So it turns out that the FBI was actually pretty sure that one of Trump's campaign advisers was secretly working as a Russian spy. Update!

Spy? Do I look like a spy to you?

Courtesy of WaPo: 

The FBI obtained a secret court order last summer to monitor the communications of an adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, part of an investigation into possible links between Russia and the campaign, law enforcement and other U.S. officials said. 

The FBI and the Justice Department obtained the warrant targeting Carter Page’s communications after convincing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power, in this case Russia, according to the officials. 

This is the clearest evidence so far that the FBI had reason to believe during the 2016 presidential campaign that a Trump campaign adviser was in touch with Russian agents. Such contacts are now at the center of an investigation into whether the campaign coordinated with the Russian government to swing the election in Trump’s favor.

The article goes on to say that currently Page is not officially accused of a crime, nor is there any certainty that he will be in the future.


This by the way is NOT the "incidental collection" of data which Devon Nunes spoke of last month.

This is a full blown investigation into somebody that the FBI was able to convince a federal judge poses a serious threat.

Here's more:

The government’s application for the surveillance order targeting Page included a lengthy declaration that laid out investigators’ basis for believing that Page was an agent of the Russian government and knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of Moscow, officials said. 

Among other things, the application cited contacts that he had with a Russian intelligence operative in New York City in 2013, officials said. Those contacts had earlier surfaced in a federal espionage case brought by the Justice Department against the intelligence operative and two other Russian agents. In addition, the application said Page had other contacts with Russian operatives that have not been publicly disclosed, officials said.

For his part Carter Page said this:  

“This confirms all of my suspicions about unjustified, politically motivated government surveillance,” Page said in an interview Tuesday. “I have nothing to hide.” He compared surveillance of him to the eavesdropping that the FBI and Justice Department conducted against civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Oh yeah, Carter Page is JUST like MLK.

Let's not forget that even the Russians who recruited him thought Carter Page was "an idiot."

I will go out on a limb and suggest that there may be a few more of these FISA court orders for other members of Trump's campaign, and current administration, that we just have not heard about yet.

Update: Like I said. 

Source: Carter Page isn't the only Trump campaign ally who was the subject of a FISA warrant. A second target was recorded also. Tick tock..

— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) April 12, 2017

British press rallies around MI-6 spy who assembled dossier that Donald Trump calls "fake news."

Courtesy of Business Insider: 

There has been an avalanche of support for Steele's credentials in the British press over the past two days, the cumulative effect of which has been to add credibility to the unproven allegations against the US president-elect. Here are some key things we now know about Steele: 

Steele was head of MI6’s Russia desk. He worked at Britain's intelligence service for years and was a highly regarded specialist on Russia, according to The Guardian. He served in Paris and Moscow in the 1990s before retiring. He now runs the intelligence company Orbis Business Intelligence with Christopher Burrows, a former British Foreign Office counsellor. 

He has a network of sources in Russia. The New York Times said he was known for "his knowledge of the intricate web of Kremlin-tied companies and associates that control Russia." He called on these contacts to compile the allegations against Trump. 

Steele has been trusted by the FBI and others with sensitive work.Reuters reported that the intelligence expert supplied the FBI with information on corruption at football's world governing body, FIFA, in 2010. He also gathered intelligence on Russia for England's 2018 World Cup bid. Russia ultimately triumphed during the bidding process. 

He has friends in high places. Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Moscow who helped alert US intelligence to the dossier, said Steele was a "very competent professional operator."

Well that doesn't sound like the sort of professional who simply traffics in gossip and innuendo.

Which was also the conclusion of David Corn who writes for Mother Jones, who interviewed Steele and had this to say:

I also was able to review the memos the former spy had written, and I quoted a few key portions in my article. I did not report the specific allegations—especially the lurid allegations about Trump's personal behavior—because they could not be confirmed. The newsworthy story at this point was that a credible intelligence official had provided information to the FBI alleging Moscow had tried to cultivate and compromise a presidential candidate. And the issue at hand—at a time when the FBI was publicly disclosing information about its investigation of Hillary Clinton's handling of her email at the State Department—was whether the FBI had thoroughly investigated these allegations related to Russia and Trump. I also didn't post the memos, as BuzzFeed did this week, because the documents contained information about the former spy's sources that could place these people at risk. 

