Snowden Goes to Russia; Seeking Asylum from Ecuador
The computer contractor who exposed details of U.S. surveillance programs was on the run late Sunday, seeking asylum in Ecuador with the aid of the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, the organization and Ecuador’s Foreign Ministry announced.
Edward Snowden left Hong Kong after Washington sought his extradition on espionage charges, according to WikiLeaks, which facilitates the publication of classified information.
“He is bound for the Republic of Ecuador via a safe route for the purposes of asylum and is being escorted by diplomats and legal advisers from WikiLeaks,” the group said. Ecuador’s foreign ministry said it had received a request for asylum from Snowden, and a CNN crew spotted a car with diplomatic plates and an Ecuadorian flag at the Russian capital’s international airport.
Ecuador has already given WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange refuge in its embassy in London for a year after he unsuccessfully fought extradition to Sweden in British courts.
Details as they emerge.
Ding.
Patterico (9c670f) — 6/23/2013 @ 3:45 pmBy the way, I am working on an interesting story that interfaces with the current scandals.
Patterico (9c670f) — 6/23/2013 @ 3:46 pmAs I said in another thread, this looks like the bullies playing keep-way with the nerd’s books.
Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 6/23/2013 @ 4:39 pmBoy shoulda gone to Brazil.
Moriah Jovan (74a54f) — 6/23/2013 @ 4:45 pmLooking forward.
Agree with Sarah Palin completely here — the pertinent part starts at 5:45:
“Palin: Snowden Is Not The Problem; The Problem Is Government Violating Our Fourth Amendment Right”
Former Conservative (6e026c) — 6/23/2013 @ 4:48 pmThis is what it’s like over there;
https://knightcenter.utexas.edu/blog/00-14071-8-highlights-understand-ecuador%E2%80%99s-controversial-communications-law
narciso (3fec35) — 6/23/2013 @ 4:51 pmI’d like to thank Edward Snowden for having the courage of his heh heh convictions!! Now after he and Obama should share a cell.
Gus (694db4) — 6/23/2013 @ 5:39 pmnarciso, Ecuador is an odd choice for someone who pretends to be in favor of free speech and internet privacy.
But then anyone who gets China and Russia to help him flee the US obviously doesn’t believe in those things.
Steve57 (ab2b34) — 6/23/2013 @ 5:58 pmedward snowden dance party!!! hell yeah i gots to move it move it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44t3xc_XDes
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/23/2013 @ 5:59 pmIt does seem so, although I’m getting the impression he’s not the only source in Greenwald’s mailbag.
narciso (3fec35) — 6/23/2013 @ 6:03 pmCan’t wait for Halloween, and the Edward Snowden wannabees trying to pick up pole dancers.
Gus (694db4) — 6/23/2013 @ 6:06 pmYeah Narciso, and I’m sure David Gregory has tons of sources too. Isn’t it funny watching the dead Media trying desperately to have some sort of relevance.
Gus (694db4) — 6/23/2013 @ 6:08 pmIt would not break my heart should Mr Snowden somehow . . . get separated . . . from his escort, disappear, and then be seen again a few days later, in handcuffs, surrounded by US Marshals.
The deputy sheriff Dana (af9ec3) — 6/23/2013 @ 6:16 pmthis is interesting about booze allah whorington
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-23/visualizing-how-booz-allen-hamilton-swallowed-washington
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/23/2013 @ 6:32 pmNow after he and Obama should share a cell.
They’d make a lovely, ideal couple.
And speaking of our current Commander in Chief, I’m reminded of recent reports of male-on-male rape in the US military becoming an ongoing, growing problem. One pro-GLBT observer who scrutinizes and directs political pressure to the military says that such behavior isn’t so much a matter of homosexuality as much as it’s case of “prison” type extremism. Uh, okay.
Mark (67e579) — 6/23/2013 @ 6:42 pmMachiavelli warned us about mercenaries.
nk (875f57) — 6/23/2013 @ 6:46 pmYes, I can see Obama in the SITUATION ROOM right now, calling for the drone strike.
