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In reply to the discussion: Greenwald Lashes Back At Critics Who Call Snowden A Russian Propagandist [View all]MADem
(135,425 posts)I was talking about something I read about in a foreign publication with a group of people, and I got a little visit from some assholes from a three letter club who accused me of "talking out of turn." I directed them to the publication where I obtained the information and told them to shove it; and I was also able to demonstrate that I didn't have access to the area where the stuff they were sweating about was held. Pissed me off, I have to say, but I was able to resolve the matter in short order.
I can't get more specific than that, but I later went and looked around in FBIS and found the same "unclassified" material there--sometimes, the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing! And sometimes, when morons who have an inflated idea of their own importance start typing SSSSS and TS on every other paragraph they write, really dumb shit can get classified. We got a handle on that awhile back, but it's like a ping pong ball--you put it at the bottom of the pool and it pops right back up!
As for ES, I think you're right. I think he either took direction from outside people, or got ideas from them, or was led down the garden path by them. His movements, his comments, they don't come off as spontaneous. He's being stage managed. He obviously received guidance from "friends" and advisers. Who paid them to jolly Ed along, who knows? He may have been passing stuff along that we don't even know about, or stockpiling the lot of it, but we now know he wasn't just grabbing stuff at Booz, he was doing it at Dell too.
And if he was going to make a move, having a dramatic FISA document was just the way to go out with a bang.
I read, early on in this whole drama, that someone in the Booz personnel office essentially warned him that there was a problem with his clearance, specifically, his educational credentials. People have been fired for less. It could also be that fact--knowing that the boom was about to be lowered, that the clock was ticking, and when they sent the paperwork back through again that there would eventually be trouble--that caused him to take off like a shot. I just don't know, though.
One day, we'll get the full flower of this story. I think that arrogance and hubris played a not-small role in this business, myself.