He should avoid testifying, Germany will offer no safe passage, no asylum, wants to skip and hold hands with the US, and yet wants to make Snowden a sacrificial lamb, so they can use his information as leverage for more cooperative spying with the US. It’s a lose/lose situation for him to jeopardize his standing with Russia, at this point, with no where else to go.
This seems like a good thing. I suppose we will not know until the testimony is done. Perhaps we need a modern and more effective Church committee in the US today. Have Snowden testify remotely. There is no need for him to go anywhere to testify. This is the internet age.
How will he know if what he is testifying to will break Putin’s conditions, before doing so?
If he outlines what he will testify to, in confidence to Putin ahead of time, then the US will further accuse him of conspiring with Russia. I don’t see how this will end well for him. If Germany wants him to speak, they should, in good faith, offer him asylum, but they won’t do that.
OK, I see your point.
Depends on how clear these conditions are defined. It should be possible to outline the no-go-areas, so to speak, in advance.
Also, Snowden could limit his testimony to the information that is already public knowledge, i.e. what has been reported in the media (and that’s pretty much).
The interesting part of his testimony is the information that verifies or corroborates the information already reported.
Plus it would proably be a good idea to hold something back as an insurance hedge.
Am I mistaken in thinking that he’s already given his info-cache away to journalists/others? I would think Russia could kill him (if the need presented itself) and take whatever he’s got and they’ve got a win-win since the US will be suspected of assassination. As much as it pains me to say this, I don’t think Obama would lose any sleep if Snowden were to be found face down in a river somewhere.
Greenwald and others already have the data.
Everything they have they got from Snowden, but do they have everything that Snowden has?
@wrecksdart: he should make sure to stay well outside the operational range of armed UAVs
Agreed–if Snowden hears propellers he ought to be worried (not that he’d hear the hellfire missile, of course). And thank you for so eloquently reframing my question about who has what. I believe someone mentioned that Snowden wasn’t worried about the Chinese, as he knew their capabilities. The Russians, I would think, surpass the Chinese in that arena, and would therefore pose a greater risk to any info Snowden is carrying.
I hate to go back to the tired old cliche about a high-school dropout making good, but Snowden’s name is likely to be as persistent in the American history books as Obama’s.
Oh yes, he will be more than just a footnote in the history books, and not just the American ones. The impact he has made in Europe is enormous.
Re history books: if Obama carries on like this he’ll make Nixon look good.
That sound is HST’s phalanges desperately scraping across a coffin in
search of a dealer’s telephone number and that godamned iPhone.
Sorry, you lost me, I don’t get it. HST?
Hubble Space Telescope ?
Hunter S. Thompson ?
no idea either
The Good Doctor’s dislike of Nixon is well-documented. I’m sure he would have taken pot-shots at Obama too, but, well…
The venerable, inestimably craven genius madman and sports/politics/gibberish writer, Hunter S. Thompson. Not sure if that makes sense, so boil it down to awesome. He was not a friend to Nixon:
Richard Nixon has never been one of my favorite people anyway. For years I've regarded his existence as a monument to all the rancid genes and broken chromosomes that corrupt the possibilities of the American Dream; he was a foul caricature of himself, a man with no soul, no inner convictions, with the integrity of a hyena and the style of a poison toad. The Nixon I remembered was absolutely humorless; I couldn't imagine him laughing at anything except maybe a paraplegic who wanted to vote Democratic but couldn't quite reach the lever on the voting machine.Too bad he blew his brains out, but now that I think about it, maybe I'm happier knowing he didn't see this mess of political affairs.
Thanks!
(Only now I’m annoyed that I didn’t get it in the first place. Some two weeks ago I watched ‘Fear and Loathing on the Road to Hollywood’, a BBC documentary from the early 1980ies, I think. Venerable genius madman indeed. We just need a couple of personalities like him to shake things up a little. At least his alter ego Duke is still around.)
(Hubble was the only thing that crossed my mind, but it made absolutely no sense context-wise…)
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