Edward Snowden Is Acting Very Strange Inside Russia [View all]

[Blue_Tires]

Andrei Soldatov’s beat is Russian spies, which is a hot topic for a new cold war. As editor of agentura.ru, an online “watchdog” of Putin’s clandestine intelligence agencies, he has spent the last decade reporting on and anatomizing the resurrection of the Russian security state, from KGB-style crackdowns on dissent at home to adroit or haphazard assassinations abroad.

Most recently, Soldatov and his coauthor and collaborator Irina Borogan broke serious news about the extent to which the Federal Security Service (FSB) was surveilling and eavesdropping on everyone within slaloming distance of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Soldatov has just emerged from a writerly purdah, which has seen him complete his latest and forthcoming title with Borogan, Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries. He spoke to me via Skype from Moscow recently about the latest Russian hack of the White House, the Boris Nemtsov assassination, the Boston Marathon bombings, reshuffles in Putinist spyland, and why neither Edward Snowden nor Glenn Greenwald will agree to be interviewed by him.....

I know you’ve tried repeatedly and creatively to get an interview with Snowden. How’s that worked out?

It’s still impossible for Russian journalists to interview Edward Snowden. It’s also impossible for foreign correspondents based in Moscow. I tried different tactics to talk to him. We had the strange exchange of remarks in the Guardian when he commented my remark on him and I commented on his, so I tried to use this to send him a message—hey, maybe we can talk directly? It failed. When I was in New York, I tried to talk to a guy from ACLU—Ben Wizner, Snowden’s attorney—and I told him, “Okay, you are not ready to arrange a meeting in Moscow but maybe from your office in New York I can talk to Snowden in Moscow.” No answer. I also told him and other people I’d interview Snowden for my book and that this wouldn’t see daylight for seven, eight months, thinking maybe it was a timing issue. But it was the same story all the time: No, I was told. I also put some requests to Glenn Greenwald. I got no response. I thought that was strange—if it’s all about Snowden’s personal safety, why Greenwald cannot talk to Russian journalists from Brazil?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/13/edward-snowden-is-acting-very-strange-inside-russia.html