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U.S. officials scrambled to nab Snowden

9 points by robg 12y ago

panarky 12y ago
Intelligence officials continue to make carefully worded statements that may be technically true in some narrow, legalistic sense, but are designed to deceive. Why does the Washington Post just present this misleading material at face value? Isn't it their responsibility to help the reader get at the truth, not just be a stenographer and mouthpiece for these fuckers? The FBI doesn’t have any capability to operate in Moscow without the collaboration of the FSB. Maybe the FBI by themselves can't operate in Moscow all by themselves, but certainly they work with other agencies that can. Why would they include this quote if not to deceive the reader? "The United States did not request that any country force down President Morales’s plane," said Hayden, the National Security Council spokeswoman. "What we did do ... was communicate via diplomatic and law enforcement channels with countries through which Mr. Snowden might transit." What does this doublespeak even mean? What insight does it add to this topic? It's worse than deceptive, it's maddeningly meaningless. Several U.S. officials cited a complication to gathering intelligence on Snowden that could be seen as ironic: the fact that there has been no determination that he is an "agent of a foreign power," a legal distinction required to make an American citizen a target of espionage overseas. So the Washington Post would have us believe that there are legal constraints on surveillance of Snowden in Moscow, and that our intelligence agencies are respecting those constraints. After all we've learned about surveillance of innocent Americans while in on United States territory, is it really credible to think that there's anything at all they won't do to an "enemy of the state" while in a foreign country?
- PhantomGremlin 12y ago
  I agree with your characterization. This Washington Post article reads like the American version of the old Pravda in the USSR. Not an independent publication, rather a mouthpiece for the government.

9 points by robg 12y ago

Intelligence officials continue to make carefully worded statements that may be technically true in some narrow, legalistic sense, but are designed to deceive. Why does the Washington Post just present this misleading material at face value? Isn't it their responsibility to help the reader get at the truth, not just be a stenographer and mouthpiece for these fuckers? The FBI doesn’t have any capability to operate in Moscow without the collaboration of the FSB. Maybe the FBI by themselves can't operate in Moscow all by themselves, but certainly they work with other agencies that can. Why would they include this quote if not to deceive the reader? "The United States did not request that any country force down President Morales’s plane," said Hayden, the National Security Council spokeswoman. "What we did do ... was communicate via diplomatic and law enforcement channels with countries through which Mr. Snowden might transit." What does this doublespeak even mean? What insight does it add to this topic? It's worse than deceptive, it's maddeningly meaningless. Several U.S. officials cited a complication to gathering intelligence on Snowden that could be seen as ironic: the fact that there has been no determination that he is an "agent of a foreign power," a legal distinction required to make an American citizen a target of espionage overseas. So the Washington Post would have us believe that there are legal constraints on surveillance of Snowden in Moscow, and that our intelligence agencies are respecting those constraints. After all we've learned about surveillance of innocent Americans while in on United States territory, is it really credible to think that there's anything at all they won't do to an "enemy of the state" while in a foreign country?

PhantomGremlin 12y ago
I agree with your characterization. This Washington Post article reads like the American version of the old Pravda in the USSR. Not an independent publication, rather a mouthpiece for the government.