When I spoke with the former spy, he appeared confident about his material—acknowledging these memos were works in progress—and genuinely concerned about the implications of the allegations. He came across as a serious and somber professional who was not eager to talk to a journalist or cause a public splash. He realized he was taking a risk, but he seemed duty bound to share information he deemed crucial. He noted that these allegations deserved a "substantial inquiry" within the FBI. Yet so far, the FBI has not yet said whether such an investigation has been conducted. As the former spy said to me, "The story has to come out."

At first the former spy was working for Republicans looking for dirt on Trump, but after the election they no longer seemed to care. However Streele himself felt that the information was too important to keep secret so he started looking for ways to disseminate it pro bono.

Here was his reasoning:

Mr Steele also decided to pass on information to both British and American intelligence officials after concluding that such material should not just be in the hands of political opponents of Mr Trump, who had hired his services, but was a matter of national security for both countries. 

However, say security sources, Mr Steele became increasingly frustrated that the FBI was failing to take action on the intelligence from others as well as him. He came to believe there was a cover-up, that a cabal within the Bureau blocked a thorough inquiry into Mr Trump, focusing instead on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. 

It should also be noted that Steele was the agent who exposed the corruption within FIFA, a scandal that had international repercussions. Which only cements his reputation as a very professional and capable investigator.

Of course since all of this has come out this gentleman has gone underground, and there are reports that he is "terrified for his family's safety."

Maybe it's just me, but it seems that if this man was willing to sacrifice so much to get this information exposed to the public, that it behooves various media outlets around the world to at the very least work hard to either confirm or denounce it.

Right now it appears that Penthouse magazine might be taking the lead on that front: 

Adult magazine Penthouse has received three claims for its $1 million offer to anyone who could provide real tapes of President-elect Donald Trump’s alleged and unproven sexual escapades at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow, the publication’s editor exclusively revealed to International Business Times Thursday.

I for one don't think this story is dead yet, and I am more than a little interested in seeing where it goes. 

Mother Jones reports on former spy who reveals that Donald Trump's connections to Russia and Vladimir Putin are even more troubling than we thought.

Courtesy of Mother Jones: 

In June, the former Western intelligence officer—who spent almost two decades on Russian intelligence matters and who now works with a US firm that gathers information on Russia for corporate clients—was assigned the task of researching Trump's dealings in Russia and elsewhere, according to the former spy and his associates in this American firm. This was for an opposition research project originally financed by a Republican client critical of the celebrity mogul. (Before the former spy was retained, the project's financing switched to a client allied with Democrats.) "It started off as a fairly general inquiry," says the former spook, who asks not to be identified. But when he dug into Trump, he notes, he came across troubling information indicating connections between Trump and the Russian government. According to his sources, he says, "there was an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit." 

This was, the former spy remarks, "an extraordinary situation." He regularly consults with US government agencies on Russian matters, and near the start of July on his own initiative—without the permission of the US company that hired him—he sent a report he had written for that firm to a contact at the FBI, according to the former intelligence officer and his American associates, who asked not to be identified. (He declines to identify the FBI contact.) The former spy says he concluded that the information he had collected on Trump was "sufficiently serious" to share with the FBI. 

Mother Jones has reviewed that report and other memos this former spy wrote. The first memo, based on the former intelligence officer's conversations with Russian sources, noted, "Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance." It maintained that Trump "and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals." It claimed that Russian intelligence had "compromised" Trump during his visits to Moscow and could "blackmail him." It also reported that Russian intelligence had compiled a dossier on Hillary Clinton based on "bugged conversations she had on various visits to Russia and intercepted phone calls."

The former intelligence officer also reports that the FBI responded with "shock and horror" at the information provided and asked for all of his info.

The former spy also claims that there is an ongoing investigation at the agency.

Now of course Trump supporters would undoubtedly dismiss this as a partisan hack job by a liberal media outlet, however it is only the latest in a long list of serious allegations about the connections between Trump and Russia.

And those now include news that the FBI is also investigating Trump's former campaign manager  Paul Manafort.

I have been sold on the fact that Putin is pulling Trump's strings for awhile now, and I think it only serves to underscore the importance of keeping his lunatic out of the White House. 

And the fact that the Republican party continues to support his candidacy just goes to prove that everything that they have claimed to be true about their party is just so much horse shit.

Edward Snowden regrets participating in staged Q and A with Putin. Gee, ya think?

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

NSA leaker Edward Snowden instantly regretted asking Russian President Vladimir Putin a softball question on live television about the Kremlin’s mass surveillance effort, two sources close to the leaker tell The Daily Beast. 

