Edward Snowden, hoist by Julian Assange's petard, now used as a tool by Greenwald et al

Unless you're living under an international geopolitical rock, you know that, earlier today, Merikkkan time, Vladimir Putin offered Edward Snowden Russian citizenship. That said, while Putin granted it today to maximize leverage, don't forget that Snowden applied on his own rather than remain de facto stateless, though he was NOT de jure stateless.

Hence this post.

Hoist by Julian Assange's petard?

Yes. Per an update of my original review of Snowden's "Permanent Record," 'twas Assange who convinced Snowden to change his original flight path, which wound up with him being screwed and stranded in Russia. There's other lies and half-truths from Snowden about everything that happened from the time he set foot in Hong Kong on (and lies and half-truths about his thievery), so read all of it. Oh, while I'm here, there's lies and half-truths even more galore in Glenn Greenwald's book about Snowden, "No Place to Hide," which is fitting because Greenwald has no place to hide from its lies — and the many other lies he's told over many years.

Glennwald's Twitter thread is full of Overton window tweets, talking about the US trapping Snowden in Russia.

So, why did Snowden change his original plans, and instead, listen to Assange so he could get trapped in Russia in the first place? And, why won't Glenn Greenwald talk about that? (None of this shocks me; Glennwald has a whole factory of Overton Windows) https://t.co/msc9XVCmEO https://t.co/zkXd7bCx3O

— TheRealSocraticGadfly (@real_gadfly) September 26, 2022

One other thing missing? This:

While we're here, Glenn Greenwald, amidst all your Snowden blather, why don't you talk about the 95 percent of whatever of the Snowden material that you never published but handed over to Omidyar??? You don't really care about Snowden; he's a useful tool for you & that's about it https://t.co/hwH2buN35J

— TheRealSocraticGadfly (@real_gadfly) September 26, 2022

That's our Glennwald! Also "our Glennwald" is blocking people on Twitter when, per Jack Nicholson, he can't handle the truth.

Next: Is Snowden a Russian asset? Possibly today. Likely not at the time. Yeah, Ken Silverstein thinks he might have been trapped by a Russian honeypot, but I don't see it. I still see him as hoist by Assange's petard. Sorry, Xeni Jardin and others. Not buying it. On the third hand, could Assange have been paid to entrap him, even if Snowden wasn't yet a Russian agent? Yes.

Assange? He almost surely knew, early on, the source of his DNC material in 2016. And, yes, it was the Russians. Fuck off if you claim otherwise. And, the fact that he never started a Russian version of Wikileaks, nor did anything to nurture domestic Russian versions already extant, looks more and more suspicious. And that lack of effort, and his being called out on it, go back long before the 2016 election.

Let's also not forget the bullshit of Mark Ames, Yasha Levine et al. Fellow Exiler Matt Taibbi is, like Glennwald, bullshitting on Twitter as I type. OTOH, Ames once noted, as I blogged, that whistle-blowers don't always have patriotic motives.

Finally, let's get back to current geopolitics. Did Snowden trade Russian citizenship being granted for info he didn't originally give Putin?

Update, Sept. 21, 2023: Bruce Schneier talks about his experience of working with Greenwald, how both Greenwald and Barton Gellman held back files from their initial reporting and more.

CIA wanted to kidnap or assassinate Assange

Michael Isikoff and two co-authors have some breaking news at Yahoo News.

Under Mike Pompeo's reign, the Trump-era CIA was so infuriated at the Vault 7 leaks by Wikileaks (remember, they didn't directly steal this one, nor was it Russkies) that they talked about either kidnapping Julian Assange from the Ecuadorean embassy in London or else assassinating him.

Meanwhile, they gave high credibility to claims that Ecuador's then-president was looking at giving Assange official diplomatic status and sending him to its ambassadorial mission in Moscow. (That presumes that Assange was willing, or at a minimum would accept this if given a TINA by Ecuador, though a former Ecuadorean first minister in London says that when he learned about it, he refused to accept it.)

So, the CIA discussed either getting in a gun battle with Russian operatives on London streets trying to get to the airport, or else shooting the tires out of any Russian plane believed to be carrying him. At least with the latter, the British agreed to assist. But, they also said "No" on any kidnapping attempt.

Post-Edward Snowden leaks, the CIA pushed Dear Leader Obama to not only officially designate that Assange was not a journalist but rather an "information broker," but to do the same for the likes of Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. The Obama Admin said no, thank doorknob.

I totally agree re actual journalists. However, Snowden has himself said he's not a journalist, and I certainly don't think Assange is. My most recent in-depth thoughts on that here.

And, Assange probably had some degree of sympathy within the Obama Admin until he started publishing the Russia-filched emails of the DNC in 2016. I know he started losing sympathy from me when he became the first real pusher of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory. My thoughts on that here. My thoughts on some alleged leftist media outlets gaslighting readers over that is here with Consortium News (one of several), and here with "Cozy Bear" gaslighting by Mark Ames and Yasha Levine, and here, my big picture piece refuting the Forensicator bullshit first peddled by Patrick Lawence at The Nation. (The Nation eventually had Nathanial Freitas write a new piece to clean up for Lawrence's BS, but has never, AFAIK, ever officially apologized for running it in the first place. Anyway, today's story shows that Consortium, especially, and others who also attacked Isikoff's reporting over Seth Rich and over the fact that Russia's Internet Research Agency stole those DNC emails, owe us all an apology. But, based on past history, they won't. It's part of bigger lying not just by CN, but bigger stooges like Ty Clevenger.)

