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I wonder what, if any, effect this will have on those that feel Snowden is a Russian Spy.

• Zigurd 12y ago
  His question was already called a "softball" on this thread. So probably not much.
• at-fates-hands 12y ago
  Well, it is pretty telling Putin says, "Mr. Snowden, you are a former agent, a spy, I used to be working for an intelligence service, we are going to talk one professional language." Putin is such a master chess player, you always have to dig a LOT deeper every time he says something. A lot of people could say he said it because he thinks / knows Snowden is a spy (the whole Russian spy conspiracy angle: http://rockthetruth2.blogspot.com/2014/01/snowden-was-russian-spy.html http://rockthetruth2.blogspot.com/2014/01/snowden-was-russia... ), or could just be playing a game with semantics where he's just trying to stoke the ire of the US government. Either way, it's going to reinforce whatever opinion you had of him prior to this.
  • smsm42 12y ago
    You don't need to dig deeper, it's completely transparent. Everything Putin says is meant for internal consumption in Russia, where nobody (within 99% margin, Putin doesn't care about a minuscule bunch of geeks who only talk to people like them) knows how NSA or CIA works and can not distinguish between CIA operative and NSA technical contractor. So for them Snowden is a CIA spy, and the fact that CIA spy has defected to Russian side is a welcome reference to the olden times, where the cases of such defectors were celebrates and triumphantly displayed as a proof of the superiority of everything Soviet. There's nothing new and deep here - it is a simple lie that is designed to deceive the uninformed and keep them this way so that they would keep supporting Putin who protects them from CIA atrocities. Any authoritarian thug with quarter a brain does that.