more at: http://jhaines6.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/matrix-who-is-edward-snowden-by-jon-rappoport-july-8-2013/Okay. Let’s look at Snowden’s brief history as reported by The Guardian. Are there any holes?
Is the Pope Catholic?
In 2003, at age 19, without a high school diploma, Snowden enlists in the Army. He begins a training program to join the Special Forces. At what point after enlistment can a new soldier start this elite training program?
Snowden breaks both legs in an exercise. He’s discharged from the Army. Is that automatic? How about healing and then resuming service?
If he was accepted in the Special Forces training program because he had special computer skills, then why discharge him simply because he broke both legs?
“Sorry, Ed, but with two broken legs we just don’t think you can hack into terrorist data anymore. You were good, but not now. Try Walmart. They always have openings.”
Circa 2003, Snowden gets a job as a security guard for an NSA facility at the University of Maryland. He specifically wanted to work for NSA? It was just a generic job opening he found out about?
Snowden shifts jobs. Boom. He’s now in the CIA, in IT. He has no high school diploma. He’s a young computer genius.
In 2007, Snowden is sent to Geneva. He’s only 23 years old. The CIA gives him diplomatic cover there. He’s put in charge of maintaining computer-network security. Major job. Obviously, he has access to a wide range of classified documents. Sound a little odd? He’s just a kid. Maybe he has his GED. Otherwise, he still doesn’t have a high school diploma.
Snowden says that during this period, in Geneva, one of the incidents that really sours him on the CIA is the “turning of a Swiss banker.” One night, CIA guys get a banker drunk, encourage him to drive home, the banker gets busted, the CIA guys help him out, then with that bond formed, they eventually get the banker to reveal deep secrets to the Agency.
This sours Snowden? He’s that naïve? He doesn’t know by now that the CIA does this sort of thing all the time? He’s shocked? He “didn’t sign up for this?” Come on.
In 2009, Snowden leaves the CIA. Why? Presumably because he’s disillusioned. It should noted here that Snowden claimed he could do very heavy damage to the entire US intelligence community in 2008, but decided to wait because he thought Obama, just coming into the presidency, might keep his “transparency” promise.
After two years with the CIA in Geneva, Snowden really had the capability to take down the whole US inter-agency intelligence network, or a major chunk of it?
If you buy that without further inquiry, I have condos for sale on the dark side of the moon.
In 2009, Snowden leaves the CIA and goes to work in the private sector. Dell, Booze Allen Hamilton. In this latter job, Snowden is assigned to work at the NSA.
He’s an outsider, but, again, he claims to have so much access to so much sensitive NSA data that he can take down the whole US intelligence network in a single day. The. Whole. US. Intelligence. Network.
This is Ed Snowden’s sketchy legend. It’s all red flags, alarm bells, sirens, flashing lights.
Then we have the crowning piece: they solved the riddle: Ed Snowden was able to steal thousands of highly protected NSA documents because…he had a thumb drive.
It’s the weapon that breached the inner sanctum of the most sophisticated information agency in the world.
It’s the weapon to which the NSA, with all its resources, remains utterly vulnerable. Can’t defeat it.
Not only did Snowden stroll into NSA with a thumb drive, he knew how to navigate all the security layers put in place to stop people from stealing classified documents.
“Let’s see. We have a new guy coming to work for us here at NSA today? Oh, whiz kid. Ed Snowden. Outside contractor. Booz Allen. He’s not really a full-time employee of the NSA. Twenty-nine years old. No high school diploma. Has a GED. He worked for the CIA and quit. Hmm. Why did he quit? Oh, never mind, who cares? No problem.
“Tell you what. Let’s give this kid access to our most sensitive data. Sure. Why not? Everything. That stuff we keep behind 986 walls? Where you have to pledge the life of your first-born against the possibility you’ll go rogue? Let Snowden see it all. Sure. What the hell. I’m feeling charitable. He seems like a nice kid.”
NSA is the most awesome spying agency ever devised in this world. If you cross the street in Podunk, Anywhere, USA, to buy an ice cream soda, on a Tuesday afternoon in July, they know.
They know whether you sit at the counter and drink that soda or take it and move to the only table in the store. They know whether you lick the foam from the top of the glass with your tongue or pick the foam with your straw and then lick it.
They know if you keep the receipt for the soda or leave it on the counter.
They know whether you’re wearing shoes or sneakers. They know the brand of your underwear. They know your shaving cream, and precisely which container it came out of.
But this agency, with all its vast power and its dollars…
Can’t track one of its own, a man who came to work every day, a man who made up a story about needing treatment in Hong Kong for epilepsy and then skipped the country.
Just can’t find him.
Can’t find him in Hong Kong, where he does a sit-down video interview with Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian. Can’t find that “safe house” or that “hotel” where he’s staying.
No. Can’t find him or spy on his communications while he’s in Hong Kong. Can’t figure out he’s booked a flight to Russia. Can’t intercept him at the airport before he leaves for Russia . Too difficult.
And this man, this employee, is walking around with four laptops that contain the keys to all the secret spying knowledge in the known cosmos.
Can’t locate those laptops. Can’t hack into them to see what’s there. Can’t access the laptops or the data. The most brilliant technical minds of this or any other generation can find a computer in Outer Mongolia in the middle of a blizzard, but these walking-around computers in Hong Kong are somehow beyond reach.
And before this man, Snowden, this employee, skipped Hawaii, he was able to access the layout of the entire US intelligence network. Yes.
He stole enough to “take down the entire US intelligence network in a single afternoon.”
Not only that, but anyone who worked at this super-agency as an analyst, as a systems-analyst supervisor, could have done the same thing. Could have stolen the keys to the kingdom.
This is why NSA geniuses with IQs over 180 have decided, now, in the midst of the Snowden affair, that they need to draft “tighter rules and procedures” for their employees. Right.
Now, a few pieces of internal of security they hadn’t realized they needed before will be put in place.
This is, let me remind you, the most secretive spying agency in the world. The richest spying agency. The smartest spying agency.
But somehow, over the years, they’d overlooked this corner of their own security. They’d left a door open, so that any one of their own analysts could steal everything.
Could take it all. Could just snatch it away and copy it and store it on a few laptops.
But now, yes now, having been made aware of this vulnerability, the agency will make corrections.
Sure.
And reporters for elite US media don’t find any of this hard to swallow.
A smart sixth-grader could see through this tower of fabricated crap in a minute, but veteran grizzled reporters are clueless.
On the ever-solicitous Charley Rose, a gaggle of pundits/newspeople warned that Ed Snowden, walking around with those four laptops, could be an easy target for Chinese spies or Russian spies, who could get access to the data on those computers. The spies could just hack in.
But the NSA can’t. No. The NSA can’t find out what Snowden has. They can only speculate.
The tightest and strongest and richest and smartest spying agency in the world can’t find its own employee. It’s in the business of tracking, and it can’t find him.
It’s in the business of security, and it can’t protect its own data from its employees.
If you believe all that, I have timeshares to sell in the black hole in the center of the Milky Way