MADem
(135,425 posts)both his legs. He never did any time in the theater of war or deployed anywhere. My background is not Army, but in my experience, most advanced training demands a HS diploma--the idea is that the recruit has "stuck to it" and completed a task. Diplomas strongly correlate with successful completion of training AND enlistment contract across the Services.
He started out at NSA as a janitor, and migrated to IT. Then he worked for the CIA overseas. Then he worked for NSA in Japan.
It's just an INCREDIBLE rise for someone so young and with virtually no formal education in his field. Indeed, he failed to complete the computer courses he took in junior college. He just doesn't, on the surface, appear to be a good candidate for anything.
He has, per some articles, family members who "work in government." It could be (speculation here) that one of those family members got him "in" to the NSA family. We all know that kind of stuff does happen, to some extent. How did Dick Cheney's daughter end up waving guns at her desk when she had that no-work job at State (that was created just for her) running the 'near east desk?' How did Colin Powell's kid end up being the Jerk of the Decade over at the FCC, worrying about Janet Jackson's bosom at the Superbowl? It's all down to patronage. Perhaps he has a powerful mentor?
Hong Kong provides plausible deniability, certainly. And if things go wobbly, and China is willing, he's safe behind a 'no extradition' wall simply by crossing over the border.