Kerry Says Snowden Should "Man Up" and Return to US

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**Gentleman_Jellyfish**

Co'tor Shas wrote:
thenoobbomb wrote:
Co'tor Shas wrote:
Fafnir wrote:
Co'tor Shas wrote:
Ah, Snowden. He lost all legitimacy in my eyes after he ran to Russia.

"Oh-no, the US is invading people's privacy! It violates people's rights! Better go to Russia, a cesspit of corruption, lack of rights!"

What a gakker.

Yeah, it's not like the US government cancelled his passport when he was on his way to another location, leaving him stranded there.

Then live in the airport and make a deal with the US gov. to not reveal any more info in return for a pardon. I'm sure they would have loved that, especially since it would mean that Russia doesn't get any info. He has always seemed to be a bit self-serving, and arrogant to me.

That would go against exactly what he 'preaches'.

So it would be better to give only Russia the info?

That's weird considering how many articles I read based off his leaks.

**thenoobbomb**

Co'tor Shas wrote:
thenoobbomb wrote:
But he doesn't. He makes it public.

And what has he said recently? He is supposed to still have a bunch of other info, which now the Russian gov has. He worked for the NSA and got a lot of info, you can't honestly believe that this is all he saw.

He's leaking stuff over time.

I think he'll also keep some stuff to himself, as a sort of life insurance: "If you get me killed, this information will be published".

**Co'tor Shas**

Just some calcification, I'm talking about info he is still supposed to have but has not given to the public because it has nothing to do with PRISIM.

**daedalus**

Co'tor Shas wrote:
Just some calcification, I'm talking about info he is still supposed to have but has not given to the public because it has nothing to do with PRISIM.

Do you have a link to something suggesting that such a thing exists? I can't find anything.

I DID find an NY Times article with "snowden-says-he-was-a-spy" in the link, in spite of the fact that in the body of the actual article, it says that he says he said he's NOT a spy. That made me chuckle.

**Gentleman_Jellyfish**

Co'tor Shas wrote:
Just some calcification, I'm talking about info he is still supposed to have but has not given to the public because it has nothing to do with PRISIM.

So you're upset that he's releasing it over time instead of the shotgun approach so we can all forget about him in a month?

**Co'tor Shas**

Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:
Co'tor Shas wrote:
Just some calcification, I'm talking about info he is still supposed to have but has not given to the public because it has nothing to do with PRISIM.

So you're upset that he's releasing it over time instead of the shotgun approach so we can all forget about him in a month?

What? no. I'm not upset at all. I couldn't care less about him or his info, I just think he was stupid to go to Russia.

**BobtheInquisitor**

Wait wait wait.

What's this about aliens?

**Co'tor Shas**

....

What.

**Grey Templar**

BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Wait wait wait.

What's this about aliens?

Snowden leaked a blatantly false accusation that the Government had covered up the existence of aliens.

**Gentleman_Jellyfish**

Grey Templar wrote:
BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Wait wait wait.

What's this about aliens?

Snowden leaked a blatantly false accusation that the Government had covered up the existence of aliens.

I thought the documents that he released regarding UFO's were part of some training course

**Dust**

I think it's tremendously ironic for Kerry to tell someone to "man up"

**Co'tor Shas**

Why?

**thenoobbomb**

Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:
Grey Templar wrote:
BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Wait wait wait.

What's this about aliens?

Snowden leaked a blatantly false accusation that the Government had covered up the existence of aliens.

I thought the documents that he released regarding UFO's were part of some training course

Along with zombies, I recall.

**Ahtman**

Co'tor Shas wrote:
Why?

I'm guessing because he himself isn't seen as very masculine.

**Flashman**

Ever wonder if this is just an elaborate plot to narrow the search for internet based terrorists. Anyone deemed to be engaged in suspicious activity who immediately stopped using the internet in the aftermath of the Snowden revelations has surely got to be a prime suspect.

**Gentleman_Jellyfish**

Flashman wrote:
Ever wonder if this is just an elaborate plot to narrow the search for internet based terrorists. Anyone deemed to be engaged in suspicious activity who immediately stopped using the internet in the aftermath of the Snowden revelations has surely got to be a prime suspect.

.

Whoever talks about Snowden the longest is the terrorist!

