Last week, the Sunday chat shows featured some of the usual official vitriol directed at NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Republican Rep. Mike Rogers led the charge. On Meet the Press (1/19/14), he said listening to Snowden was like paying attention to “the janitor at a bank who figured out how to steal some money deciding matters of high finance.”
He went on:
ROGERS: Well, let me just say this. I believe there’s a reason he ended up in the hands, the loving arms, of an FSB agent in Moscow. I don’t think that’s a coincidence, No. 1. No. 2, and let me just talk about this. I think it’s important.
GREGORY: You think the Russians helped Ed Snowden?
ROGERS: I believe there’s questions to be answered there. I don’t think it was a gee-whiz luck event that he ended up in Moscow under the handling of the FSB.
GREGORY: That’s a significant development if it’s true.
“If it’s true”–an important qualifier there.
Rogers was also on Face the Nation (1/19/14), saying the same thing (“I can guarantee you he’s in the loving arms of an FSB agent right today”), still offering no evidence.
But in Newsweek (1/24/14), Jeff Stein seemed to think these accusations had some bite:
Give the hard-liners credit: After one stunning revelation after another about the National Security Agency’s Orwellian spying operations, they finally managed to land a punch this week on Edward Snowden, the über-leaking fugitive.
And the punch apparently came from Rogers and others:
But this week, renewed accusations of “treason,” along with sharper insinuations from Rogers that the former NSA contractor had to have had “some help,” or was “cultivated by a foreign power to do what he did,” as House Homeland Security Committee chairman Mike McCaul, R-Texas, claimed, seemed to have gained wider support. Even Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, added her voice to the overheated rhetoric, telling Meet the Press that Snowden “may well have” had help from the Russians. “I don’t know,” she added lamely.
No matter that no one cited any evidence to back up these charges. But backstopped by a blistering cover story in the liberal New Republic portraying Snowden, his reporter pal Glenn Greenwald and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as men who “despise the modern liberal state,” the assaults found takers on every major network. Indeed, they emerged like talking points from the war room of a right-wing Washington think tank.
So there’s no evidence yet that any of this is true. But since the charges are repeated everywhere in the media, along with the old even-the-liberal-New-Republic trick, means that this line of attack is punchy or something. Newsweek‘s piece isn’t even all that clear:
But scrapping over whether the whistle-blower was a Russian agent is futile now-–and mostly silly, says Oleg Kalugin, an ex-KGB general who spent much of his 32-year career running espionage operations in and against the United States. From what he has seen and heard, Kalugin told Newsweek, Snowden wasn’t a spy.
So there’s no evidence for these charges, Snowden denies them, US intelligence doesn’t seem to think they add up–but this is a potent line of attack on Snowden? It’s a curious take. If lawmakers are making unfounded allegations about a whistleblower, and those allegations are being repeated across the media, one might think the real problem is with a media culture.
At least, that’s how Snowden sees it, according to an interview with the New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer (1/21/14):
“It’s just amazing that these massive media institutions don’t have any sort of editorial position on this. I mean these are pretty serious allegations, you know?” He continued, “The media has a major role to play in American society, and they’re really abdicating their responsibility to hold power to account.”
It’s always amusing to me
(Well, perhaps “amusing” isn’t the right word … )
How the corpress coughs up “dispassionate” analysis of how effective some PR strategy is
When they in large measure determine its efficacy.
It’s like pouring gasoline on a fire
And then reporting on its spread.
The argument that Snowden was or is in league with the Russians reminds me of when George W. Bush kept claiming that Saddam had WMD and was to blame for 911. Snowden was abhorred that the government is spying on everyone so he took action. Do they use their spy machine for political or economic gain? If not yet…when? It’s inevitable that they will. That’s why we used to have a right to privacy. It’s why Congress, not the President was given the exclusive right to declare. The greatest threat we face is our political rulers….not the Russians…not even the terrorists….er what terrorists anyway? The worst we have seen is the nutcase brothers who bombed Boston. Why does our government let those people live here anyway? The spy machine will become a weapon to enslave us all eventually. We need to pull the plug on it. Spy on foreigners not on us Uncle Sam!
