I’ve been writing out some notes for a piece about the starkly different reactions different people are having to the Snowden story and what different assumptions we bring to it. But first I wanted to flag a couple other points. We’re going to be doing a lot of reporting on Snowden’s pre-leak career, trying to piece together and confirm what we can about his background, what if anything doesn’t match up between his account and what we can find out from other sources and so forth. So that’s coming. One of the basic questions I’m interested in is whether Snowden really had quite the level of access and power he claimed in his interview with the Guardian.
In part this is just because it’s worth knowing the credibility and motives of someone at the center of such a major story. But there are two other reasons I’m particularly interested in this. Read More
Another take from TPM Reader DC …
First let me say that I greatly appreciate your thoughtful exploration of the whole NSA leak saga. Given a past history on my part of leftist kneejerkism, I am trying in this case to look more like a scientist and observer as what it all means, and what are the real facts versus the first news stories.
Apart from many of the concerns expressed by others (the need to look for terrorist threats that are indeed real, the need to prevent a high tech version of the domestic monitoring that took place in the red scare era and in the Vietnam war era) there are two things that stand out to me as big issues.
TPM Reader FG hits on one of the points I’ve wondered about too. Should we really be so surprised that Snowden had the vast access he claims when Manning, a very junior Army intelligence analyst, had access to everything he did? Read More
Edward Snowden came forward as the source of NSA leaks. Cable news hosts treated it with as much subtlety and insight as they could muster.
New Jersey Republicans seem to have decided (if only by default) that their best bet to grab the NJ Senate seat is to get behind a full-bore Tea Partier named Steve Lonegan.
Obama administration gives up effort to restrict access to ‘Morning After Pill’.
Obama administration gives up effort to restrict access to ‘Morning After Pill’.
The Post has a good piece, just a show-opener really, on a critical issue raised by the Snowden imbroglio – the massive waste, private sector enrichment or shoddy work that has resulted from the Intelligence Community’s massive reliance on private contractors like Booz Allen Hamilton and many others. Read More
A quirk in Hong Kong law could make a Snowden extradition a lengthy legal battle.
One of the notable subplots to the Snowden story are the conflicting narratives given by the different reporters involved, specifically how each seems aimed at diminishing or ridiculing the other party involved – not totally surprising given how rivalries work. For Gellman, Greenwald was brought in late as a sort of desperation move when the Post wouldn’t do Snowden’s bidding. For Greenwald, the move to Gellman was to play to MSM vanity and exploit the Post’s insider cred. In the narrowly factual sense, Greenwald seems to have the better part of the argument at the moment, from what I can tell.