Snowden’s Camp: Staged Putin Q&A Was a Screw-Up

[DonViejo]

Noah Shachtman

Even the NSA leaker’s closest advisers now say his appearance on a Kremlin call-in show, which touched off yet another international firestorm, was a mistake.

NSA leaker Edward Snowden instantly regretted asking Russian President Vladimir Putin a softball question on live television about the Kremlin’s mass surveillance effort, two sources close to the leaker tell The Daily Beast.

“It certainly didn’t go as he would’ve hoped,” one of these sources said. “I don’t think there’s any shame in saying that he made an error in judgment.”

“He basically viewed the question as his first foray into criticizing Russia. He was genuinely surprised that in reasonable corridors it was seen as the opposite,” added Ben Wizner, the American Civil Liberties Union attorney who serves as one of Snowden’s closest advisers.

According to Wizner and others, Snowden hadn’t realized how much last week’s Q&A—with Putin blithely assuring Snowden that Moscow had no such eavesdropping programs—would appear to be a Kremlin propaganda victory to Western eyes. And so the leaker quickly decided to write an op-ed for the Guardian to explain his actions and to all but label Putin a liar for his televised response.

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/20/snowden-s-camp-staged-putin-q-a-was-a-screw-up.html

[Thinkingabout]

1. Makes you wonder if Snowden has a death wish.

If he is being advised then the advise is terrible, if he is doing things on his own it is a bad move. If he thinks his "working with Putin" is good, then no, it pushes the issue of him being a traitor. To rush in and say he was trying to get Putin in a lie, it will take a much more savvy person than Snowden. He went to hacker school but it does not appear he has gotten much spy schooling or the course did not do him very well.

[brush]

2. Error in judgment? What an understatement.

“I don’t think there’s any shame in saying that he made an error in judgment.”

Indeed! This is just his latest error in judgment.

I understand he was advised, when he arrived in Asia with the "appropriated files", that he didn't have to give up his whole life and go public to leak the documents, that there were other ways to do it. He insisted however that he wanted it to be known that he was the one responsible for the leaks.

That was perhaps an error in judgment.

Another was the leaking of details of his own country's international covert operations.

Seems Snowden should have just stood in bed — as the old statement goes.

[Blue_Tires]

3. So I was right...

Snowden really is that naïve, he isn't engineering some kind of master plan, and that Guardian op-ed (which was clearly written by Greenwald) was every bit the shameless, revisionist, ass-covering tripe it appeared to be...Great job bringing his credibility and reputation down to zero in just a few minutes...

Either Snowden is getting some really bad advice (he's never said a single word this past year that wasn't filtered by Harrison, Greenwald or Wizner; and it's clear that unseen masters have been pulling his strings), or that Pulitzer + Vanity Fair in the same week blew up his ego to godlike proportions...

Either way, Snowden needs to HTFU, come clean and apologize to the public if he has that much 'regret'...Don't pull some bullshit stunt like that, then double down your ignorance in some half-assed op-ed (which the Guardian should have been ashamed to even print, but they'd long ago thrown their ethics out the window for this story), and THEN get some lackeys to leak behind-the-scenes how it was all a regrettable mistake...

[flamingdem]

5. I think his advice comes from a closet at the Ecuadoran Embassy

in London!

[Blue_Tires]

6. Not only that, but

I see Wizner is doing his job to make sure the narrative of "Snowden has acted of his own accord independently and alone the entire time" continues to stick...There can be no hint or whispers whatsoever that certain people collaborated with him to decide which files to steal a long time before he "officially" went public (fwiw I don't have any hard proof of this yet, but there are some strong indications and that scenario would explain a great many things)...

Sadly, Snowden's circle of handlers has been managing and spinning this story for so long it's gotten to the point where anything they say is a direct contradiction of an earlier statement...

Last summer: Snowden is a brave, bold, worldly technological savant masterminding the biggest act of civil disobedience in the modern era...

Today: Snowden is a well-meaning but uninformed and naïve innocent child constantly obsessed with his public image; and despite his experience in the big intelligence industry, he has absolutely NO IDEA how foreign governments/cultures/societies operate...And without constant monitoring/advising from his circle, you see he's liable to act on some really fucking stupid ideas...

[Tarheel_Dem]

4. But his diehard sycophantic fanboi's will never admit that.

[stevenleser]

7. We tried to tell them. Snowden is a fool. Everything he has claimed is suspect.

I don't trust the documents he stole. Are they proposals? Are they emergency measures that can be enacted in exigent circumstances? Are they ideas that were rejected? We don't know, and Snowden's word on them certainly cannot be trusted.

[Tarheel_Dem]

8. I think acceptance is the last stage. "Trust" and Snowden in the same sentence is packed with irony.

[davidpdx]

9. Now wait a minute...

1) Snowden never makes a mistake
2) Putin would never ever spy on his own citizens
3) If you believe 1 & 2, I have a bridge in the Nevada desert to sell you.