Gus (694db4) — 6/23/2013 @ 6:46 pmLewis Carroll warned us about the jabberwock.
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/23/2013 @ 6:47 pmThe Jubjub bird too. But the Bandersnatch turned out to be nice in the movie. Say that out loud — Band-er-snatch.
nk (875f57) — 6/23/2013 @ 6:52 pmpokerface
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/23/2013 @ 7:00 pmHere you go Mr. newrouter found a link on the internet
http://bit.ly/12iTUbr
I had to make it like that cause of the filter…. here is what it’s about:
The Ruling Class Consensus On Domestic Spying
by Angelo M. Codevilla
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/23/2013 @ 7:08 pmI can’t wait to read it!
here is a tasty morsel for your delectation
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/23/2013 @ 7:13 pmSince when did Wikileaks get diplomats?
Can I get one too?
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 6/23/2013 @ 7:20 pmyes you may
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/23/2013 @ 7:30 pmMr. Feets – Excellent. I’ve always wanted my own diplomat at my beck and call.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 6/23/2013 @ 7:39 pmMr. Feets, how did a vigilant anti-fascist like you miss this seven years ago?
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm
Due to the fact that David Gregory’s high-pocrisy got most of the well-earned attention, this significant admission that Greenwald gave on Meet The Press Hypocrite seems to have gone largely unnoticed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RArMsz485P4&feature=player_embedded
Greenwald confirms that Snowden has a great deal of information that is harmful to the US and is helpful to hostile foreign governments. In fact Greenwald is withholding the majority of the information that Snowden gave him for precisely that reason.
Snowden has done a fair job managing his public image, I’ll admit. He asks people like Greenwald to be careful about what they publish at the same time making public the fact the majority of the information he has in his control isn’t about the domestic spying program.
I can’t imagine falling for it, myself, and I’m amazed people are falling for his act.
But it is an act. He may not post that information to the internet or try to get a newspaper to publish it. That would harm his PR campaign to promote himself as a noble whistleblower. Meanwhile he’ll be trading all that harmful information to those hostile foreign governments for sanctuary.
In fact I seriously doubt that the nations aiding Snowdon; the CHICOMs, the country former KGB agent Putin owns, the Cubans, the Venezuelans, or even Ecuador want him to make a lot of that information public. They just want it for themselves. Then they can pretend to just be concerned about civil liberties. Which is another act I can’t believe people are falling for (read narciso’s link about how Ecuador is suppressing free speech).
Steve57 (ab2b34) — 6/23/2013 @ 7:56 pmWe know how much information Agee gave up, (who served first in Ecuador )and he didn’t have massive computer files, he was cribbing off East German ‘researchers’ like Mader,
narciso (3fec35) — 6/23/2013 @ 8:00 pmthe most infamous case, Richard Welch, hadn’t even been in Greece in 15 years, but because he had aided
narciso (3fec35) — 6/23/2013 @ 8:11 pmthe Government in counterinsurgency in Latin America, he was ‘fair game;
So Snowden is now a DIPLOMAT!!! He told me, that he was just an AMERICAN. He seems to be a bit dishonest.
Gus (694db4) — 6/23/2013 @ 8:22 pmwell all i can say is the piggy piggy nsa spy pansies are learning a very expensive lesson about getting in bed with booze allah whorington
at our expense of course
and plus also they’ve mortally undermined global confidence in both America and “private enterprise” such as the closely-aligned-with-the-state search engine google and nsa partner microsoft and this shady and elusive “facebook” organization
good job, piggy piggy nsa spy pansies!
how much did that cost again?
a bargain at half the price
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/23/2013 @ 8:29 pmWhatever laws Mr Snowden has broken, I could care less, hell we are about to make millions of illegals, legal for some reason. But if it wasn’t for him and some UK newspaper, I wouldn’t have had a clue what my own government was really doing. That is the sad reality of my current life along with all us other schmucks in the US of A.
