Gary Johnson: I Would Pardon Edward Snowden

[Draggingtree]

Texas Tribune:

Gary Johnson: I Would Pardon Edward Snowden

by Patrick Svitek Sept. 24, 2016

 

Amid a renewed debate about Edward Snowden, Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson said Saturday he would pardon the whistleblower based on his knowledge of the case.

 

In an interview at The Texas Tribune Festival, Johnson, the former New Mexico governor, was deeply skeptical of how the United States is using the kind of intelligence capabilities brought to light by Snowden. Snowden, a former government contractor, faces charges under the Espionage Act for leaking classified information about the National Security Agency to reporters in 2013.

 

[Draggingtree]

The Real Ed Snowden Is a Patsy, a Fraud and a Kremlin-Controlled Pawn

 

Few American defectors to Moscow ever return home—most fade away in a haze of vodka and regret

 

By John R. Schindler • 09/19/16 3:15pm

I’ve closely followed the saga of Edward Snowden from the moment the former CIA and NSA IT contractor grabbed the global limelight with both hands back on June 12, 2013 by appearing in the Chinese media, exposing American government secrets on a scale nobody had ever done before.

 

I insisted from the outset that Snowden was not the whistleblower he claimed to be, rather an attention-seeking narcissist, and that certainly once he landed in Moscow on June 23, 2013—and quite possibly before—he was in bed with Russian intelligence. Moreover, Snowden’s 1.5 million stolen documents were nearly all about NSA foreign intelligence and Pentagon military matters—not domestic surveillance. In short, the Snowden saga as presented to the public by Ed and his media enablers was a fantasy.

 

Now, more than three years later, my position—which garnered me criticism and epic amounts of social media trolling—has been vindicated by several sources,

including the U.S. Congress. Oliver Stone’s apologia-as-film about Snowden has just opened, to decidedly mixed reviews http://observer.com/2016/09/the-real-ed-snowden-is-a-patsy-a-fraud-and-a-kremlin-controlled-pawn/