“It certainly didn’t go as he would’ve hoped,” one of these sources said. “I don’t think there’s any shame in saying that he made an error in judgment.” “He basically viewed the question as his first foray into criticizing Russia. 

He was genuinely surprised that in reasonable corridors it was seen as the opposite,” added Ben Wizner, the American Civil Liberties Union attorney who serves as one of Snowden’s closest advisers. According to Wizner and others, Snowden hadn’t realized how much last week’s Q&A—with Putin blithely assuring Snowden that Moscow had no such eavesdropping programs—would appear to be a Kremlin propaganda victory to Western eyes. 

Snowden’s camp wouldn’t get into the specifics of how his question made it onto the live broadcast on Russian state television. But it is worth noting that Anatoly Kucherena, Snowden’s Russian lawyer, has deep Kremlin ties and sits on the board that oversees the FSB, the successor to the KGB. Getting on state television wouldn’t have been much trouble. 

The article goes on to quote Snowden's camp as claiming that Snowden genuinely thought he could catch Putin in a lie, and that he would prove to the western world that he was not a Russian stooge.

Now color me as a skeptic here, but this reads like damage control to me.

As the article pointed out, Snowden's Russian lawyer has deep ties to the KGB, just like Putin, and appears to me as more of a handler than a lawyer.

So if a former KGB operative is controlling the message read by an American defector, what in the world would make somebody supposedly as smart as Edward Snowden believe that he would be allowed to ask a question live and on the air that Putin had not been prepared to answer?

Which clearly he was: 

Putin’s answer was predictable.  

“Of course, we know that criminals and terrorists use technology for their criminal acts and of course the special services have to use technical means to respond to their crimes,” he said. “But we don’t have a mass-scale, uncontrollable efforts like that…Our special services…are strictly controlled by the society and the law, and are regulated by the law.”

As the Daily Beast article points out that is a blatant, and obvious lie. 

Yet it was left to hang there, unchallenged by Snowden, or anybody else involved in the interview session.

That meant that to Russian and American ears, Edward Snowden, the man who revealed duplicity with the NSA here at home, had just provided Putin with a get out of domestic spying free card.

There is no goddamn way that he could not have seen that coming!

So I call bullshit on the Q and A, and I call bullshit on this attempt to cover his ass.

No longer up for discussion, Edward Snowden is a traitor.

The other day Vladimir Putin did a televised propaganda outreach.

During the carefully manipulated session, there was a "surprise" caller.

Courtesy of NBC News:  

NSA leaker Edward Snowden put a direct question to Vladimir Putin during a live televised question-and-answer session Thursday, asking Russia's president about Moscow's use of mass surveillance on its citizens. 

Speaking via a video link, Snowden asked: "I've seen little public discussion of Russia's own involvement in the policies of mass surveillance, so I'd like to ask you: Does Russia intercept, store or analyze, in any way, the communications of millions of individuals?" 

Putin replied by stating Russia did not carry out mass surveillance on its population, and that its intelligence operations were strictly regulated by court orders. 

"Mr Snowden, you are a former agent, a spy, I used to work for the intelligence service, we are going to talk one professional language," Putin said, according to translation by state-run broadcaster Russia Today. 

"Our intelligence efforts are strictly regulated by our law so...you have to get a court permission to stalk that particular person. 

"We don't have as much money as they have in the States and we don't have these technical devices that they have in the States. Our special services, thank God, are strictly controlled by society and the law and regulated by the law." 

He added: "Of course, we know that terrorists and criminals use technology so we have to use means to respond to these, but we don't have uncontrollable efforts like [in America]." 

One of the call-in program's hosts introduced Snowden's video message by saying: "We've got really sensational, really outrageous video message from a person who revolutionized the world by leaking information about American secret services."

So the Snowden has now completely transformed himself from a "reluctant whistle blower who felt compelled to reveal the NSA's data gathering techniques" to a propaganda tool for an ex-KGB agent turned Russian tyrant, who identified him directly "a former agent, a spy."

There is nothing to take from this except for the fact that Snowden did indeed provide Russia with the material that he took from is time working for Booz Allen Hamilton, and that now he is functioning as fully cooperating operative of the Putin administration.

One who is now allowing Putin to shrug off charges of being a despot by using the NSA scandal to provide cover for his actions, and to paint him as more sympathetic character, while blaming the Ukrainian situation on interference from President Obama. A tactic that is helped in no small way by John McCain and conservatives in this country. 