Wow, this media insanity is truly amazing. I suppose we can all entertain all kinds of wild thoughts…….I just made up this one:
*** The lizard people are infesting the media and Snowden has really escaped from the planet, Orwell, to warn us of the impending doom of the lizard overlords.
Look closely…can’t you see the forked tongues sneaking out of the mouths of some of these pretend reporters and elected officials? Like chamelons, they can easily change colors, but the slither of the tongue is the dead give away.***
You see media, if you want to make something up, be like that penny paper of a previous century, THE SUN, and write about unicorns and bat winged men living on the moon. That will certainly increase your audience and would be more believeable that what you write now.
Alan Greyson is reminding us of that old movie NETWORK, and so; Isn’t it time for us to stand up, go to a window and scream out:
“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more! ”
I really would like the news Life to imitate that movie art right now!
So Snowden and friends “despise the modern liberal state,” does he mean the corporatocracy that we have posing as a modern liberal state? There’s plenty of reason to despise it, it makes sure there are wars to provide profits to the already rich and fails to take care of its own citizens whose jobs it has allowed to be transported to other countries. And now it’s spying on all of us. All the while mealy mouthing platitudes about protecting us.
I seriously doubt anyone with half a mind pays attention to what the chattering (and well remunerated for its efforts) class in the MSM has to “say.”
The issue is how to neutralize this venomous propaganda to get us out of this horrible moment in history.
Not true? Who cares? Russian intrigue against “U.S. interests” makes a good story, and everybody loves a good story, right?
I don’t really think that the Russians helped Snowden get his data, but one has to be stupid or totally naive to think the Russians haven’t helped themselves to Snowden’s stolen info. But this is all a distraction from the main topic, Snowden needs to be snatched, brought back to the US, go to trial and prision for being a traitor and violating the
U.S. Code › Title 18 › Part I › Chapter 37 › § 793
18 U.S. CODE § 793 – GATHERING, TRANSMITTING OR LOSING DEFENSE INFORMATION.
Dear George C.;
I would like to see the architects of WMDs and those who ignored the CIA etc. who said there were no WMDs. Phony wars impact the whole planet——forever. War crimes were dealt with in WW II, so why not now?
However, if elected and appointed officals are exempt from laws that everyone else has to follow ( in their own nation and internationally) ……..then there don’t seem to be any laws at all.
Mr. Snowden is a whistlenlower; there is a difference. Please reread the Bill of Rights; that is what every citizen is told that they go to war for—-to defend YOUR freedoms. Aren’t you glad that someone is looking out for the rights of the people?
The gossip principle- get enough people saying something enough times, and many people will believe it- because a “big name” said it- Ad hominen. you learn this fallacy in your first week of any class in logic.
When all else fails, make up something that can’t be verified, then act as though it were Gospel. That why you can eat your cake and have it too. This is what Corpse-Press zombies want. They can point the finger at snowden, and being zombie, the other four finger have all fallen off, so they can’t possible ‘point back at them’.
Has anyone else noticed that every time Snowden farts, the Corpse-Press goes into apocalyptic fits and starts spewing the bile.
1) Socrates 2 contradicts himself. I hope he will re-read is post.
And 2) Doug Latimer’s image is very very good, and I think helpful to others. I would only add that the fire that they help to spread is a total fake and yet there’s the alarm! There’s the fire department trucks! There’s the police and the in-justice department! There’s the Air Force to enforce the illegal domestic laws! And there’s every Tom, Dick, and Harry bureaucrat lined up to help penalize the innocent over a crime that never happened–all laws that violate the Constitution being by definition null and void! Jay Warren Clark
Thanks again to latimer. I’m a teacher and I know that I should keep a special hatred apart for the sins of my own colleagues in the fiasco we face today in the American Republic, but sometimes I can’t help but think that the sin of journalists and their bosses is the heaviest of all. What they do in the order of commission, omission, and distraction is really unforgivable.
Much obliged, Jay.
“We report
You decide”?
Try “We decide
Then report”.