DOJ rightly thought Pompeo was an unhinged nutter on this and wanted something better.

This led to the sealed charges against Assange, which became unsealed after the change in Ecuadorean governments led to the removal of his asylum, followed by his British arrest. My thoughts on that here.

Anyway, there's lots more. Isikoff talks more about the CIA's self-perceived, self-defined powers under "CIA common law" and other things. Go read it.

Glenn Greenwald has "No Place to Hide" on Snowden-tied lies, and neither do any of his defenders / enablers

As is the norm, on a book with political, philosophical or other import of a sufficient level, I'm here doing an expanded version of a Goodreads book review. Added material will be underlined, as I used italics in parts of the original review, in stuff I quoted from the Snowden book.

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State by Glenn Greenwald
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Good passion for a real cause is undercut by obfuscations at the time of writing and seeming after-the-fact lies. Given that Greenwald to this day continues to lie about his initial support for the Iraq War, despite those lies being easily refuted, none of this should be a surprise.

First, a quick take on Snowden. I don’t think he’s a traitor, but I don’t think he’s an innocent nothingburger, either. (I don't think he's committed a material violation of the Logan Act or something like that, either; that said, I don't think he's been 100 percent forthcoming on every interaction of note he's had with foreign actors. That starts with, not his visit to Hong Kong, but his planning for that visit, as I detail in my review of his book, linked below.) And, he told multiple lies in his book, one of which is passed on by Greenwald. (That, again, concerns planning for his trip to Hong Kong and which countries he was looking at, and which he was dismissing, as potential asylum sites.) UPDATE, and important one, on this, March 14, 2022. How I missed this before, I don't know, but Assange his own self reportedly told Snowden not to go to Latin America and to go to Russia instead. This is another capper on suspicion about Assange and, per Dick Tofel, why he's not a journalist.

With that, let me give you my take on this book and related issues.

First, the passion. Snowden rightly exposed the NSA’s snooping, which Greenwald (and many others) had been wondering about for some time. That and calling out the lying of members of Congress on this issue, or timidity of others, or timidity of The Guardian, is half of the book. And, overall good, but not perfectly good on the Guardian, because that’s part of what gets Greenwald hoist by his own petard.

That said, even more, his TOTALLY unethical recording of witnesses during l'affaire Matt Hale massively petard-hoists. More on Greenwald's hypocritical dickishness on confidentiality is here.

So, let’s dive into all that.

Sections in italics will be quotes from my review of Snowden’s “Permanent Record.”

First, on page 30, Glenn claims that Snowden carefully reviewed everything. Then why was 90 percent of it not published? Glenn engages in what I’ll call “tracks-covering” on page 48, when he says much of this was for journalistic backgrounding. Then, why not publish at least summaries of it?

This is all related to Greenwald eventually NOT publishing about 90 percent of Snowden’s material and instead handing it over to Pierre Omidyar. Given that people like Tim Shorrock have speculated Omidyar is using this for private industrial espionage, as documented here, Glennwald (a popular slapdown for him) posturing in anger over the NSA enabling corporate spying rings hollow. What’s even funnier is that story is linked at the site to which Glennwald’s own proposed NSADisclosures.com flips to.

That said, that then gets again to the “lying in hindsight.” So, at the time in 2013, when The Guardian seemed slow (by Glennwald’s standards) to want to publish, Glenn was ready to dump everything on that NSADisclosures site. But, six years later? No, no, the public doesn’t need to look at it. Bigger names than me have hammered Greenwald over the head on this issue and he's refused, blatantly refused in his Glennwaldian way, to address this.

And, on 56, Glennwald hosts himself by his own petard in attacking the “mainstream media,” foreign policy and national security division. I quote:

“Yet another unwritten rule designed to protect the government is that media outlets publish only a few such secret documents and then stop.”

BOOM. I sank your battleship, Glennwald. (Actually, you sank yourself and I just pointed it out.)

Next is passing on Snowden’s lies about his planned itinerary.

Question 10: How does he reconcile him allegedly having a plan to go to Ecuador with him stating a dozen pages earlier that he chose NOT to originally go to Latin America (page 284) because “Africa and Latin America were no-go zones too — the United States had a history of acting there with impunity.” Given the other denials of transit, why not fly to, say Ecuador’s embassy in either Beijing or Hanoi? (Update: Or, given how Beijing was already elbowing into Hong Kong's independence, why not just stay there???)

And, at that point, I think we’ve caught Snowden in an outright lie. Or, to repost the item above?
UPDATE, and important one, on this, March 14, 2022. How I missed this before, I don't know, but Assange his own self reportedly told Snowden not to go to Latin America and to go to Russia instead. This is another capper on suspicion about Assange and, per Dick Tofel, why he's not a journalist. That said, this is a good reason Snowden's not a journalist. If he were, and were a good one, he'd "burn" Assange as a source.

Question 11: The passport and the time frame. Edward Jay Epstein notes that, a day before he left Hong Kong, the US had ALREADY invalidated his passport except for return to the US. Therefore, his claim it has been invalidated in midair is a technical Jesuitical truth at best and a lie at worst. Care to address that?

On page 49, Glennwald buys Snowden’s lie, full stop on his travel plans and never addresses the technicality of the passport issue.