Earlier there had been speculation that the information Snowden provided Putin might have been what enabled Putin to slip Russian forces into Crimea undetected, and I think this is just one more piece of evidence which supports that contention.

I think for those who are still supporters of Edward Snowden there are some very serious, and very troubling questions you have to ask yourself.

Number one is was Snowden a Russian spy all along?

After three year investigation, Scotland Yard deems case of MI6 spy found dead and locked in a bag, an accident. I'm sorry, what? Update!

Courtesy of the Guardian:  

The MI6 spy found dead in a bag three years ago probably locked himself in the holdall and died as a result of a tragic accident, Scotland Yard has said. 

Outlining the results of a three-year investigation on Wednesday, the Metropolitan police said Gareth Williams most likely died alone in his flat. 

But Detective Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt said the police could not "fundamentally and beyond doubt" rule out the possibility that a third party was involved in his death. 

Williams's naked body was found in the padlocked bag, with the keys discovered under his body, in the otherwise empty bath in his flat in Pimlico, central London, in August 2010. 

Last year, a coroner concluded that Williams was probably unlawfully killed and his death the result of a criminal act. Following an eight-day inquest, the Westminster coroner, Dr Fiona Wilcox, said he was probably either suffocated or poisoned, before a third party locked and placed the bag in the bath. 

But Hewitt said Scotland Yard's three-year inquiry had come to a different conclusion and that Williams was "most probably" alone when he died. 

"Despite all of this considerable effort, it is still the case that there is insufficient evidence to be definitive on the circumstances that led to Gareth's death," he said. 

"Rather, what we are left with is either individual pieces of evidence, or a lack of such evidence, that can logically support one of a number of hypotheses." 

Hewitt added that the investigation had added "some clarity and detail" to the case, but that "no evidence has been identified to establish the full circumstances of Gareth's death beyond all reasonable doubt".

Look I don't want to tell Scotland Yard how to do their job but.....no scratch that, I really DO want to tell them how to do their job. 

Listen when you find a naked dead guy locked in a bag, with the keys on the OUTSIDE of the bag, that pretty much rules out "accidental death."

I mean don't you think?

Seriously DON'T you think?

even if we were to entertain the possibility that this guy some hoe got off on zipping himself up naked in various pieces of luggage, HOW would locking the bag enhance that experience?

And while we are on the subject HOW in the fuck do you lock a bag from the inside, while leaving the keys on the outside?

My new rules is that if I am ever inclined to kill anybody I am flying us both to England first because apparently there you can get away with ANYTHING!

Update: Okay it appears that I read the part about the keys incorrectly, and that they were inside the bag instead of outside the bag. This changes the story from completely impossible to virtually impossible. 

I continue to stand by my WTF response however.

This should give those who support Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald a moment of pause.

Greenwald: NSA Has Trillions of Telephone Calls in Databases http://t.co/XSxNudbbPu
— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) July 29, 2013

Greenwald on James Clapper: It’s Amazing He Hasn’t Been Prosecuted and Still Has His Job http://t.co/Y8TyTcScKt
— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) July 29, 2013

Look it does not NECESSARILY mean that just because Sarah Palin and Breitbart News are on your side that your side is wrong. But it certainly doesn't help.

Here is an Edward Snowden Timeline which might give you pause.

Edward Snowden in Moscow Airports, sitting next to Sarah Harrison of Wikileaks

Courtesy of Joshua Foust:  

July 18, 2012: Wikileaks is reported to be nearing bankruptcy due to a freeze-out by banks. 

December 2012: Freedom of the Press Foundation, which has Glenn Greenwald and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras on their board of directors, announces their launch with the explicit purpose of funneling money to Wikileaks. 

December 2012: According to Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden first emailed him, anonymously. In an interview with Harpers, Greenwald says he initially ignored the emails. 

January, 2013: Edward Snowden contacted documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, according to an interview in Salon. Poitras notes her familiarity with encryption methods thanks to her close contact with Wikileaks for a previous film, and her involvement with TOR developer and hacker Jacob Appelbaum (who was investigated for his ties to Wikileaks in 2011). 

February-May 2013: Snowden exchanges emails with Greenwald and Poitras, according to the Washington Post, but does not reveal his identity. 

March, 2013: Snowden takes “infrastructure analyst” job at Booz Allen Hamilton for the explicit purpose of stealing documents from the NSA, according to an interview he gave the South China Morning Post. 

