© The GuardianNSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, an analyst with a U.S. defence contractor, is seen in this still image taken from video during an interview by The Guardian in his hotel room in Hong Kong June 6, 2013. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro offered asylum to former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden on July 5, 2013 in defiance of Washington, which is demanding his arrest for divulging details of secret U.S. spy programs.
But who exactly is Edward Snowden?
This is a question that not very many people have asked. Much of what has been revealed by Snowden only confirms what many have been saying about the NSA for well over a decade. The only difference is that prior to the Snowden leaks, people who talked about the extent of the NSA's surveillance programs were dismissed as conspiracy theorists. Now it is an accepted fact that the NSA spies on and collects data on almost anything you could possibly imagine.
Despite this, there is something very fishy about the Snowden narrative when you take into consideration his alleged background with the U.S. Army, the CIA and other government institutions. Not to mention the comical events that transpired after he fled the country to Hong Kong and later Russia. He just has the look and feel of a character invented by media hype and propaganda. Although we'll never know his true intentions, it is highly probable that these leaks were allowed on-purpose so the U.S. government could indirectly reveal to the world the full extent of the NSA's capabilities. This possibility is worth considering since a press conference announcing these activities would not be a workable course of action. With dissent on the rise and independent voices in the alternative media doing severe damage to the credibility of the U.S. government, these leaks may have been sanctioned as a way to discourage free speech and growing dissent against American imperialism.
Let's take a look at some of the recent NSA related stories that have come out in recent weeks and months.
NSA Gathers Data On Social Connections Of U.S. Citizens
NSA Disguised Itself As Google To Spy Say Reports
NSA Spied On Brazilian and Mexican Presidents
NSA Is Also Grabbing Millions Of Credit Card Records
Protesting NSA Spying Brazil's Leader Postpones White House Visit
The NSA Is Reading All The Stuff You Think You Have Encrypted
NSA Shares Raw Intelligence Including Americans' Data With Israel
NSA Is Wired Into Top Internet Companies' Servers, Including Google and Facebook
These are just a small number of the many NSA related stories that have come out since the Snowden leaks. Much of what is discussed in these articles are just further details surrounding what was already known about the NSA's spying capabilities. This new information simply confirms much of what was already public knowledge.
It is extremely hard to believe that the most well-funded and sophisticated data collection organization in existence could suffer such an enormous document leak detailing its high level operations from anyone even if they had broader network access like Snowden. Snowden in particular was a contract employee who had only held this position for a few months so it is difficult to understand how this even happened in the first place.
Prior to the leaks, the NSA had roughly 1,000 systems administrators on staff many of which had to be exclusively focused on information security. Either this is a case of gross professional incompetence or the leaks were part of a sanctioned operation. The fact that he was just able to grab a treasure trove of files, copy it on to a USB drive and walk out with little difficulty sounds like fantasy. Perhaps a combination of government incompetence and an ulterior motive were at play but it still doesn't add up.
Another question is Snowden's supposed background which upon close analysis seems very odd. We are told that he enlisted in the U.S. Army as a Special Forces recruit but was discharged after breaking both of his legs in a training accident. This doesn't make sense because the U.S. Army wouldn't discharge someone just because their legs were broken. They would be allowed to heal and would resume training once they were 100%. The U.S. Army won't discharge somebody unless they feel as if they have no other choice. His alleged discharge also happened at around the same time when stop loss policies were put into place to prevent people from leaving due to the on-going Iraq war so who knows how true all of this is. The U.S. Army has not released his DD-214 or discharge papers so much of this is difficult to confirm.
Following Snowden's alleged training accident he found work as a security guard for the Center for Advanced Study of Language at the University of Maryland. Shortly after his security guard work, he landed a job at the CIA dealing with information technology (IT) security. How does one go from being a security guard to working at the CIA in IT security with no prior IT job experience or credentials? Snowden claimed that he had no trouble getting the job because he was a computer wizard. If he was such a computer wizard why didn't he get a computer related job to begin with instead of taking a job as a security guard? It is true that there are some people who get high paying technology jobs without degrees and credentials but those people usually have a breadth of experience. Snowden had no real world technology job experience. The whole story reeks of lies.
Once in the CIA Snowden is supposedly sent to Geneva and given diplomatic cover. At only 23 years of age he is put in charge of maintaining network security. So here we have someone with no prior technology job experience and they just decide to put him in charge of network security? This is a role that would more often than not go to somebody with much more experience.
