Bruce Fein, a constitutional lawyer closely associated with Ron Paul, who has recently gone from denouncing to supporting the Tamil Tigers, is now counseling the father of Edward Snowden:

“The father of Edward Snowden, the former defense contractor accused of disclosing details about secret U.S. surveillance programs, is concerned that his son’s recent association with the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks is being used by its founder Julian Assange to raise the organization’s public profile for fundraising purposes.

Attorney Bruce Fein, who represents Lonnie Snowden, said Friday that Snowden’s father is worried that the legal counsel and travel expenses provided by WikiLeaks are part the plan to “keep (Edward Snowden) from doing the right thing” by returning to the USA to confront the espionage charges filed against him.

“They are using him to raise money,” Fein said in an interview with USA TODAY.”

LRC finally understands where the libertarian talking up of blackmail gets us:

LRC:

“Other whistleblowers say the same thing. When the former head of the NSA’s digital spying program – William Binney – disclosed the fact that the U.S. was spying on everyone in the U.S. and storing the data forever, and that the U.S. was quickly becoming a totalitarian state, the Feds tried to scare him into shutting up:

[Numerous] FBI officers held a gun to Binney’s head as he stepped naked from the shower. He watched with his wife and youngest son as the FBI ransacked their home. Later Binney was separated from the rest of his family, and FBI officials pressured him to implicate one of the other complainants in criminal activity. During the raid, Binney attempted to report to FBI officials the crimes he had witnessed at NSA, in particular the NSA’s violation of the constitutional rights of all Americans. However, the FBI wasn’t interested in these disclosures. Instead, FBI officials seized Binney’s private computer, which to this day has not been returned despite the fact that he has not been charged with a crime.

[Lila: That means the Feds can implicate him…or  you…. in some cooked up wrong-doing, in which they can be prosecutor, judge and jury….and hold all the “evidence” – i.e. emails you didn’t know you wrote, conversations and words torn from their context, phone calls strung together into a circumstantial daisy-chain of the kind that convicted Rajat Gupta]

Other NSA whistleblowers have also been subjected to armed raids and criminal prosecution.”

Webster Tarpley on how to tell a limited hang-out artist from a truth-teller:

Limited hangout artists are instant media darlings

which was hatched first here (June 13: “Edward Snowden=Sophie Scholl or you’re a fink,”

and also posted at Scott Creightons’ blog.

Creighton took up the the Poitras conspiracy on June 15 and he is referenced, but not me.

Very interesting. Have I joined the list of non-persons? I kind of think so.

Ever since, I began “not playing ball” (2007) this has been the case.

Not that I care.  I’ll just add it to my long list of stories about the underworld of blogging…stories that shine the light on the sewer that is the international “free” press.

Yes, free to lie, plagiarize, manipulate, brainwash, and finally justify mass murder and enslavement.

Some freedom.

Just from what I know so far (and I’m always open to changing my mind if I find anything new), I’ve kind of concluded that this is a “good-guy” intel operation.

See what it accomplishes:

1. Gets to bring up the US gripe with Chinese hackers against the US, while simultaneously giving the Chinese a bit of a fright, with indications of how far they’ve been hacked. Lots of room here for swinging between arm-twisting and the kind of  hugging boxers do before matches

2. Brings out of the closet the massive extent of the US surveillance state and does it in a colorful “sexy” way, replete with pole-dancing, a little gender-tweaking, spy versus spy. Desensitizes the public to some of it, while alerting it about some of its dangers.

3. Lets the “bad guys” and terrorists know that the USG has their number.

4. Scares away any minor trouble-makers from joining “the revolution” (Wolf’s point). Creighton’s point is exactly the opposite – that Snowden is a provocateur.

5. Now comes my favorite explanation –  “maps” social networks and assesses real-time responses, in a  form of cyber war-gaming or, if your prefer it, a kind of opinion poll.

6. Informs people of the need to encrypt communications. This is the good guy part. The government is concerned that a lot of its data bank is being used by criminals and private contractors for their own purposes. So mom and pop need to be told it’s a good thing to encrypt (it is, if you can).

However, even Snowden admits tacitly that the NSA can get its hands quite easily on anything you write, even encrypted, by spying at other points in the chain of communication.