Obfuscations aren't as serious of an issue, but they're not nonexistent, either. Glennwald has no problem quoting Tim Shorrock that 70 percent of every national security dollar is spent on private contractors, but quickly zooms past how much of Snowden's employment was for those exact contractors, not the NSA itself. And, beyond the dollars amount, he never really looks at the security issues of private contractors vs the NSA, nor the alleged cost-effectiveness vs the actual reality. Side note: Stuff like this is why Glennwald is not a leftist, has not been a leftist and never will be a leftist.

Finally, why Greenwald? Snowden’s never answered that. I mean, let's take Greenwald vs, say James Bamford, who interviewed him in Russia, or Bruce Schneier. Bruce isn’t a “journalist” per se; he’s an academic/public policy person. But Bamford is, with even bigger chops in critical and skeptical national security writing, primarily magazine world and books, than Greenwald, and that was definitely the case before Greenwald started working on the Snowden files. Greenwald has never indicated that Snowden told him why.

My guess, as I said in my review of Snowden’s book? Greenwald came off as inept enough in the tech world that he might not challenge Snowden’s account where it needed to be challenged.

Backdrop?

Snowden talks about cooling his heels in Hong Kong while getting people to bite. What journalists DID he talk to besides Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Barton Gellman and Ewan MacAskill? Or did he talk to any? …

What is he not revealing about his time in Hong Kong before meeting G & P? …

If he did get other serious nibbles, did they not pan out? Did he cut them out? Why?

Greenwald never gives any indication that Snowden told him he talked to other journos. So, either Snowden’s confirmed in another lie (and my theory on “why Glennwald” is confirmed) or else Snowden’s playing his cards that close (and possibly my theory of “why Glennwald” is confirmed).

No, finally finally.

I hate books that don’t have a print index at the back.

AND!!!! Per Snowden? Glennwald’s website is “not secure” according to teh Chrome.

No, finally, finally, finally.

Let’s not forget that this is a man who continues to lie about the fact that he supported the Iraq War when it was first launched, even though he’s easily refutable from the public Internet domain. Lying that blatantly has a whiff of the narcissistic at a minimum, maybe of the sociopathic.

And so, with the benefit of hindsight, Glennwald gets two stars compared to Snowden’s three. (Go talk about that with “good Socialist” Swanson Tucker Carlson, Glenn.)

Speaking of that? Glennwald was surely looking for an excuse to leave the Intercept when he did. The fact it wouldn't print his Hunter Biden screed, which he was calling news not a column, and for which he's been edited before at the Intercept and elsewhere, gave him his opening. That said, the fact that he's getting $1-2 million at Substack vs $500K at the Intercept, with total hands off? Yeah, he was looking to jump and would have done so even without an excuse.

And, beyond that, Glennwald has descended into new levels of Twitter trolling and thuggery in recent months. A fair chunk of it builds on sexism he exhibited before he became famous. And, yes, gay men can be sexist. Oh, can they.

While I'm here, Mona Holland, who has had plenty of chances to ditch, not just lessen, her playing robot in the Czech original sense to Glennwald's godbot, can tell her own lies. Like claiming Grayzone is factual, when Max Blumenthal has lied about the Uyghurs, and as nailed by me, lied by omission about GG's setup at the Intercept. Speaking of, as recently as two years ago, she was reportedly very much his robot on Intercept commenting. I think she had backed off somewhat in the last two years, No, take that back. At Substack just over six months ago, she was still defending him. Glenn's commissioned hack job from Ralph Cipriano on Larry Krasner, detailed by me at this link, MAY HAVE been too much for her in some ways. (She did retweet David Menschel to that effect.)

That's enough digression. This is about Greenwald.

For my full Snowden review, go here.

Update, Sept. 21, 2023: Bruce Schneier talks about his experience of working with Greenwald, how both Greenwald and Barton Gellman held back files from their initial reporting and more. 

View all my reviews

Pardon Snowden and/or Assange? ONLY with preconditions

This leftist homey doesn't write blank checks, and this tweet to Greenwald should say it all:

I will support a pardon for Snowden ONLY if .@Snowden answers these questions which you, Glenn Greenwald, never asked him.https://t.co/j2nDpjFaCy
I will support a pardon for Assange ONLY if he tells us what he knew and when he knew it about the source of the SVR-stolen emails

— Your Glenn Greenwald pouty tomato face 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 18, 2021

First, Snowden. 

The questions Glenn failed to ask (and Snowden has failed to answer despite being tagged by me on Twitter many times), are from my review of his book.

Short version here. Go to the review for more in-depth versions, with explainers and my tentative answers.

• Question 1: Why didn’t Snowden approach him? 
• Question 2. Snowden talks about cooling his heels in Hong Kong while getting people to bite. What journalists DID he talk to besides Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Barton Gellman and Ewan MacAskill? 
• Question 3: What is he not revealing about his time in Hong Kong before meeting G & P? 
• Question 4 goes straight to Snowden: If he did get other serious nibbles, did they not pan out? Did he cut them out? Why?
• Question 5, or really, a series of related questions: What does he think about Poitras and Greenwald (actually Greenwald, basically) ultimately NOT publishing most of what he gave them? (This is also a question for Glennwald, of course, who lied his ass off when surrendering these jewels to Omidyar.) 
• Question 6: Given Omidyar’s own access to the national security state, did Snowden not think of this possibility in advance? 
• Question 7: Did he not, at this point, rethink going to Wikileaks? 
• Question 8: Had he thought about Greenwald stovepipeing this information? 
• Question 9: Did he really not think that the almighty US Government would find him sooner rather than later? 
• Question 10: How does he reconcile him allegedly having a plan to go to Ecuador with him stating a dozen pages earlier that he chose NOT to originally go to Latin America? (At that point, I think we’ve caught Snowden in an outright lie.) 
• Question 11: How do you explain apparent discrepancies in the passport and the time frame? 
• Question 12: Why does he never mention direct Russian involvement? 
• Question 13: This is unrelated to the spying, but if you were such an idealist, and already at least a bit informed at age 20, why didn’t you oppose the Iraq War?