MSL (5f601f) — 6/23/2013 @ 9:41 pmI’m with MSL.
And I’m with Steve in an odd sort of way too.
It seems that Snowden didn’t give out secrets, or to be more precise he gave out page 18 secrets.
Page 18 secrets aren’t secrets at all – they’re just sucessful coverups.
So why the warrants? Why the dragnet?
Did Obama pick up Leslie Cauley first?
papertiger (c2d6da) — 6/24/2013 @ 4:15 amI think he is just being used by countries that like to put the US in a bad light, whether he has any info of any worth or not.
Maybe in the grand scheme of things it is just a misdirection to take attention off of 100 things that are more important.
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 6/24/2013 @ 7:24 amComment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 6/24/2013 @ 7:24 am
Maybe in the grand scheme of things it is just a misdirection to take attention off of 100 things that are more important.
Other, and more important spies, and hacking?
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 6/24/2013 @ 11:26 amThis seems to be the situation:
Attorney General Eric Holder discussed how to proceed with Hong Kong and was led to believe everything would work out to his satisfaction. Hong Kong double crossed the U.S. While in most things its judicial system is independent, and has to be, here they were following some orders from Beijing. They pretended to find a problem, but didn’t actually notify the U.S. Justice Department until after Snowden had left Hong Kong. They were taking no chances the minor technical problem (which it is possible they actually created by advice to DOJ) could be corrected.
Snowden, or the people helping him, had to know this would happen. Maybe not Snowden himself – Wikileaks claimed he had to be persuaded to leave Hong Kong. What most moved him was the possibility of losing his Internet connection.
Snowden’s passport was revoked the day before he left Hong Kong but Wikipeakls arranged for him to get a refugee passport. I wonder if maybe that’s the reason they waited for an arrest warrant, as maybe they felt they needed an arrest warrant to get him the refugeee passport.
Snowden was not put on an Interpol list, (called a red notice) because Interpol considers espionage a political crime, so the U.S. didn’t try, especially since they thought revoking his passport and a Hong Kong extradition proceeding would keep him in Hong Kong, and they were also keeping the charges sealed till they issued a warrant for his arrest. Had the U.S. charged him with less, just stealing secrets, maybe that could have been done. But the DOJ thought they had a plan worked out with Hong Kong to arrest him.
Snowden actually never left the Moscow airport. (called Sheremetyevo)
The hotel he went to is within the perimeter where foregners without a visa to Russia can stay if they have a connecting flight. (called the transit zone)
The passengers in Snowden’s plane to Moscow did not deplane in the normal way. Rather than a passenger walkway, they disembarked via a staircase on the runway, and Snowden was met by some cars, including a black-windowed, black sedan. Driven away in a limousine, that is.
Nobody knows where Wikileaks is getitng its money from.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 6/24/2013 @ 11:49 amThe limosine belonged to the Ecuadorian government? That would be insulation for Putin.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 6/24/2013 @ 11:50 amRemember that Oskar Schindler broke the “law” as well. As did Martin Luther King. And Jesus.
We would all be a lot better off if we’d stop conflating legality and morality. We are told that the government didn’t break any laws to circumvent the constitution, by the same people who say that Snowden broke the “law” and should go to jail for exposing the consitutional violations.
Our right to be free from improper search and seizure does not come from the constitution, but from nature and nature’s God. The constitution is supposed to prevent the government from encroaching on our natural rights. But now, we are living out the words of Lysander Spooner: “be it one thing or another, the constitution has either allowed for the kind of tyranny we have come to know, or it has been powerless to stop it. Either way, it is unfit to exist.”
Ghost (2d8874) — 6/24/2013 @ 12:12 pmThanks for that link, feets. I hadn’t realized how intertwined the gov’t was with booz allen hamilton.
carlitos (49ef9f) — 6/24/2013 @ 12:31 pmIntrigue deepened on Monday over the whereabouts of Edward J. Snowden, the fugitive former National Security Agency contractor accused of espionage, when he did not leave Moscow on a planned flight to Havana, one day after Hong Kong frustrated his American pursuers by allowing him to leave on a Moscow-bound flight.