After Snowden's work at the CIA he held various contract positions. He had only worked at Booz Allen Hamilton inside the NSA for three months before leaking the documents. So after just three months in this position he was able to find all of these documents exposing at a high level all of these sensitive NSA programs? Common sense would dictate that this is a very unlikely scenario. Snowden also claimed that he was given a $200,000 a year salary where as Booz Allen Hamilton said he was making $120,000 a year which pokes yet another hole in the story. But more importantly are we really to believe that this guy is such a saint that he willfully decided to ruin his life, give up a high paying job and a comfortable lifestyle in order to expose all of this information? Most people who decide to join the CIA in any capacity are professional liars to begin with so this in of itself is hard to believe.
Snowden would later claim that he had such broad access to information that he could have done heavy damage to the U.S. intelligence community. This is yet another highly unlikely claim but here's Snowden's exact quote.
"I had access to the full rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community, and undercover assets all around the world," Snowden said. "The locations of every station we have, what their missions are. ... If I had just wanted to harm the U.S., you could shut the surveillance system in an afternoon. But that's not my intention."
Even more questions arise from the fact that after this news broke the corporate media focused almost entirely on Snowden's whereabouts in a bizarre televised version of Where's Waldo. Instead of talking about the broader issue of NSA spying and surveillance they were more interested in Snowden himself which was really of little importance comparatively speaking.
Shortly after Snowden made his way to Hong Kong professionally made banners supporting him immediately began popping up out of the ether around the city. Even flash mobs were organized in support of him. How convenient considering that the CIA through his own admission have maintained a significant presence in Hong Kong.
We are then told that Snowden flew to Russia where he remained holed up in Moscow's airport seeking asylum. According to the official narrative, Snowden's U.S. passport was revoked so he couldn't leave the airport's international transit zone. Amazingly, in this age of camera and video phones nobody was able to take one picture of him while he was in this area and leak it to the press. This is despite the fact that the vast majority of the international media was focusing in on what would happen to him for several weeks. The only pictures of him at the airport are said to have come when he had a meeting with various rights activists including individuals from Human Rights Watch and Wikileaks both of which are highly dubious organizations. A representative from Human Rights Watch was actually responsible for releasing photos of the press conference.
To provide more persepctive, Human Rights Watch is essentially a fraudulent human rights group financed and run by Zionist interests. The group consistently ignores human rights violations conducted by Israel and the U.S. and instead uses its influence to discredit their enemies. George Soros the Jewish billionaire is a big financial backer of the organization which explains the organization's biased leanings.
Wikileaks is another highly questionable organization considering that the corporate press made them a household name a few years ago. Back in 2010 Wikileaks released graphic video footage of a U.S. helicopter attack that killed several Iraqis including some journalists. The corporate press acted as if this was big breaking news when U.S. war crimes in Iraq were already well documented. It was only new in the sense that there was now raw video footage of a U.S. war crime but the story itself was old news. Immediately Julian Assange the Wikileaks founder became the focus of the corporate media and the cult of personality figure representing the brand.
After establishing credibility with the helicopter attack footage, Wikileaks would switch gears and begin releasing documents that were embarrassing to countries that got caught up in the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. In fact Assange would be given partial credit for starting the Arab Spring which undoubtedly aided the U.S. and Israel. Coincidentally Wikileaks along with the London Guardian which first published Snowden's NSA documents would be given this credit by Amnesty International. It is interesting to see that the London Guardian would both be so closely involved with Assange and Snowden indicating there might be much more to this. There's even going to be a major Hollywood movie about Assange and Wikileaks called The Fifth Estate that is expected to come out very soon. If the Jewish dominated Hollywood film industry wants to make him the subject of a feature length film this should raise an immediate red flag.
There are undoubtedly many other questions surrounding the whole Snowden story but these in of themselves are enough to indicate that Snowden is probably another phony hero created by the intelligence and media circles. His claims about NSA surveillance and spying are certainly true but it isn't exactly breaking news considering how long people have been talking about this. Whether or not he is actively part of an operation or has been led down this path by someone else is difficult to say. However, it is pretty obvious that the whole Snowden story really can't be believed at face value. Controlled opposition is a very important part of the propaganda machine and we will likely see even more of these Snowden types emerge as the system moves closer to a total collapse.
No matter what the true story surrounding Snowden is or isn't, or how wide spread the NSA's spying activities are, it is not going to stop people from speaking out against the criminality taking place within the U.S. government. This is a system that is on the brink of economic and moral ruin and at some point in the near future it will no longer be able to function. There are far too many people in the alternative media myself included who are going to continue speaking out regardless of if the NSA is listening to our phone calls, reading our e-mails or collecting information on us. The U.S. government has lost all credibility and once it collapses the people who supported this system will go down in history as some of the most insane, mentally ill tyrants the world has ever seen.
what, then, is Glenn Greenwald?