These were no-brainer questions to me.

As for Assange? Beyond him being the first person to goose the Seth Rich conspiracy theory, his toady-flunky Craig Murray has indicated he knows that Assange knew something about their provenance before the end of 2016, it seems. And, he's never apologized for goosing the conspiracy theory.

Greenwald has been tagged about every time I've tagged Snowden, and has also chosen not to respond.

Beyond wanting to know what Snowden and Assange know, I want to remove the potential veil of martyrdom from them. 

Without that, no pardons.

Time for some Twitter cleanup, maybe another timeout as well as one from Facebook

I have taken several Facebook timeouts of one week or less. But, until earlier this summer, never took a Twitter timeout, as in, like with Facebook, doing an account snooze.

The one I did do with Twitter was more than two weeks.

Here's my take on the two.

Twitter's cesspool, proportionally, is probably worse than Facebook's. But, overall, Twitter does a better job of cleanup. That's the only social media programs I use regularly. I use MeWe semiregularly, ditched Jimmy Wales' site, tried and passed on Mastodon and occasionally used Instagram at previous work sites. I use LinkedIn regularly FOR JOB HUNTING ONLY. You're an idiot if you blog there under your real name, especially about anything not narrowly related to your career field.

That said, back to the header.

There's an old cliché that says "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Bullshit.

This is clearly an Idries Shah issue:

First, as I have said here and elsewhere, the enemy of my enemy may simply be an ally of convenience. That's another side right there.

Or, the enemy of my enemy may also be an enemy to me on other issues, or even on the issue at hand, just via a different track.

Politics (what else?) brings this issue to the fore on Twitter.

I get, in a sense ("get" but don't agree with) still butt-hurt Berners who look for takedown tools against Joe Biden. As a Green, Bernie would have been more acceptable, but I was still voting for the Green Party nominee before 2020 started. (Well, at least for eventual actual nominee Howie Hawkins, and at that time, had the door open for Dario Hunter. The other candidates already seemed off the wall, and then, this summer, true Dario revealed himself. But I digress, again.)

That said, using wingnuts who are often attacking Biden because they're Trumpers, or like nutter H.A. Goodman, Bernie → Trump guys, as part of your takedown tools? No. I'm not blocking, or even muting any of you folks, but I am unfollowing several.

Anyway, the cleanup has happened, but not for the reasons above.

Trump talked over the weekend about considering a pardon for Snowden. That then brought the Assange-stanners, especially not the halfway sane ones but, natch, the Seth Rich conspiracy theorists, to the fore. I unfollowed several people who had been following both Suzi 3D and Kim Dotcom, and then eventually kicked both of them full to the curb. On her? Yes, she's right about the "Five Eyes." So are many other people who don't lie about Seth Rich, don't stovepipe Assange, don't claim persecution and haven't "magically" ended up in Moscow. Her tale sounds less credible than it once did, which is part of why I think I had been following her.

The need for a new Facebook timeout is for other reasons. I've been reporting more and more posts there by wingnuts as fake news, and Twitter, sadly, still doesn't have a "false news" report line.

That said, I had already thought weeks ago that Twitter, even though it has the deeper cesspool, does a better job of policing.

That then became confirmed in spades with news that Facebook fired an engineer after he discovered information that wingnut activist groups were getting preferential treatment in getting false news flags removed. And, given that individual wingnuts' false news posts often involve sharing items from these orgs, I've just been playing kabuki theater. Well, no reason to do that deliberately.

Plus, while Facebook does have a "false news" report, the results of it are definitely a "nothingburger" most the time. A screen over the post that says "Facebook has found this partially false/false." No takedowns.

New Facebook, which is being forced upon us, sux donkey dongs worse than New Twitter. And, it sux in another way. It's burying the "most recent" button for chronological post feed, and instead forcing the algorithms on us. And, it says, in New Facebook help, that you can hit the "most recent" feed, but that posts will eventually revert to Hucksterman's definition of "most popular." I smell another Facebook timeout coming up.

Alternatives? Ello long ago became the British MySpace. Mastodon is clunky. I tried some other alternative to Twitter that interested me even less than Mastodon.

But, there is MeWe. Formed out of remnants of Google Plus after Google pulled the plug on it (after screwing the pooch in several ways), it's not bad. I just need to make an effort on developing some contacts there. On the other, or third, or whatever hand or side, I had a Trumper regularly trolling the Green Party group there. And on the fourth hand, friend Brett Welch said several of his groups have "dried up" recently, including some migrating (back?) to Hucksterville.

Gellman and Snowden

Barton Gellman's new book about Snowden is finally coming out. The Atlantic has an excerpt. The excerpt is about Gellman's own history of being surveilled, and is scary as shit.

Wired has another excerpt, with Gellman talking about what questions talking to Snowden led him to next. The idea of contact chaining, even if not abused to the degree the NSA could have abused it, is insidious indeed.

Given that Snowden's own book raised more questions than it answered, per my review, I'm interested.

Update, Sept. 21, 2023: Bruce Schneier talks about his experience of working with Greenwald, how both Greenwald and Barton Gellman held back files from their initial reporting and more.

