Here's Why Snowden Plea Negotiations Are Going Nowhere

[struggle4progress]

12. Here's what the Church Committee says early in its Volume V

on the NSA:

... The value of its work has been and will continue to be inestimable. We are determined not to impair the excellent contributions made by the NSA to the defense of our country. To make sure this committee does not interfere with ongoing intelligence activities, we have had to be exceedingly careful, for the techniques of the NSA are of the most sensitive and fragile character. We have prepared ourselves exhaustively; we have circumscribed the area of inquiry to include only those that represent abuses of power; and we have planned the format for today's hearing with great care, so as not to venture beyond our stated objectives ... NSA has been cooperative with the committee ...

The Report is available at the Senate Intelligence website

You are free, I suppose, to make whatever ideological presuppositions you wish, regarding what material, among the 1.5 million documents alleged obtained by Snowden, might or might not have been known by other governments before the materials were released. But such presuppositions must be regarded as speculative. Snowden himself could not possibly have evaluated 1.5 million pages before releasing them

To date, several of his releases have provoked diplomatic crises between other nations

Nor is there any real evidence that anyone in particular in is control of Snowden's materials. Assange, for example, recently released some material Greenwald loudly refused to release. The Register recently published material, allegedly from Snowden, about UK tapping of cables in the Middle East -- and what connection could that possibly have to your defense that Snowden is merely alerting Americans to the dangers of domestic surveillance?

The fact is: the Snowden case is really rather opaque. Is he a well-intended but naive wonder-boy? Is he a wannabe Chinese agent, a US agent planted in Russia, or an NSA contractor recruited by the Russians, or a double agent, or a triple agent? Did the NSA discover he was trying to download files and sucker him into downloading a bit of sexy stuff and a lot of trash? We could be deep in Mirror-Puzzle-Land here, so there's really no way to know

The domestic surveillance issues are certainly winnable political fights if approached properly -- but hitching that wagon to Snowden is a losing proposition. The nicest view one could hold of Snowden is that he seems bright and well-intentioned but is fundamentally bonkers. A lot of Americans will gladly climb on a wagon fluttering flags No Domestic Surveillance! And at least half of them will jump right back off if the wagon also flies banners Let's Tell Our Spy Secrets to Other Countries!