I trust everyone will think over whether they have enough information to add their signature to this petition, especially in view of the just released House Intelligence Committee Report. This report alleges that Snowden is still in contact with Russian intelligence agents.
This report is so heavily redacted that the press and public can make no sense of it. I think we have to trust Obama, who no doubt has considered issuing a pardon to Snowden, will see the unreacted report and go over it with his national security advisors.
At the very least, I recommend that if anyone is inclined to sign this petition they read the report.
I am not moved by Snowdon’s denials. After all innocent or guilty, just about everyone issues denials. I am certainly aware that what he exposed needed to come to light.
However, I also know there has been a desire among many progressives to make him seem daring and heroic. Liberals and conservatives alike, in fact most everybody is susceptible to the need to glamorize public figures we admire. Sometimes this is deserved. Sometimes the end may have justified the means. It is not always easy to figure out whether approbation or condemnation, or a complex combination of the two, is appropriate.
The following is from Yahoo New:
Newly declassified passages from a highly critical House Intelligence Committee reporton Edward Snowden assert that since arriving in Moscow the former NSA contractor “has had, and continues to have, contact with Russian intelligence services.”
Minutes after the report was released Thursday, Snowden’s chief lawyer, Ben Wizner, tweeted that the report was “petulant nonsense.”
Snowden has adamantly denied such contacts, most recently this month in an interview with Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric. Snowden told Couric he gave Russian officials “the stiff-arm” when they first approached him in 2013, and that since then, while living with President Vladimir Putin’s approval as a fugitive in Moscow, “they have left me alone, for the most part.”
The panel’s newly declassified 33-page report, which is being released this morning, cites classified U.S. intelligence reporting to support its assertion of continuous contacts with Russian intelligence — an especially explosive charge in light of the current uproar in Washington over Russian interference in the U.S. election.
But all details of that intelligence reporting are still classified and blacked out in the report, making it difficult, if not impossible, for the public to assess. The charge comes at a time when Snowden’s defenders — who portray him as a courageous whistleblower who exposed U.S. surveillance abuses — are making their final, uphill pitch for a pardon before President Obama leaves office. From Yahoo News
Snowden is a unique figure for many reasons, not the least of which is that he was depicted in the Oliver Stone “Snowden” as larger than life. (I base this on reviews like this by critic David Edelstein, and the trailer which you can watch here.)
I do not think we know the full story about why Snowden did what he this the way he did it. We just do not have enough information.
President Obama and those privy to the full report have infinitely more information than we do. Yet they still may not know the whole truth.
I do think that petition notwithstanding Obama has, or will, give due diligence to deciding whether to pardon him.
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This has nothing to do with this article, but just wanted to share it:
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