Snowden: Permanent Record or First Draft of Hand-Waving?

 Permanent Record by Edward Snowden

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The book gets three stars for the questions it raises, and no more for that than not answering them. The questions aren't about the NSA et al, they're about Snowden and his imperfect record, and they're the basis for the review, which I think catches him in at least one full-on lie.

That’s my honest take on Edward Snowden after “Permanent Record.”

With more questions than answers, this is an expanded version of my book review, diving further into some of these questions the book raises, why I think some of his responses to the outside world's interpretation of his actions (and not just the deep state and its political supporters' responses — some left-liberals and leftists raise one eyebrow, at least, about Snowden) are hand waving, and more.

The questioning starts about three-quarters in, when he tells us he’s made “The Decision,” and now he’s trying to figure out who in the media to approach. He’s also said that most journalists reporting on NSA issues are basically noobs about technology. One of the two he most extensively hooked up with, Greenwald, certainly is.

But, he mentions one name at this same time: James Bamford. Bamford is not, AFAIK, a tech noob; after all, some of his writing has been for Wired. And, having written multiple books on these issues, he knew then and still knows his way around both CIA and NSA.

So, question 1: Why didn’t Snowden approach him? Or, per Bamford’s interview with Snowden in Moscow, and Bamford mentioning him, Bruce Schneier? Per that link, I also find it interesting that Bamford didn't ask Snowden that very issue himself. No, I don't think there's some Bamford-Snowden conspiracy; I just mean "interesting" in the everyday sense that Bamford overlooked this. I Tweeted my original review to Bamford and asked him this very question; no response.

That leads to question 2. Snowden talks about cooling his heels in Hong Kong while getting people to bite. What journalists DID he talk to besides Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Barton Gellman and Ewan MacAskill? Or did he talk to any? Related — given that his goal was to leak to a trusted professional journalist or three, how much advance planning did he do? Or not? Care to connect this to other things, Snowden?

Question 3: What is he not revealing about his time in Hong Kong before meeting Greenwald and Poitras? See this link for some discussion of this issue. More here. I’m not saying I agree with every take, and I certainly don’t agree with the person’s or group’s background — that site looks to be straight “The Resistance,” and on Snowden, the pieces seem to be smears. And, since it links to Edward Jay Epstein, a lawful program can still be highly immoral. See “separate but equal.” And Snowden never claimed the programs were “rogue.”

Question 4 goes straight to Snowden: If he did get other serious nibbles, did they not pan out? Did he cut them out? Why? This ties back to both questions 2 and 3, of course. Again, without a detailed timeline from Snowden (which could include a hacker busting into his credit card and/or any cellphone records), we're left to wonder.

Question 5, or really, a series of related questions: What does he think about Poitras and Greenwald (actually Greenwald, basically) ultimately NOT publishing most of what he gave them? As in about 90 percent? What does he think about the lies, as I see them, by Greenwald and Intercept flunkies, that Intercept, owned by a billionaire, didn’t have the money to do more? What does he think of this decision including sealing access to these files, especially since Intercept is the only place to which he gave full access? More on that whole issue at this site, one of many places to discuss the issue. Snowden looks like he had less than the best judgment, in part given Greenwald's subserviance to Pierre Omidyar before Snowden tagged him.

Question 6: Given Omidyar’s own access to the national security state, did Snowden not think of this possibility in advance? I mean, Glenn worked for Pierre on salary. He wasn't an independent journalist. He wasn't even a regular, but contracted, contributor like he was with the Guardian. Again, seems to "go to character, your honor" (on both Greenwald and Snowden), to use an old legal phrase.

Question 7: Did he not, at this point, rethink going to Wikileaks? If he did not think of that, why not? Is he that technologically constrained inside Russia today?

Question 8: Had he thought about Greenwald stovepipeing this information? Had he considered Greenwald’s past, or even some of Poitras?

Question 9: Did he really not think that the almighty US Government would find him sooner rather than later? In other words, why didn’t he book a flight to Ecuador as soon as he cut the video with Poitras? Why linger in Hong Kong? For THAT matter, why not go directly to Ecuador, which gets directly to Question 10, and directly to catching Snowden in what seems to be an outright lie.

Question 10: How does he reconcile him allegedly having a plan to go to Ecuador with him stating a dozen pages earlier that he chose NOT to originally go to Latin America (page 284) because “Africa and Latin America were no-go zones too — the United States had a history of acting there with impunity.” Given the other denials of transit, why not fly to, say Ecuador’s embassy in either Beijing or Hanoi?

And, at that point, I think we’ve caught Snowden in an outright lie.

Question 11: The passport and the time frame. Edward Jay Epstein notes that, a day before he left Hong Kong, the US had ALREADY invalidated his passport except for return to the US. Therefore, his claim it has been invalidated in midair is a technical Jesuitical truth at best and a lie at worst. Care to address that?

Question 12: Why does he never mention direct Russian involvement? Why does he never mention he lives in a country that spies on people more than the US? If the US claims are all true, why didn’t Hong Kong arrest him? How much was Beijing involved?

Question 13: This is unrelated to the spying, but if you were such an idealist, and already at least a bit informed at age 20, why didn’t you oppose the Iraq War? Related: Why, as late as 2011 in Hawaii, were you that shocked that we gave raw intell to Israel?

Tentative thoughts and answers.