April, 2013: Jacob Appelbaum goes on vacation in Hawaii, according to a June 25 talk he gave in Berlin (approximately 25:30 into the video). He does not report having any contact with Snowden. 

May 1, 2013: A real estate agent in Hawaii says Snowden and his girlfriend moved out of their house, but did not know where they went afterward. 

May, 2013: Poitras and Appelbaum conduct an interview via encrypted email with Snowden, asking detailed technical questions to ensure Snowden possessed the skills and knowledge he claimed. Appelbaum says in an interview in Der Spiegel that he did not know Snowden’s identity. Appelbaum does not release any further details about the content of the technical discussion. 

Early May, 2013: Snowden “indirectly” contacts Barton Gellman (the meaning of “indirectly” is unclear), who begins working on the PRISM story at the Washington Post. 

May 16, 2013: Snowden directly communicates with Gellman for the first time (the meanings of “direct” and “indirect” are unclear). 

May 20, 2013: Snowden flees Hawaii for Hong Kong, winding up in the Mira Hotel. 

May 24, 2013: Snowden tells Gellman of his desire to apply for asylum in Iceland, then asks Gellman to “publish — within 72 hours — the full text of a PowerPoint presentation describing PRISM.” When Gellman balks, Snowden apparently contacts Greenwald. 

June 6, 2013: The Guardian publishes the first in its ongoing cache of documents provided by Snowden. 

June 9, 2013: The Guardian reveals Edward Snowden as the source of the leaks and publishes the first of two video interviews with him. Snowden says of his leaking: “I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong.” 

June 10, 2013: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange praises Snowden as a hero from the Ecuadorian embassy in London. 

June 10, 2013: Snowden checks out of the Mira Hotel in Hong Kong, whereabouts unknown. 

June 19, 2013: Assange says Wikileaks is giving Snowden legal counsel and helping him “broker” asylum. 

June 22, 2013: A New York Times story included “a person familiar with the case” saying Snowden was staying at an apartment under Hong Kong police protection. It is removed within 24 hours.

 June 23, 2013: Snowden leaves for Moscow. The Wall Street Journal reports that Wikileaks advised Snowden to leave Hong Kong; fearing a loss of internet access, he does. A source tells the WSJ no Chinese officials were involved in his departure; a New York Times report disagrees. Izvestia, a state-owned Russian newspaper, writes that the Kremlin and its intelligence services collaborated with Wikileaks to help Snowden escape from Hong Kong (Wikileaks did not mention any official involvement in Snowden’s departure from Hong Kong in their press statements). 

June 28, 2013: The AP reports that the transit hotel where Snowden is staying costs $300 per night. 

July 4, 2013: Israel Shamir, a Wikileaks spokesman (Wikileaks denies this, but former Wikileaks employees insist he worked closely with Julian Assange. Shamir had earlier helped Belarussian dictator Alexandr Lukashenka oppress dissidents with Wikileaks data, and was placed in charge of editing Russian-language cables), praises Snowden to Zavtra, an anti-Semitic Russian-nationalist magazine edited by Alexander Prokhanov (whose own background of communism and anti-Semitism is worth noting). Shamir favorably compares Snowden to renowned British defector Kim Philby. 

July 9, 2013: Bernd Fix, a fundraiser for Wikileaks, says the group has gone from raising €2,000 a month in 2012 to €1,000 a day, still below the group’s high of €20,000 a month in 2010.

There's  more, a lot more, and all of it backed up with links, but you get the idea.

So the question, besides Snowden's motives, is WHO has been helping Snowden, and what are THEIR motives?

It also should be noted that Russia has not officially given Snowden asylum, and that Eric Holder issued a letter to Russia saying that if returned Snowden would not be executed, nor face torture.

Which may mean that he is in no way out of the woods yet. In fact the Russian woods may be much worse for him in the long run than anything he might face in the United States.

The tide of public opinion has turned on Edward Snowden.

Courtesy of Business Insider: 

The American public's views of National Security Agency leak source Edward Snowden have flipped in the past month, according to one poll — and now most support him being charged with a crime. 

According to the ABC-Washington Post poll, 53% say that Snowden should be charged with a crime after exposing a trove of NSA secrets, compared with 36% who disagree. That's a sharp turn from the point immediately after his revelations in June, when Americans opposed him being charged by a 48-43 margin. 