**Vaktathi**

If I were Snowden, I don't think I'd be rising to Kerry's taunt. Otherwise it's just a good way to get black bagged and spend quite a bit of time in prison.

I do not understand this administration's approach to the situation, they really are going out of their way to show that was this guy did was the correct course of action and that he really should not come back.

**Ketara**

Let's see......spend the next ten years in solitary confinement in America, or live in isolation in communist Russia....

Great choices.

**Jihadin**

It get cold in Russia. Serbian winter can shatter anyone who "Man Up" to it. Ask the Germans from a certain time period

As for Kerry and his questionable integrity on his war time award(s) and to include Snowden action. Dueling idiots

**mega_bassist**

Ouze wrote:
The US doesn't have a justice system. We have a legal system.

And you can take my Exalt for today

**Fafnir**

Co'tor Shas wrote:
Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:
Co'tor Shas wrote:
Just some calcification, I'm talking about info he is still supposed to have but has not given to the public because it has nothing to do with PRISIM.

So you're upset that he's releasing it over time instead of the shotgun approach so we can all forget about him in a month?

What? no. I'm not upset at all. I couldn't care less about him or his info, I just think he was stupid to go to Russia.

It's kind of difficult to get to anywhere pleasant when your travel route can only include countries that won't extradite to the US. It also doesn't help to have your passport cancelled half-way through your trip.

**Gentleman_Jellyfish**

EDWARD SNOWDEN SEES HIMSELF AS A PATRIOT

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/5/28/edward-snowden-nbcinterview.html

Former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden said in an interview that he takes the threat of terrorism very seriously and views himself as a patriot, and insisted he is not under the control of Russia's government and has given Moscow no intelligence documents after nearly a year of asylum there.

"I have no relationship with the Russian government at all," Snowden told NBC News in an interview – the whistleblower’s first with a U.S. television network – aired late Wednesday. "I'm not supported by the Russian government. I'm not taking money from the Russian government. I'm not a spy."

The remarks by Snowden, whose leaks about highly classified U.S. surveillance programs upended the NSA, upset millions of ordinary people as well as world leaders and prompted limited reforms by President Barack Obama, were his most extensive to date on his relations with his host government.

While some U.S. government officials have said Snowden's leaks could benefit those wishing to harm American interests, he insisted that he takes "the threat of terrorism seriously."

"I was on Fort Meade [in Maryland, where the NSA is headquartered] on Sept. 11th. I was right outside the NSA. So, I remember the tension on that day. I remember hearing on the radio the planes hitting. And I remember thinking my grandfather, who worked for the FBI at the time, was in the Pentagon when the plane hit it," Snowden said.

"And I think it's really disingenuous for the government to invoke and sort of scandalize our memories to sort of exploit the national trauma that we all suffered together, and worked so hard to come through, to justify programs that have never been shown to keep us safe."

But Current and former U.S. intelligence officials have said it is unlikely Russian security services have not squeezed Snowden for secrets.

Snowden — who said he wants to return to the United States — said he destroyed classified materials before transiting to a Moscow airport, where he was prevented from onward travel.

"I took nothing to Russia, so I could give them nothing," he told NBC's Brian Williams in the hour-long interview.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials have said he was welcome to return to the United States if he wanted to face justice for leaking details of massive U.S. intelligence-gathering programs.

"If I could go anywhere in the world, that place would be home," Snowden told Williams in an interview that is one of several he has given since leaving the U.S.

Asked how eager he was to make a deal to return to the United States, Snowden replied: “My priority is not about myself. It’s about making sure that these programs are reformed — and that the family that I left behind, the country that I left behind — can be helped by my actions.”

But when asked why he doesn’t go home and "face the music," as suggested by some in the U.S. government, he said that "the music is not an open and fair court."

Snowden who fled to Hong Kong before ending up in Moscow, is believed to have taken 1.7 million computerized documents. The leaked documents revealed massive programs run by the NSA that gathered information on emails, phone calls and Internet use by millions of Americans and others worldwide.

He was charged last year in the United States with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified intelligence to an unauthorized person.

Earlier on Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry invited Snowden to "man up and come back to the United States" on the CBS "This Morning" program on Wednesday.

Snowden contended he did not betray his country when Williams said "A lot of people would say, 'You've badly damaged your country.” Snowden responded “I'd say, 'Can you show that?” He, and others contend, none of the information he had leaked has damaged the United States. Indeed, he said that he “demanded” that journalists he gave documents to consult with the government before publication.