Unlike The Resistance grifters et al, I don’t think Snowden is a traitor. I do think, though, that per the amount he talks about games in the book, he is, was, has been, and will continue to be running his own game, and it’s not the one of naïve idealist. Is it as an Assange-type anarchist of sorts? He did officially support Ron Paul for Prez in 2012.

Answers to specific questions.

1.    Roping in Bamford would have avoided issues, or exposed issues, under 3, 5, 6, 11 and 12 at least. Whether this was deliberate or not, not talking to somebody smarter than Greenwald left Snowden more open to claims of being a Russian plant or dupe than is necessary.
2.    I don’t know that Snowden will ever tell us that.
3.    I’m not sure how much is “real” in those links; they are from a Resistance group. Nonetheless, it at a minimum leaves Snowden open to charges of being disorganized in the face of all of the issues.
4.    Related to 2.
5.    I doubt Snowden will ever tell us that, either. In part, it gives him an ongoing game to play with the NSA. In part, given his espoused libertarian tendencies, and his relative dismissal of the degree that Big Biz spies on us, I think he kind of likes it. Maybe he knew more in advance here than he lets on.
6.    See above.
7.    No, because it would have undermined 5-6.
8.    See above.
9.    This one is really a puzzler for me. Since I don’t think he’s a Russian agent, the best I can lay this to is further disorganization. At a minimum, it doesn’t speak well for him overall. UPDATE, and important one, on this, March 14, 2022. How I missed this before, I don't know, but Assange his own self reportedly told Snowden not to go to Latin America and to go to Russia instead. This is another capper on suspicion about Assange and, per Dick Tofel, why he's not a journalist.
10.    See 3 and 9. But at what point is this actual disorganization vs apparent disorganization?
11.    Obviously Snowden had to fly. Literally. It’s a semi-white lie to enhance his martyrdom.
12.    Beyond the obvious reason of having worse accommodations in Russia, or even being turned over after being wrung dry? The Chinese angle still makes me wonder. I’m sure it’s in the background somewhere.
13.    The “idealism” is probably about 1/3 pose, if not more, by 2003. By 2011, it’s entirely a myth. If not, Snowden really IS an idiot.

==

Some of these questions are by no means unique to me. For example, Ken Silverstein has told me that he thinks the Russkies honeypotted Snowden. Now, he's married, isn't he? Yeah, but plenty of married men get honeypotted. Or maybe it was a gay honeypotting.

Update, Sept. 21, 2023: Bruce Schneier talks about his experience of working with Greenwald, how both Greenwald and Barton Gellman held back files from their initial reporting and more.

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Ladies and gents, I present the brilliant US national security establishment

Reality Winner, ex-NSA noob

In the wake of the recently announced documents leak arrest, these initial observations about "Reality Winner" and in turn, reflections on the state of the American establishment in general.

1. The National Security Agency, due to both sides of the duopoly and their hypercapitalist fetish for privatization, has to use ever more private contractors. (Remember, Snowden was one.)
2. These contractors, in their own idiocy, hire ever more younger employees, and in turn give ever more of them Top Secret clearances (remember Snowden) on the thinnest of grounds and at pre-30 ages when they can’t have earned them.
3. In this case, the idiot, with the charming name of Reality Winner, was dumb enough to email the Intercept from a work email. She was also dumb enough not to realize the document she sent really wasn’t worth all the trouble to which she went.
4. Sidebar — If the NSA itself weren’t that dumb, I’d almost believe it wrote a fake document to see what “Putin Did It” noob would bite. (FYI, the actual document doesn’t move any actual “Putin Did It” findings one iota forward. Allegedly penetrating 100 election officials out of 3,000-plus county, parish and independent cities that conduct elections? Nothingburger. Plus, the piece is caveated beyond that from here to Sunday.)  Don't believe me? Here's the Intercept's story. Yes, the NSA unequivocally claims the GRU was hacking, but, within that, it's caveated all to hell. Beyond that, the hacking, to the degree it did happen, was after early voting was done in most states that have it. And a bigger derp? The piece quotes Alex Halderman, the Michigan prof who gulled Jill Stein into her recount.
5. Top this all off by one of Glenn Greenwald’s minions at the Intercept, Winner’s media target, sending a photocopy of the document itself back to the NSA when asking for comment. The folds on the doc are what helped lead to Winner’s arrest. Worse? Glenn's staff numnuts also asked another NSA contractor about the doc, Justice says. And, per the Washington Post, that contact burned them; I'm assuming the contact's claim the docs were fake was itself a ruse. Of course, the Intercept ain't alone in being stupid in this way. I present The New York Times outing a CIA officer. Meanwhile, some wagon-circlers on Twitter are claiming this couldn't have been handled any other way. Tosh. Snowden himself might have pointed out some of the mistakes, if he'd been asked, and had wanted to. And an ooops that this isn't a first-time deal:

   .@theintercept should be ashamed of itself. Matthew Cole burns yet another source. It makes your entire organization untrustworthy.