According to the ABC-WaPo poll, 57% of Americans believe that it is more important for the NSA to "investigate possible terrorist threats, even if that intrudes on personal privacy" — the Obama administration's justification for the programs. Only 39% think it's more important for the government not to intrude on personal privacy, "even if that limits its ability to investigate possible terrorist threats." 

You know I am one who was very upset to learn that the Bush era domestic surveillance had not only continued but that it had expanded. However Snowden was never a sympathetic figure in my mind, and I was always suspicious of his motivations.

Now that he is hiding from the authorities in Vladimir Putin's Russia I have nothing but disdain for him and believe that if he ever DID have a crack at heroism he pissed it away the day he landed in that Moscow airport. Or perhaps even earlier when he landed in the Hong Kong airport.

If Snowden had really wanted to become a martyr that people would rally around he needed to stay in America and make sure the details of the American NSA program were made public to Americans, and NOT make them vulnerable to America's enemies.

I am not a nationalist but this to me is treason, and may NOT have been considered so if he had made it a top priority to protect his country as well as the sensitive information of its citizens.

Believe me I have a completely different emotional response to learning that MY country is scooping up my data then I do if I find out that Russia is now capable of doing so as well.

Despite what his original intent may have been, is Edward Snowden now, for all intents and purposes, a Russian spy?

"I have made a terrible mistake."

Courtesy of Business Insider: 

Russian attorney Anatoly Kucherena — who also happens to be the head of public council for the Federal Security Service (FSB) — has announced that Edward Snowden may leave the Moscow airport on Wednesday. 

His next destination: Russia. 

That's right, he's likely not going too far. 

We also know that Snowden supposedly said he has no plans to travel to Latin America because at this time, he thought it too dangerous to travel. 

How do we know that? Well, Kucherena said Snowden said it, of course. 

Not only does Kucherena run the FSB's public council, but it seems he runs Snowdens public relations as well — he "helped" Snowden apply for temporary asylum, he relayed Snowden's "promise" not to hurt the U.S. anymore, and he announced Snowden's (very own) idea about possibly applying for Russian citizenship with the intent to stay for a while and "learn Russian culture." 

Okay so Snowden's Svengali, Glenn Greenwald, has insisted that the NSA blueprint and other sensitive material in Snowden's possession have NOT fallen into the Chinese or Russian hands, are we now to believe that Putin, the ex-KGB spy, is NOT going to make Snowden's request for asylum contingent on gaining access to that information?

No, not even Snowden's most ardent admirers can possibly believe that Putin has not either already surfed through the documentation in Snowden's possession, or soon will.

You know I have struggled with my interpretation of Snowden, as either a good guy, a bad guy, or a fucking moron. But I really think his decision to go to Russia, and to trust Putin, clears that right up. 

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.

Edward Snowden on way to Ecuador. So what do we think of this?

Courtesy of RT News:  

The plane carrying whistleblower Edward Snowden has landed at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. The former CIA contractor, who left Hong Kong in a bid to elude US extradition on espionage charges, is on his way to a ‘third country’ via Russia. 

Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino announced via twitter that Snowden had applied for asylum. 

Interfax news agency is citing an unnamed source in Sheremetyevo airport management, saying that Snowden is still at the airport. 

"Snowden is a transit passenger, his next flight is to Cuba, he remains in the airport complex – where he’s supposed to be, waiting for the next flight," the source said. 

A source at Aeroflot Russian Airlines told the agency that the whistleblower, who is accompanied by WikiLeaks representative, Sarah Harrison, has rented a suit at the airport’s «V-Express» Capsule Hotel. 

“He arrived. But he can’t leave the terminal because he doesn’t have a Russian visa,” the source said. 

Two cars with diplomatic license plates of Ecuador – the country named among Snowden’s possible destinations – were spotted at Sheremetyevo airport. 

Ecuador’s ambassador to Russia, Patricio Chavez, arrived at Sheremetyevo Airport after Edward Snowden's plane touched down in Moscow. 

Okay I am not going to prejudice any discussion by telling all of you what I am thinking about this whole thing right now, though I ma thinking quite a lot actually, and instead open up the floor to discussion on whether you think Snowden a hero, a criminal, a dupe, or a facade for others to hide behind.

I will weigh in with one opinion however. I saw Glenn Greenwald on MTP today, and he came off as a complete asshole. Not that assholes can't be right, but he did not do himself too many favors with his attitude and arrogance.

I'm just saying.