7. Separates bloggers/activists/other trouble-makers into groups:

a. Those who will support their fearless leader, not matter what. And those who won’t.

b. Those who will play the game, and those who aren’t into game playing, generally.

c. Those who can be allowed a greater voice. And those who can’t.

8. Feeds bogus information about the NSA into the internet to confuse foreign intelligence agencies (and my heart is not breaking for any of them)…. because the “battle-field is everywhere”.

9. Feeds bogus information to activists at home who might otherwise inadvertently disclose sensitive security matters.

10. Possibly hurts another agency or department (i.e. interdepartmental outing, a favorite sport of the government (think State versus CIA or FBI versus Military Intelligence).

11. Payback against Booz Hamilton or maybe this is a government versus contractor pay-back?

12.  Creates a credible and popular voice in the alternate media.

UPDATE:

I want to clarify that I don’t mean by this that anyone who supports Snowden is a tool. Not at all.

But, unless they have inside information that they can’t or won’t disclose (or even indicate they have), they cannot possibly be so sure, since what we know so far about Snowden is so sketchy and contradictory.

I have to infer that they are be taking things on authority from Greenwald (or Binney or Ellsberg) and tying their own credibility to his.

Or they are simply digging themselves in, because it’s “for the team,” so to speak.

That might suit, if you think this is all about Team A versus Team B…

But I don’t buy that as a working model for blogging. I just don’t.

So, no, you can support Snowden and not be a tool.

And conversely, you can oppose him and not be a fink. How’s that for fair?

ORIGINAL POST

Just as I pointed out the loss of credibility involved with activists in backing to the hilt this Snowden figure before all the facts have been parsed, Scott Creighton, writing from the left, makes the same point, at much greater length here.

Notice that Creighton too is troubled by  Laura Poitras’ role in this affair, a point I made on June 10 in, “Edward Snowden=Sophie Scholl…or You’re A Statist Fink”.

Bob Wenzel, at EPJ, is now looking at the Poitras angle as well.

To give him credit, Anthony Wile did get it right from the start….courtesy of Creighton.  Give him credit for reading everyone, not just his ideological pals.

Foundation-funding is a big red flag, as I’ve said a  number of times on this blog, and it’s been found stirring up “popular movements” all over the world as I’ve blogged before (eg.  “Barry Zwicker, Noam Chomsky, and the Left-Gate-Keepers,” June 17, 2010 and  “Left-Gate Keeping on Controversial Topics,”April2, 2009).

Foundation-funded activism and “gate-keeping” by the left (and by the right) is one of the premier reasons that real journalism gets subverted, so I’m very happy to read this post, especially as this is an argument best made by native-born Americans.

Scott Creighton:

“Poitras has a long history of making films that expose various horrific aspects of our new Global War OF Terror… to a point. Her preoccupation with the “blow back” meme is troubling to me as is her recent payday (more in the quote below) and to my knowledge she doesn’t focus on the fact that we own and support many of the terrorist destabilization campaigns across the globe. How can an investigative journalist have that much access, that many frequent flier miles and not know the most basic fundamental foundation of the manufactured War Of Terror? For that matter, how does she explain being such a thorn in the side of the establishment and keep flying around the world without a care talking to “terrorists”? Oh yeah, they take her aside when she goes through customs sometimes. That’s her credibility story.

Most recently she did a film featuring a real whistle-blower, William Binney. The NSA just couldn’t WAIT to tar and feather her or at least to appear to.

“But her role as the first point of contact for disclosures about U.S. surveillance programs has drawn the glare of attention to the independent filmmaker who, abruptly, has pushed documentaries deeper into the realm of journalistic immediacy.

For peers and backers of Poitras, the 2012 recipient of a $500,000 “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation, it’s unsurprising that she has seized a story worth telling. However, her crucial involvement with a confidential source and two newspapers on the same big exclusive is extraordinary.” Huffington Post

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a 5.6 billion dollar slush fund financing NGOs in over 60 countries across the world. MacArthur was a banker owning  Bankers Life and Casualty and other businesses. Their focus is on the media and public affairs.

When you want to silence an outspoken critic, the best and least troublesome way to do it is to buy them off with a foundation grant. Just ask Amy Goodman about that. And Poitras got a half million dollars last year?