…..Mr. Snowden’s vacant seat on the Havana flight raised the possibility that the Russian government had detained him, either to consider Washington’s demands….or perhaps to question him for Russia’s own purposes.
But OTOH
The authorities in Hong Kong said Mr. Snowden boarded an Aeroflot flight to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport that arrived on Sunday afternoon. But he was never photographed in Hong Kong and has not been seen publicly since his reported arrival in Moscow. Arriving passengers on that flight, interviewed at the airport, said they could not confirm that he had been aboard.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/world/edward-snowden-nsa-surveillance-leak.html?smid=pl-share&_r=0
elissa (0b3286) — 6/24/2013 @ 12:46 pmBorrowed from a commenter on nother blog:
“They seek him here,
elissa (0b3286) — 6/24/2013 @ 12:48 pmthey seek him there,
those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven or is he in hell?
That damned elusive Pimpernel.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that an airport spokeswoman for Sheremetyevi airport confirmed late Sunday he was in the transit zone and also two business class passengers said they saw cars meet the plane
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 6/24/2013 @ 1:23 pmOn the runway.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 6/24/2013 @ 1:23 pmShe’s a spokeswoman, Sammy. Carnie is a spokesman. Get it?
elissa (0b3286) — 6/24/2013 @ 1:26 pmYes, but there are other indications. Hong Kong claims he left. Wikileaks claims he left and that one its lawyers was on the plane. If he never went to Moscow that will be apparent very soon.
If the very fact he went to Moscow is a lie that would have to be a well-orchestrated one.
If Snowden just disappears and nobody knows where he is, that could create a case that he never went to Moscow, and then we would have reaosn to question if he ever even got there.
Or he might surface, and it would turn out he traveled a different way, like a direct route to Havana, but why would Putin take on the onus of Snowden being treated royally in Russia if he didn’t do it?
And let’s say that’s no problem because we’ll find out soon it’s not true, and he never was actually in Moscow, why he would he want the world to openly acknowldege such big lies?
Two passengers aboard the plane at least confirm that it landed in the middle of the runway and they got off there, and THAT CARS CAME TO MEET THE PLANE. Unless they are part of the lie too, of course, and maybe even they themselves weren’t on the plane.
The thing is, nobody has any pictures of Snowden.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 6/24/2013 @ 1:39 pmhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/world/asia/snowden-departure-from-hong-kong.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all
Albert Ho, a lawyer for Snowden, a former chairman of the Democratic Party and a longtime campaigner for full democracy and a membner of the local legislature says that he left, and went through the security and immigration channels (not the special channel usually used for people involved in highly political cases)
It was only the other day he found out he might be held withiout bail.
Mr. Ho…..declined to identify Mr. Snowden’s final intended destination except to say that it was almost certainly not Iceland or Cuba and that Mr. Snowden intended only to pass in transit through Moscow’s airport. He refused to discuss whether his destination was Ecuador.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 6/24/2013 @ 1:44 pmHe’s not being used. He’s willingly collaborates with those foreign governments. From the June 25th South China Morning Post:
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1268209/snowden-sought-booz-allen-job-gather-evidence-nsa-surveillance
Citizen of the World took the job at Booze, Allen, Hamilton to expose the NSA’s foreign intelligence collection activities.
As I said, he’s done a fair job of managing his public image. He releases non-information about domestic programs that comes as a complete shock to a public that hasn’t been paying attention for years to garner sympathy from a gullible US audience. He releases information to the foreign press about NSA’s legitimate foreign espionage against targets in the PRC to garner sympathy in his temporary refuge. He leaks details about NSA’s legitimate exploitation of Russian leadership comms to curry favor with Moscow and now he’s reaping the pay-off.