He said he took information and turned it over so people wouldn’t get killed. "I didn’t want to take information that... would cause harm to individuals, that would cause people to die," he said.

Snowden repeated what he has said in the past, that he went through proper channels to raise concerns with the NSA, only to be told to stop asking questions.

Saying he saw himself as a patriot, Snowden said to Williams: "The reality is the situation determined that this needed to be told to the public. The Constitution of the United States had been violated on a massive scale.

"I think it’s important to remember that people don’t set their lives on fire, they don’t say goodbye to their families ... they don’t walk away from their extraordinarily comfortable lives ... and burn down everything they love for no reason.”

U.S. officials also fired back at Snowden’s comments in an excerpt from the NBC interview that aired on Tuesday in which he said he was trained as a spy and that he worked undercover and overseas for the CIA and the NSA.

Asked by CNN if that were true, White House national security adviser Susan Rice replied: "No."

In the material aired Wednesday, Snowden said it misleading for the government to describe him as a low-level systems operator. He described himself as a technical expert who has worked for the United States at high levels, including as a lecturer in a counterintelligence academy for the Defense Intelligence Agency.

“But I am a technical specialist. I am a technical expert,” he said. “I don’t work with people. I don’t recruit agents. What I do is I put systems to work for the United States. And I’ve done that at all levels from — from the bottom on the ground all the way to the top.”

**Ouze**

It also appears that he made at least some attempt to report the excesses he saw from within the system initially before going to the press.

NSA releases Edward Snowden e-mail exchange

Washington (CNN) -- The NSA has released an e-mail exchange between Edward Snowden and the agency's general counsel's office, countering a claim the former contractor made in an interview this week.

Speaking to NBC News in an interview that aired Wednesday, Snowden claimed that he'd reached out to the office while working as an National Security Agency contractor to report what he saw as an abuse of power by the agency.

"I reported that there were real problems with the way the NSA was interpreting its legal authorities," he told NBC's Brian Williams.

In the e-mail exchange released by the NSA Thursday, Snowden requests clarification about training material he'd received, asking whether executive orders can override federal laws.

The general counsel's office responded to Snowden's e-mail, saying that executive orders have the "force and effect of law" but cannot override a statute.

"Please give me a call if you would like to discuss further," the e-mail concludes.

In his interview with NBC, Snowden said that after raising concerns, he essentially was told to "stop asking questions."

He described his contact with the general counsel's office as an indication of what he said were his efforts to go through official channels to raise his concerns about the NSA before leaking classified documents.

In a statement Thursday, the NSA said the e-mail exchange it released was the only communication found and there was no evidence Snowden followed up.

"We have searched for additional indications of outreach from him in those areas and to date have not discovered any engagements related to his claims," the statement said.

Snowden said Thursday that the e-mail exchange released by the NSA was "a strangely tailored and incomplete leak," telling The Washington Post that it "only shows the NSA feels it has something to hide."

"If the White House is interested in the whole truth, rather than the NSA's clearly tailored and incomplete leak today for a political advantage, it will require the NSA to ask my former colleagues, management, and the senior leadership team about whether I, at any time, raised concerns about the NSA's improper and at times unconstitutional surveillance activities," Snowden told the newspaper. "It will not take long to receive an answer."

source

**Jihadin**

Should have asked for that in written and take a "verbal". Yet no name who gave him a verbal

**Ouze**

what is "a verbal"? Like, intentionally get written up?

**Jihadin**

First offense is a verbal
follow by a written
follow by written and corrective action
follow by reprimand and negative action
follow by removal from job

Edit

Verbal warning

**Ouze**

Yeah, but why would it have been a good idea to have taken a verbal? Just to get it in writing (yes, at my job, "verbal" warnings are actually copiously documented)

**Relapse**

Dust wrote:
I think it's tremendously ironic for Kerry to tell someone to "man up"

Is it? From Wiki on Kerry's military service:

