Is there specific evidence that Edward Snowden is a spy for Russia?

[struggle4progress]

23. With Snowden, we enter the mad mirror-puzzle world of intelligence/counter-intelligence

His background, as reported by media, is somewhat blurry: into the army, back out of the army; time in various community college courses; into a minor CIA position, then back out; perhaps some NSA employment; here and there with various "security" contractors ... It's difficult to get much of a definite fix on him

Unless he's just incredibly good, Russian intelligence is very unlikely to have used him to get sensitive information they really wanted, since such information can lose value quickly as the opponent becomes aware of the nature of the breach

On the other hand, it remains possible than Russian intelligence/counter-intelligence has used him in other ways: for example, to cause costly disruption of US networks by requiring US intelligence to cover a large number of possible breaches, due to uncertainty about exactly what may have been disclosed; or to distract attention from some other more limited but more damaging breach that may not yet have been discovered. Distraction is nothing new in the mirror-puzzle world: during WWI, Mata Hari was probably accused of spying to divert attention from a real spy (and this was bad luck for her, since she was executed for it)

More generally, the Russian state might also find it convenient to support him, for various geopolitical propaganda advantages

In the mirror-puzzle world, it seems likely that Russian intelligence/counter-intelligence has and will make use of Snowden's flight to Russia to drop hints (honest or dishonest) to US intelligence/counter-intelligence about what they may have learned from Snowden, or about their own relations to Snowden, in hopes of learning something by monitoring reactions

On the other side, there's the possibility that he is a US intelligence/counter-intelligence operative, intended to be planted in China or Russian; and Chinese suspicions of that may account for China's failure to harbor him. Even if that is not the case, US intelligence/counter-intelligence is itself likely to to drop hints (honest or dishonest) to Russian intelligence/counter-intelligence about what Snowden might know, also in hopes of learning something by monitoring reactions

A rather less likely possibility is that he himself could have been duped by US intelligence/counter-intelligence into carting away a number of essentially worthless documents, that seem sexy on first glance, to prevent attention to other possibly more damaging disclosures. Some observers, of the Church Committee hearings years ago, believed the CIA deliberately handed the Committee sexy-sounding material to prevent discovery of other covert operations

If you demand provable conclusions, you're largely going to out of luck. The problem is that everybody involved in this story is likely to bullshizz. Snowden himself hasn't been terribly honest about what he's actually done, and the coverage isn't always very accurate. Official responses in the US have ranged from "what a damaging breach!" to"nothing he has is important," and from "we really have no idea what he took" to "we think know exactly what he took" -- which, of course, is only to be expected in the mirror-puzzle world. Similarly, Russian intelligence simultaneously denies connection with him -- but in Russia he gets a lawyer with close ties to Russian intelligence.