All along I’ve been stunned that anyone would buy his act. Despite his talk of his noble intentions, if it wasn’t clear at first it’s been crystal clear within days of surfacing in Hong Kong that Snowden intended to sell his information about the US’s foreign espionage to the highest bidder.
Greenwald on Meet the Press admitted that the majority of the information Snowden had given him was genuinely harmful to the US and not in the public interest. But that Snowden asked him and The Guardian to use their discretion and only publish information that they thought was in the public information. Thus simultaneously making it public he had national defense/communications information harmful to the US in his control while maintaining the pretense that wasn’t his intention. Today in Hong Kong the SCMP prints that Snowden told them it was his intention to get a job at Booze, Allen, & Hamilton precisely to steal information on NSA’s surveillance on a global scale. Note that both Greenwald and the SCMP sat on what they already knew until Snowden had negotiated his asylum to revealing the damning information that:
1) Snowden deliberately and knowingly violated the Espionage Act of 1917.
2) He infiltrated an NSA contractor with the intention of doing just that.
How long are you all who think he’s a hero because he told you nothing about the NSA’s domestic spying, you just hadn’t noticed, going to be dupes for this guy? The Snowden fan club reminds me of the Obama voters who learned over time that their candidate isn’t who they thought he was in 2008 but obstinately refused to admit that in 2012. It was always naive to take Snowden’s word about the purity of his intentions were. He’s always dropped hints that he had ulterior motives. Now we know.
Snowden was very careful to parse his words before he arranged his safe haven. He told the WaPo’s Gellman that he was very careful about what he released because he “didn’t want to enable the Bradley Manning argument” and release everything indiscriminately.
Yeah, then he didn’t. But to be honest he isn’t another Bradley Manning. He’s worse than Manning as there’s no evidence that Manning joined the Army with the intention of exposing all the classified information he could get his hands on.
I ask again; how much damage can this guy do, and how publicly can he state that causing that damage was his goal all along, are you prepared to make up your own excuses for? Excuses not even Snowden is hiding behind anymore.
Steve57 (ab2b34) — 6/24/2013 @ 1:57 pm*…that they thought was in the public
Steve57 (ab2b34) — 6/24/2013 @ 1:59 pminformationinterest.*Wow, cars met the plane and the other passengers didn’t disembark as normal.
Sammy, why don’t you do an internet search for “shell game.”
Steve57 (ab2b34) — 6/24/2013 @ 2:07 pm“Citizen of the World took the job at Booze, Allen, Hamilton to expose the NSA’s foreign intelligence collection activities.”
Steve57 – America is truly the Land of Opportunity where 29 year-old (now 30) anarcho-narcissists can decide what classified information needs to remain classified and what information should be revealed to the world or enemies of the the U.S., because such 29 year-olds are better than you and their principals are more important than the rest of the country.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 6/24/2013 @ 2:16 pmLook at this:
Wonkbook: Does Edward Snowden even exist? By Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas, Published: June 24, 2013 at 8:44 am (Washington Post)
Aeroflot flight 150, from Moscow to Havana, was packed with dozens of journalists who’d bought tickets to get a glimpse of, and maybe even an interview with, fleeing leaker Edward Snowden. But when the doors closed and the plane readied for takeoff, they made an unpleasant discovery: Snowden wasn’t on the plane.
There is, of course, only one explanation for Snowden’s absence: He never existed in the first place.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 6/24/2013 @ 2:34 pmVia http://ace.mu.nu/ we get this killer quote from Mickey Kaus capturing the quality of the reasoning you’ll encounter on Wonkbook:
People like Klein that claim that the NSA’s domestic spying story has been utterly buried since Snowden has become the story are the same people who claimed they couldn’t cover stories like Benghazi because Fox made too big a deal of it.