   — John Kiriakou (@JohnKiriakou) June 6, 2017

   Speaking of Snowden ...
6. Regional readers of this blog should remember that I’m not 100 percent convinced of Snowden’s bona fides, anyway. Likewise, I wasn't convinced of Glenn's brilliance on all matters related to this, either. Look up some stuff online from Mark Ames and / or Yasha Levine for more. None of the four bylined reporters are fly-by-night newbies. This is a fuck-up, pure and simple. I mean, I've never heard of sending back a physical copy of an actually leaked document like that. NEVER. Smartly, Greenwald himself is pretty much keeping his yap shut.
7. Does all of this add up to a suggestion for more skepticism? I think not. This is a 20-something Dem voter who surely bought lock, stock and barrel into DNC claims that "Putin Did It." Snowden had more brains than that, though more deviousness as well. Glenn's staff, beyond the dumb shit above, should have read the document more carefully and vetted her background better. Any NSA leaker who normally post to "public" on Facebook is an idiot anyway. But, like Snowden, she's at least a small-l libertarian; at a minimum, she doesn't recognize that Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders aren't that close politically (and neither are Sanders and Ted Cruz; always suspect people with incoherent political beliefs), that Bill Mahar is a racist as well as an idiot, and other things.
8. Sadly, the fact that one of the Intercept's advisers on the story was Halderman now has Stein doubling down on "yes, my recounts." And the Green Party retweeting, just as party staffers had Bob Fitrakis write an uncritical account of the recounts a month ago, about which I blogged. I swear, I get ever closer to moving my official third-party allegiance to the Socialist Party USA.

Wikileaks, the CIA and cybersecurity (updated)

Julian Assange

Folks like Mark Ames and Yasha Levine are way ahead of me on their take on Wikileaks' new revelation  (NYT) of CIA hacking into various consumer devices, including but not limited to cell phones, means. Tim Shorrock is also weighing in on some connected issues.

Basically, it means we need to have some concerns over these government-funded, national-security sector funded, online communications security applications, and indirectly, the operational systems running them. It also means we need to keep tabs on all the private agencies to whom the government has contracted more and more of its mushroomed national security operations.

Yes, technically, it wasn't the devices themselves, and it wasn't hacking — it was keeping open holes to bypass encryption on apps like Signal. Apps that, per Yasha Levine:

Remember when @Snowden said "Use Signal, Use Tor". Thanks super spy! https://t.co/MnBSVZzl1y

— Yasha Levine (@yashalevine) March 7, 2017

Snowden has touted, both directly and through intermediaries such as Glenn Greenwald.

Snowden, after spinning the language of whether or not it's a hack, and software vs. hardware, does repeated spinning of his own, in Tweets like this:

Evidence mounts showing CIA & FBI knew about catastrophic weaknesses in the most-used smartphones in America, but kept them open -- to spy. https://t.co/mDyVred3H8

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) March 7, 2017

You'll never find "NSA," for whom Snowden used to work as a contractor, in those Tweets.

Nor will you likely find any admission that he had heard of such holes when he was an NSA contractor.

Speaking of, speculation — reasonably informed speculation — is high that it was a CIA contractor that was behind this dump. They, like NSA contractors, generally have lower standards of security, especially in the actual enforcement of said standards, than the Agency's own direct employees do. Snowden probably doesn't want to comment on that, either.

Related to that is the fact that the last two presidencies and the eternal? "War on Terra" have insisted on a large national security establishment, and both Obama and Bush have held fast to the idea that the private sector can do many national security functions more cheaply than the CIA.

The reality is that the private sector usually both costs more and delivers worse work. The fact that Dear Leader didn't overturn this, as part of not overturn other elements of the War on Terra he inherited from Bush, is yet another reason for real "progressives" or left-liberals or beyond to #DemExit.

Tim Shorrock has more on this at the Washington Post. Key takeaway? A full 70 cents on each government dollar of intelligence spending goes to the private sector.

Key takeaway No. 2? Nobody within the government-sector base of the intelligence world seems to want to admit this is a problem. It sounds like that would mean admitting some mix of oversight failure on their part and limitations on oversight controls that they can't fix. The fact that problems at Booz Allen persisted after Snowden's flight show it IS a problem, whatever the cause.

Now, back to our main narrative.

On the former, surely the NSA is using those same holes. (And, probably, in a Mad magazine Spy vs. Spy angle, NSA and CIA are trying to steal each other's hacking tools.) On the latter, if you believe he knew nothing, I'll sell you Snowden's Putin-provided Crimean dacha.

To the degree The Intercept is discussing this, they do mention the CIA developed this in conjunction with the British, which also means that there's another reason the NSA has had possibility to hear about it — or to do its own work in the same area, that we don't know about yet, or so it would seem to me.

That said, let's go straight to Wikileaks' cyber-presser, specifically, this:

As an example, specific CIA malware revealed in "Year Zero" is able to penetrate, infest and control both the Android phone and iPhone software that runs or has run presidential Twitter accounts. The CIA attacks this software by using undisclosed security vulnerabilities ("zero days") possessed by the CIA but if the CIA can hack these phones then so can everyone else who has obtained or discovered the vulnerability. As long as the CIA keeps these vulnerabilities concealed from Apple and Google (who make the phones) they will not be fixed, and the phones will remain hackable.

So, on paper, at least, the CIA could hack at least @realDonaldTrump, if not also @POTUS?

First of all, this update, per Reuters.

Stuart McClure, CEO of Cylance, an Irvine, California, cyber security firm, said that one of the most significant disclosures shows how CIA hackers cover their tracks by leaving electronic trails suggesting they are from Russia, China and Iran rather than the United States.

This is directly relevant to Cozy Bear, Fancy Bear, Schmaltzy Bear, etc. Yes, those attacks MAY well be by Russian intelligence services. (If so, whether they were deliberate on the DNC at first, or just general fishing expeditions, and even after they eventually became deliberate at some point, how high the knowledge trail went within Russian intelligence circles are yet other questions.)


