A hero unraveled. Edward Snowden took security job for the sole purpose of exposing NSA, and allowed China to drain four laptops worth of top secret information.

Courtesy of the South China Morning Post: 

Edward Snowden secured a job with a US government contractor for one reason alone - to obtain evidence of Washington's cyberspying networks, the South China Morning Post can reveal. 

For the first time, Snowden has admitted he sought a position at Booz Allen Hamilton so he could collect proof about the US National Security Agency's secret surveillance programmes ahead of planned leaks to the media. 

"My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked," he told the Post on June 12. "That is why I accepted that position about three months ago." 

During a live global online chat last week, Snowden also stated he took pay cuts "in the course of pursuing specific work". He said: "Booz was not the most I've been paid." 

He spent the time collecting a cache of classified documents as a computer systems administrator at Booz Allen Hamilton. 

In his interview with the Post, Snowden divulged information that he claimed showed hacking by the NSA into computers in Hong Kong and the mainland. 

"I did not release them earlier because I don't want to simply dump huge amounts of documents without regard to their content," he said. 

"I have to screen everything before releasing it to journalists." 

Asked if he specifically went to Booz Allen Hamilton to gather evidence of surveillance, he replied: "Correct on Booz."

Not only did Snowden seek employment with Booz Allen for the purpose of exposing secret American programs, he also seems to have allowed the Chinese government complete access to the stolen information contained on the four laptops in his possession, much of which could have been data mined from Americans through phone calls and e-mails.

Courtesy of the New York Times:

Two Western intelligence experts, who worked for major government spy agencies, said they believed that the Chinese government had managed to drain the contents of the four laptops that Mr. Snowden said he brought to Hong Kong, and that he said were with him during his stay at a Hong Kong hotel.

I have been asked my opinion on Mr. Snowden and here it is.

While I think learning about these programs and recognizing that our government, and yes that includes President Obama, lied to us is an important and necessary thing to learn, I do not think that how Edward Snowden went about this is defensible, nor do I trust his motives.

As for Glenn Greenwald, I am not a fan and believe that if a better journalist had been the one to break this story Snowden would not be gallivanting around the country dropping our personal information, and top Secret data, all over the world like a tipsy businessman into the ear of a $200 streetwalker.

And I don't know about you, but I have a LOT of unanswered questions. Such as who was Snowden working with, and HOW did he know that working for Booz Allen would connect him to the data he was looking for?

My other question is how did Booz Allen Hamilton get so goddam big so goddamn fast?

Even if Snowden did not intend to allow this information to fall into the hands of those who would do us harm, the fact that he took the data out of the country, suddenly making it vulnerable to spies, and then transported it into countries that have difficult if not adversarial relationships with America, makes him either incredibly naive or a traitor to his country.