Meanwhile the top headlines and top stories at CNN are:
Yup, durn it. The press just can’t pull those reporters off stories about Paula Deen, Berlusconi’s sex crimes conviction, how the DoS as well as the Clinton’s personally intervened to return James Gandolfini’s body to the US, how a spider freaked out a weather reporter, the Twinkie comeback, whether or not LeBron James’ kicks have been stolen, and what’s up with the National Zoo’s Red Panda because people like me are (in gary gulrud’s view) “obsessed” with Eddie Snowden.
I suppose that will be Klein and company’s next dodge. Snowden will no longer be the story but the public’s obsession story will be.
The MFM will still report on stories of vital national interest. Such as the fact Snooki hopes she has a little gay boy one day. But not on the NSA’s domestic spying and it’s all my fault. Or the fault of people like me.
Steve57 (ab2b34) — 6/24/2013 @ 3:33 pmI think Ezra’s a figment of someone’s imagination, probably after bad chinese;
http://blog.heritage.org/2013/06/24/snowden-rafael-correa-and-ecuador/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FoundryConservativePolicyNews+%28The+Foundry%3A+Conservative+Policy+News.%29
narciso (3fec35) — 6/24/2013 @ 3:40 pmCan’t wait for Halloween, and the Edward Snowden wannabees trying to pick up pole dancers.
Girls dress as pole dancers for Halloween? Hopefully older girls.
Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 6/24/2013 @ 6:07 pmThis is the acid test for our (snicker) “oreign intelligence” rveillances. Can they locate Snowden? If they can’t, is it because of the (giggle) “irreversible damage”?
nk (875f57) — 6/25/2013 @ 2:43 amFishing for idiots and buffoons in America that might resemble one’s psychological antagonist, the enemy of all that is reliable and good, your father’s raper and baby’s head dasher is a totally pat hand.
Mission accomplished. We’ve met the plastic turkey and he am us.
gary gulrud (ef8610) — 6/25/2013 @ 5:42 amGood choice – Ecuador is pretty much one big asylum right now…
mojo (8096f2) — 6/25/2013 @ 2:44 pmVia Nice Deb today, a couple of blasts from the past from Powerline, Krauthammer, with a couple of important updates (links to the sources she cites at Nice Deb):
http://nicedeb.wordpress.com/
I despise Bradly Manning and Julian Assange (and Snowden, obviously) but one thing the leaked cables confirmed was that Obama is an international joke. I recall one cable that reported that a Hamas official laughed in the face of an Obama envoy and said that people were at least afraid of of the US when Bush was President but no longer. Note I didn’t say we learned that Obama is an international joke from the leaks, unless you’re an Obamaton who obeys this administration when it tells you not to believe your lying eyes.
The foregoing is why I’m convinced Snowden could have stayed in Hong Kong as long as he liked. Like the Russians the Chinese too were clearly enjoying the Obama administration’s hissy fits. The way Obama is handling the situation reminds me of nothing more than the school dweeb trying to get his book bag back as the big kids play keep away and laugh at him.
And yes I’ve seen reports that Snowden was told to leave by some unknown, nameless emissary from Beijing. But has anyone ever acted as if they’re worried about what the Obama administration might do when it gets it’s panties in a bunch? Not just the Russians and Chinese but anyone? Before you answer recall how the Iranians reacted to that supposedly secret diplomatic note that the Obama administration sent via three channels to Iran trying to get them to return to negotiations over their nuclear weapons program a couple of years back; via Amb. Rice at the UN, via the President of Iraq to an Iranian official, and via the American interest section of the Swiss embassy in Tehran.
They gave it to the press to have it published so they could mock it. And it was easy to mock as it alternated between threatening and begging. And the Obama administration was forced to admit that embarrassment was genuine.
For all we know Snowden isn’t in Moscow but in Beijing “living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/edward-snowden-rubbishes-chinese-spy
While Xi Jinping and Vlad Putin burn up the conference call line so they can yuck it up as they watch the Obama flail.
I fully expect such world powers as San Marino or Andorra to defy the US and offer Snowden asylum any day now.
Steve57 (ab2b34) — 6/25/2013 @ 5:29 pm