Snowden: towards an endgame By Pepe Escobar

[bemildred]

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Meanwhile, the US intelligence gambit of intercepting a non-adversarial presidential plane spectacularly backfired in true Mad magazine Spy vs Spy fashion. Obama had said he would not "scramble fighter jets" to catch Snowden; of course not, just ground them.

Austrian paper Die Presse revealed that the US Ambassador in Austria, William Eacho, was responsible for spreading the (false) information about Snowden being on board Bolivia President Evo Morales' Falcon out of Russia - leading to the denial of overflying rights in France, Spain, Portugal an Italy. [2] Eacho - a former CEO of a food distribution company with no diplomatic experience whatsoever - was appointed by Obama to go to Vienna in June 2009. Why? Because he was a top Obama fundraiser.

Eacho did little to disprove those who sustain that the NSA really needs to "analyze" every phone call, email and tweet on the planet - otherwise they could never obtain such pearls of intelligence as pinpointing Snowden on Evo's plane. As for the astonishing incompetence of accumulated European intelligence agencies, that was already a given. Yet they were certainly very competent to logistically support countless extraordinary rendition CIA flights during the Bush years. No flight - much less a presidential one - was "grounded" then.

Snowden's leaks - from PRISM to TEMPORA - have established how the NSA's sweeping up of petabytes of data from just about anyone anywhere is now the norm. The Obama administration insists this is essential for its new branding of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), which Tom Engelhardt memorably described as actually being the Global War on You (GWOY). [3]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-01-090713.html

[Warren Stupidity]

1. Global War On You! That's a keeper. nt.

[GeorgeGist]

2. The Incompetency.

Is what really scares me.

[bemildred]

3. THAT is what jumps out at me too. The fatuousness of this enterprise. The sheer herd-think stupid.

I did not know how much we had corrupted the Europeans before this, though. "Lickspittle sycophants" indeed. Tony the Poodle, sure, but France? Germany? Spain? Portugal? Austria? They embarrassed their countries because some US bureaucrat says jump? But they were on the inside, weren't they, their ass is on the line now too. That is why.

[formercia]

4. Does that make us all GWOYim?

jus' askin'

[bemildred]

5. You are very, very bad.

[Igel]

6. I thought Eacho phoned after the plane was on the ground.

And that Die Presse just said he called somebody in Austria.

Did Die Presse revise it's story?

Because Escobar only allows the inference that Eacho--based on the same report--must have been telephoning all over Europe spreading the (incorrect) word, causing countries like France to hesitate in granting routine overflight privileges even before the plane took off. He must have only called the person in Austria after the plane landed because he'd been on the horn for hours and hours talking to other countries.

It's Escobar. Always a good read. Always worth fact-checking.

[bemildred]

7. I'm sure it will all come out in the end, too many people involved, public knowledge.

Butts must be covered, explanations must be made.

[Ash_F]

9. Maybe the NSA can tell us who he called and what he said? /nt

[bemildred]

10. I like the recursive aspect of this. Do they even know what they know?

I have $100 that says No they do not even know what they know, they are just grabbing it all, then running crude filters to see what comes out, betting some of it will come in handy. Fishing for terrists, in other words. And what they get are the dumb ones, mostly, the underwear bombers and shoe bombers and gullible tools.

[Ash_F]

8. Wait, so it was the USgov behind it in the end?

I actually thought it might not be, but hadn't ruled it out.

Where are all the totally-not-right-wing authoritarian trolls to to accuse DU of tinhattery now?

[bemildred]

11. That depends on what "behind" means.

The ultimate motivating force, yes, it's our legal work, our extradition, our citizen we want to punish.

But I doubt we had to use a whip or anything, if you see what I mean. Doesn't sound like it. These guys were on the same page.

Pepe is a jewel, but he is not always meticulous, and he sometimes extrapolates, so I generally don't try to use him to attack trolls with. Anyway, they don't read.

[Ash_F]

12. Well, the person who raised the 'alert' was a member of the US government right?

He was a CEO of Carlton Capital Group, a giant real estate firm that deals in sky scrapers

http://austria.usembassy.gov/ambassador.html
http://carltongroup.com/

This begs the question of why we have someone with such financial power serving a position of such political power.

Oh wait

http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2009/06/25/big_obama_campaign_donors_get_ambassadorships/

"Eacho raised more than $500,000 for Obama's presidential run"

...sigh

[bemildred]

13. Yep.

Why was this fool allowed to be in a position to embarrass us in public like this? Money, of course.