What kind of coward is Edward Snowden?

[MADem]

237. Big talk on the internet? Please.

I was responding, specifically, to a "What would you do?" question. Would you have preferred I offered instead a hearty "Fuck you, I won't respond to your inquiry?" Would that have been preferable?

Drake did not have a hope in hell of being heard, because DOD IG took the "con" on his issue (no doubt at the behest of actors within the Bush administration, for their own reasons) and the other elements to whom he complained were no doubt assured that his issues were being managed. I have said, repeatedly, that DOD IG was at the time the most fucked up, mendacious, lawless, heartless, soulless entity that Washington DC had seen in easily a half century. And that's putting it mildly. Even at that, in 2004, DOD IG prepared (but did not publicly release) a report that agreed with Drake, et. al.--whose complaints were less about the privacy issues and more about the sheer EXPENSE and inefficiency of the program. See http://www.washingtonian.com/blogs/capitalcomment/scene/indictment-continues-obama-administrations-war-on-leaks.php for background.

The salient bit:

The three former NSA officials and the congressional staffer were known to government investigators as early as September 2002, when they wrote to the Defense Department’s inspector general that senior NSA leaders had “defrauded the American taxpayer of hundreds and hundreds of millions” by investing in a computer system known as Trailblazer, which was designed to help the NSA pluck valuable clues on terrorist plots from the billions of phone calls, e-mails, and other electronic signals it intercepts on a regular basis.

The former officials and the ex-staffer believed that a rival program, called Thin Thread, could do a better job and would cost “one-tenth or less than the projected several billions of dollars cost of Trailblazer.” They also claimed Thin Thread, which was never fully deployed, was “NSA’s only real chance to have averted the 9/11 intelligence failure” by detecting the communications of the September 11 attackers before they struck.

And that was part of the problem. No one is denying it. The other part of the problem is that, after the report (which was not released) had been completed, Drake went to a reporter and shared material with her. That's where he ran afoul.

He would have been better off, in the climate of corruption that was endemic in the Bush administration, and IF his principal complaint was about PRIVACY, going to John Ashcroft back in 2002, rather than waiting three years and going to the press. Yes, indeed, Attorney General Ashcroft, who, with help from the Director of the FBI and a guy named Comey, achieved a small measure of "privacy rights" fame for fighting off asshole White House emissaries bearing an illegal authorization renewal from his hospital bed.

Remember Ashcroft? The dweeby, dinky wingnutty, on-the-wrong-side-of-most-progressive-issues evangelical who sang "Let the Eagle Soar?" The guy who got the AG job after he lost an election to a dead man?

He was actually a friend to the concept of privacy...but to point that out kind of ruins the narrative! It's much easier to paint him as a looming overlord, too...!

The Awful Truth:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/15/AR2007051500864_pf.html

... "He lifted his head off the pillow and in very strong terms expressed his view of the matter, rich in both substance and fact, which stunned me," Comey said. Then, he said, Ashcroft added: "But that doesn't matter, because I'm not the attorney general. There is the attorney general," and pointed at Comey, who was appointed acting attorney general when Ashcroft fell ill.

Later, Card ordered an 11 p.m. meeting at the White House. But Comey said he told Card that he would not go on his own, pulling then-Solicitor General Theodore Olson from a dinner party to serve as witness to anything Card or Gonzales told him. "After the conduct I had just witnessed, I would not meet with him without a witness present," Comey testified. "He replied, 'What conduct? We were just there to wish him well.' "

The next day, as terrorist bombs killed more than 200 commuters on rail lines in Madrid, the White House approved the executive order without any signature from the Justice Department certifying its legality. Comey responded by drafting his letter of resignation, effective the next day, March 12.

"I couldn't stay if the administration was going to engage in conduct that the Department of Justice had said had no legal basis," he said. "I just simply couldn't stay." Comey testified he was going to be joined in a mass resignation by some of the nation's top law enforcement officers: Ashcroft, Mueller, Ayres and Comey's own chief of staff.

Ayres persuaded Comey to delay his resignation, Comey testified. "Mr. Ashcroft's chief of staff asked me something that meant a great deal to him, and that is that I not resign until Mr. Ashcroft was well enough to resign with me," he said.....

At the end of the day, though, Snowden is no Drake, he's no Comey, he's no -- irony of ironies--Ashcroft. He's a guy who took a job to grab a bunch of shit, and then ran to Hong Kong, land of the free, home of the brave...? If he wasn't being managed by some entity, he's terribly stupid. And no matter how he ended up in a transit terminal in Moscow, he has to be starting to feel that his Grand Plan didn't quite work out the way he intended...he's still desperately looking for a place where he'll be greeted as a liberator--and that's been slow going for him.