Like Cypher in The Matrix, who wanted his machine masters to reinsert him as a celebrity after his betrayal, Snowden's Russian masters made him into a celebrity after his betrayal.
If nobody in Russia so much as tried to milk Snowden for all he's worth, someone ought to have been fired.
However, every impression I have of Snowden is that he is patriotic to the USA, and that the sole reason he is in Russia now is genuinely because of the pressure that the government of USA put on every other government to turn him over.
> However, every impression I have of Snowden is that he is patriotic to the USA, and that the sole reason he is in Russia now is genuinely because of the pressure that the government of USA put on every other government to turn him over.
Can be both. NSA contractor sees unethical secret programs, gets disillusioned and considers disclosing them, Russian SVR somehow picks that up and encourages him to do it, maybe promises him support, money, or refuge if he does. Everybody wins, except the US.
Snowden is in Russia because the US State Department revoked his passport, either leaving him stranded in Russia, or leaving him in limbo in the air between Hong Kong and Moscow (depending on exactly when they revoked it):
That's it. End of story. I remember reports that his likely ultimate destination was Venezuela or Guatemala, but these are distant, fuzzy memories, so they may not be correct.
Folks have made a _ton_ of hay out of the fact that Snowden ended up in Russia... but the truth of the matter is that he's there because the State Department stranded him there.
What makes you sure that the public story is the real one? It doesn't seem that hard to plan for Snowden to be in the right airport at the time his passport gets revoked, with some support. The fact that neither the US nor Russia went on record saying the opposite means nothing. The US might not believe they have anything to gain by trying to convince people that Snowden is a Russian agent. Doesn't mean it's false.
What would such support look like? I don’t have any reason to expect that the timing of the revocation would be sufficiently in his control to do that.
That’s not what I meant. Assuming that Snowden had support from the Russian state, his handlers could easily guess how long his passport would last and help him get to the right places at the right time. Nothing public proves it, but neither does the GP have grounds to be confident that Snowden really got stuck in Russia by chance.
In my estimation the most likely scenario that US authorities were envisioning is this one:
* The US State Department revokes Snowden's passport while he is in one or in transit between two foreign countries.
* If the passport is revoked while he is on the ground, Snowden is prevented from exiting the country, and is deported back to the US because the local government refuses to grant him a visa or grant him asylum.
* If the passport is revoked while he is in transit, Snowden is denied entry to his destination and denied transit back to his origin due to the revocation, his destination refuses to grant him asylum, and he is deported back to the US.
There's another angle that you appear to not be considering: The US State Department _deliberately_ revoked his passport while he was in transit to or on the ground in Russia. By doing this, they give FedGov the ability to insinuate that Snowden is (and was) a Russian agent from now until the time he leaves the country. (And given that the US will almost certainly snatch Snowden if he ever tries to leave, the man is likely to die in Russia.)
This would give them a perpetual character assassination tool, nearly free of charge.
This scenario is more complicated than the "bad timing" one, but it's no more complicated than yours.
> By doing this, they give FedGov the ability to insinuate that Snowden is (and was) a Russian agent from now until the time he leaves the country.
You're right, it cuts both ways.
To go back to ben_w's comment though, I don't think we can make any conclusions about what Snowden is or who he's loyal to; he could be a a patriotic American, a Russian agent, just a guy who wanted to disclose unethical government behavior, or a mix of these things. All seem equally plausible to me, since I don't have insider info.
Sure. Despite my assessment of him (more neutral than it may seem as I'm not a US citizen and therefore don't expect him to think of me as in "his tribe"), I don't claim special insight either.
> (Only thing there that fits is the recent demonstration of the Russian government acting like half-arsed movie plots are a good idea in real life).
A lot of papers suggested that the war incompetence was because Putin asked for support for his invasion, and the services knew their job was to get him that irrespective of reality. If there was any operation to take advantage of Snowden, it probably wasn't under such pressure, and I imagine the Russian services have some competent people that could pull it off.
They canceled his passport even before he left China. He's always been welcome to return to the USA to face justice.
But that's not what he wanted, and that's why he's in Russia, and why he was at the Russian consulate in Hong Kong for multiple days before he finally departed on a plane to Moscow [1]. He's a defector, so he's currently exactly where he wanted to be when he left.
Like Cypher in The Matrix, who wanted his machine masters to reinsert him as a celebrity after his betrayal, Snowden's Russian masters made him into a celebrity after his betrayal.