This section immediately above has sure aged well NOT! Given everything from the Mueller Investigation on, there seems to be good reason to believe that Fancy Bear is real, even if CrowdStrike has oversold some things.

Also, given that GOP Congresscritter Mike McCaul admitted the RNC had computers hacked just like the DNC (before the RNC apparently hauled him on the carpet), and that Comey talked about that, Yasha Levine's semi-breathless claims about RNC emails being stolen like DNC ones were is breathless at best and comes off looking like a conspiracy at worst, as not even Assange proposed a version of an Assange-fronting Seth Rich character working at the RNC.

Levine is undercut by the facts that the RNC had better security, and thus few computers were hacked, and these older ones didn't have big information.

That said, national security establishment "eggs" claiming that Russian intelligence was incompetent here and there and with Guccifer 2.0 as well, when he was alleged to be a Russian agent? What if those were CIA bread crumbs instead? Not likely, but officially now not disprovable. 

A couple of other things to note.

First, Wikileaks noted, in the dump, that other countries may have similar potential to exploit these holes. Russia was mentioned by name. For those who think Assange butters up Russia, you're again proven wrong.

Second, let's see if Snowden mentions Russia at some point in the future.

Third, speaking of Levine, he's got a must-read at the Baffler on what's behind Cozy Bear, et al, from last year's Russian snooping and hacking.

Fourth, Levine notes — presumably as a counter to Snowden — that Signal is not a "chat app." He calls it a social network based on telephone numbers. Wiki calls it an app but does note the phone number backbone.

Fifth, yes, OpenWhisper has received government funding for Signal development. That may, or may not, have been contingent on government knowledge of coding for it or whatever.

Now, what about Assange? Nobody caped crusader? Willing partner of Putin? Somewhat unaware co-opted agent of Vlad? Willful individualist, still with hacker's blood in his veins, who runs Wikileaks on a whim?

Per this piece from Moscow Times, which reinforced Daniel Domscheit-Berg's old book on Assange and Wikileaks, reviewed by me here, it's primarily the latter. It's probably about 70 percent this and 10 percent each of the other three.

Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald et al vs Mark Ames, Yasha Levine, et al

Mark Aims of Exiled Online had a great post earlier this week about how whistle-blowers don't always have patriotic motives.

He cites the story of Col. Robert McCormick, the quasi-fascist publisher for decades of the Chicago Tribune. Specifically, the day or two after the Battle of Midway, albeit without being too specific, McCormick printed that we won the battle because we'd broken Japanese codes. That said, he was specific enough to say that we knew the attack on the Aleutians was a feint, and to cite anonymous sources in Naval Intelligence.

Before that, he'd printed how Franklin D. Roosevelt planned a 10-million man army, if necessary, to win World War II.

This was three days before Pearl Harbor, when we knew that Japan was likely to attack us if diplomacy on their part failed to ease our stifling economic sanctions. We were already in an undeclared naval war with Germany.

We didn't declare war on Germany on Dec. 8, only on Japan. Germany declared war on us on Dec. 11, in part citing ... the Chicago Trib, Ames notes. Here, we know that America Firster McCormick was trying to prevent war.

So, that's how whistle-blowers aren't always good for the general public.

That brings us to Edward Snowden. And Chelsea Manning under the et al, by Ames.

And, by me, extending the et al to Snowden's leak targets in "independent" media, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras.

Ames does note, after describing how Snowden, until at least 2009, favored a hawkish national security state, and had even attempted to join the Special Forces in 2004, may indeed have crossed a Rubicon. But, until then? And, he notes that Manning's politics are even more indecipherable, correctly stating that anybody enlisting in the military in 2007 couldn't be a pacifist. In fact, Manning disavowed that she was, essentially, when claiming "transparency" was her only motive.

First, that's a helluva risk to take for "transparency." Second, Manning wasn't transparent, as far as I know, to about anyone as to wanting to be a transitioned transgender person at this time. Third, to the degree one has sexual identity problems, joining the military isn't a good idea in general, I think.

But, that leads to our other et als, especially as connected to Snowden.

We know he gave the two of them a boatload of shit. But, at times citing national security (and I know this mainly from Greenwald) most of it hasn't been published.

Why not?

Isn't "transparency" so important after all? Ames notes that at the time of the leaks, the word was a sort of shibboleth for Snowden as well as it had been for Manning.

And, if Snowden is as hack-skilled and tech-skilled as he claims, why didn't he set himself up as a personal WikiLeaks? Short of that, why didn't he go to the founder of the actual WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, and have him do a full document dump?

Even without Ames quoting Snowden's comments about Russia, I've long been suspicious of him. Indeed, I'm suspicious (as well as laughing at the hypocrisy) of Russia Today, whenever it writes about the U.S. constricting online freedom. Is Snowden feeding it tidbits?

Poitras, having made a documentary about Snowden, is emotionally and intellectually invested in carrying baggage of his mythos. So is Greenwald, who used this to bounce from The Guardian to help start up The Intercept with libertarian payola from Pierre Omidyar.

Ames concludes by cautioning once again against hero-worshipping leakers.

Perhaps he should have also cautioned against hero-worshipping those who turd-polish the myths about leakers.

I just warned you about two of them.

Beyond that, the word "transparency" is, by itself, a word with no larger meaning. As noted above, I can ask Snowden, or Greenwald, to be more transparent and wonder why they're not. Libertarian types (like them, to some degree), usually are slow to ask Big Biz to be more transparent, but have no problems with Big Biz forcing us to be more "transparent" with how much information we give them.