During the night of December 2 and early morning of December 3, 1968, Kerry was in charge of a small boat operating near a peninsula north of Cam Ranh Bay together with a Swift boat (PCF-60). According to Kerry and the two crewmen who accompanied him that night, Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis, they surprised a group of men unloading sampans at a river crossing, who began running and failed to obey an order to stop. As the men fled, Kerry and his crew opened fire on the sampans and destroyed them, then rapidly left. During this encounter, Kerry received a shrapnel wound in the left arm above the elbow. It was for this injury that Kerry received his first Purple Heart.[20]

Kerry received his second Purple Heart for a wound received in action on the Bo De River on February 20, 1969. The plan had been for the Swift boats to be accompanied by support helicopters. On the way up the Bo De, however, the helicopters were attacked. As the Swift boats reached the Cua Lon River, Kerry's boat was hit by a RPG round, and a piece of shrapnel hit Kerry's left leg, wounding him. Thereafter, they had no more trouble, and reached the Gulf of Thailand safely. Kerry still has shrapnel in his left thigh because the doctors tending to him decided to remove the damaged tissue and close the wound with sutures rather than make a wide opening to remove the shrapnel.[21] Kerry received his second Purple Heart for this injury, but like several others wounded earlier that day, he did not lose any time off from duty.[22][23]

Eight days later, on February 28, 1969, came the events for which Kerry was awarded his Silver Star. On this occasion, Kerry was in tactical command of his Swift boat and two others in an eight boat formation. Their mission on the Duong Keo river included bringing a demolition team and dozens of South Vietnamese Marines to destroy enemy sampans, structures and bunkers as described in the story The Death Of PCF 43.[24] Running into an ambush, Kerry "directed the boats to turn to the beach and charge the Viet Cong positions" and he "expertly directed" his boat's fire and coordinated the deployment of the South Vietnamese troops, according to the original medal citation (signed by Admiral Zumwalt). Going a short distance farther, Kerry's boat was the target of an RPG round; as the boat hove to and beached, a Viet Cong ("VC") insurgent armed with a rocket launcher emerged from a spider hole and ran. While the boat's gunner opened fire, wounding the VC in the leg, and while the other boats approached and offered cover fire, Kerry jumped from the boat to chase the VC insurgent, subsequently killing him and capturing his loaded rocket launcher.[25][26][27]

Kerry's commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander George Elliott, joked to Douglas Brinkley in 2003 that he didn't know whether to court-martial Kerry for beaching the boat without orders or give him a medal for saving the crew. Elliott recommended Kerry for the Silver Star, and Zumwalt flew into An Thoi to personally award medals to Kerry and the rest of the sailors involved in the mission. The Navy's account of Kerry's actions is presented in the original medal citation signed by Zumwalt. The engagement was documented in an after-action report, a press release written on March 1, 1969, and a historical summary dated March 17, 1969.[28]

On March 13, 1969, on the Song Bái Háp (Bay Hap river), five Swift boats were returning to their base after performing an Operation Sealords mission to transport South Vietnamese troops from the garrison at Cái Nước and MIKE Force advisors for a raid on a Vietcong camp located on the Rach Dong Cung canal. Earlier in the day, Kerry received a slight shrapnel wound in the buttocks from blowing up a rice bunker. Debarking some but not all of the passengers at a small village, the boats approached a fishing weir; one group of boats went around to the left of the weir, hugging the shore, and a group with Kerry's PCF-94 boat went around to the right, along the shoreline. A mine was detonated directly beneath the lead boat, PCF-3, as it crossed the weir to the left, lifting PCF-3 "about 2-3 ft out of water".[29]

James Rassmann, a Green Beret advisor who was aboard PCF-94, was knocked overboard when, according to witnesses and the documentation of the event, a mine or rocket exploded close to the boat. According to the documentation for the event, Kerry's arm was injured when he was thrown against a bulkhead during the explosion. PCF 94 returned to the scene and Kerry rescued Rassmann from the water. Kerry received the Bronze Star for his actions during this incident; he also received his third Purple Heart."

**Jihadin**

I see where your at Ouze. Snowden should have waited to get a written warning but I am also thinking was the information being to sensitive to go on the written warning. I've seen written warning of those nature but the subject matter was not covered but the infraction of releasing sensitive information is covered by whatever memo, SOP, AR, and/or Regs

**Ahtman**

Relapse wrote:
Dust wrote:
I think it's tremendously ironic for Kerry to tell someone to "man up"

Is it? From Wiki on Kerry's military service:

Don't forget this wiki page.