There is no way this Snowden guy is on the level.

[muriel_volestrangler]

75. I doubt they thought you were 'secure' because of your academic qualifications

Your qualifications would have been relevant to the work you did; whether they trust you is from the background check - for which I've not seen anything that say Snowden would have had a problem (before this, of course). He'd been in the army, for instance - which is an indication another part of the government had basic trust in him to follow orders. The nearest we've seen to political activity is donating to Ron Paul - which happened after he'd started working with the NSA. So they saw him, certainly at the start, as someone who wouldn't cause problems.

I don't think that you should "assume that none of this happened to Snowden". I've seen nothing to indicate that. He seems to have started off as a physical security guard. That would probably involve some basic use of computers; if it was clear he understood computer use well, someone may have then thought it worth moving him into IT security. Not the person inventing new forms of secure communication, but the guy who keeps access list records, deals with problems when new access is needed, maybe keeps anti-virus protection up to date on a network, that kind of thing.