Curiously, it was Poitras herself who reportedly brought in the Post reporter and Greenwald on this story after having been anonymously emailed by Snowden back in Jan of this year.

Snowden understands that no email is absolutely untraceable and he sent her and Greenwald emails explaining his desire to snitch out the NSA?

Greenwald has had a target painted on his back for a long time. At least since the Stratfor files leaks and the HBGary scandal. They’ve wanted to  shut Glenn up for years. Now’s their chance……”

AND

“With Obamagod talking about “welcoming the discussion” and saying things like “you can’t have 100% security and 100% privacy” it seems pretty clear that what is happening isn’t about exposing the NSA but rather modifying the public opinion toward the Big Brother state we live in.

And for the record, the NSA may have predicted this would be the real CHANGE of the Obama presidency, but so did MANY of us while independent journalists like Greenwald welcomed the ushering in of George W Obama.

[Lila: I, on the other hand, spotted Obama as the hedge-funds’ candidate in 2007 and voted for no one, although I supported in Ron Paul in 2008.

In 2012, I supported the Paul candidacy on educational grounds until December 2011 and then stopped supporting him too. I finally supported the excellent candidate NOBODY, who so far, hasn’t let me down one bit…]

SCOTT CREIGHTON:

“So that wasn’t too difficult to see even back then… meaning you didn’t need to work for the NSA to figure it out.

The only question surrounding this story at this point, at least for me, as a not-so Obama-loyal democrat, is how much does Greenwald really understand about all of this crap he’s found himself in and how deep is he willing to dig himself into the sludge before he can bring himself to admit he’s been set-up with a Bush gone AWOL document?

Does he have his own MacArthur Foundation paycheck? Is he just too damn proud to admit he’s been had? Is he fighting to push this thing beyond it’s reasonable limits because he fears it will destroy the last remaining opposition to our slide toward Big Brother or has he just gone full retard in his effort to finally land that big ground-breaking world changing story?

The trouble with passion sometimes is that it can be manipulated by people skilled at doing so in ways that leave you blind to reason. The harder you try to defend what you feel passionate about, the looser your grip becomes on the rational. Ask any fundamentalist religious fanatic how that works. Ask any of the remaining Obamaites. Or a Redskins fan (not really fair now that we have RG3… but for two decades it was an apt comparison)

So Mr. Greenwald, you never go full retard. Not as a journalist. And I know I don’t qualify because I don’t get weekly direct deposits from such noble institutions like the Guardian that supported NATO’s merciless bombing of Libya and the ongoing terrorist destabilization campaign in Syria (to say nothing of the WMD claims of yesteryear)

But take the advice of a little lowly blogger who got it right back in 2008 when so many others didn’t… this is not about exposing the NSA. It’s about exposing you Mr. Greenwald and us by association.

In short, the question isn’t is Edward Snowden a legitimate whistle-blower… the question is whether or not Glenn Greenwald is a legitimate journalist or just another tool?”

Lila: Yes. Of course, that’s what it’s all about. So why don’t activists with a great deal of intelligence and far more political and marketing savvy than me figure that out? You tell me.

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/06/is-edward-snowden-agent-of-state-or.html

Hmm. Ole Wenzel at EPJ wakes up and smells the freshly-brewed Langley Java, now that dissent diva, Naomi Klein Wolf says it’s OK to be suspicious….

Well, we forgive him. The boy works hard.

Thus, yours truly again saves the credibility of free-marketers, much tarnished from ill-conceived enthusiasms caught by sticking too close to each other and not close enough to the facts.

At arstechnica, Edward Snowden, with years at the CIA under his belt, looks for a cushy European posting that he thinks he can wangle by pretending an interest in Middle Eastern “hell-holes”.

“Thank god for wars,” he says, in true Sophie Scholl fashion…

“Say, Department of State. They’re understaffed right now, but Europe posts are competitive, but you can get in the door much easier if you express an interest in going to near-east hellholes. Once you’re in, tough out the crappy tour and you should be able to pick from a list of preferred posts.

Alternately, get a clearance. If you’re cleared, have a lifestyle, and have specialized IT skills, you can go anywhere in the world right now.

Thank god for wars.”