Discussion for article #223215
Kerry said. “If Mr. Snowden wants to come back to the United States today, we’ll have him on a flight today.”
Yeah—then he can get locked up incommunicado like Bradley/Chelsea Manning.
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The man is a victim! They didn’t screw him as bad as Bundy yet, but soon even Snowden may be holding a press conference with a dead calf in his arms, that’s how serious this is!!
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I thought the same thing. Snowden wants to be anywhere that won’t land him in prison. Russia is merely the only place that can happen right now so he is stuck there. It is absolutely the State Department’s fault that he is in Russia today.
You could even make a good argument that stranding him in Russia was a really bad idea. He has a lot of sensitive information about US intelligence, and you put him at the mercy of Putin? Should have let him fly to Ecuador or Bolivia. Who cares what he tells them, just so long as the Russians don’t find out.
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Please. In Russia all the calves die from frost-bite.
Right. Because as a civilian, Snowden would be subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and all of the other stuff that comes with the voluntary surrender of civil rights that occurs when you join the military.
What will happen if he comes home is that he’ll be arrested and arraigned, he’ll be put in jail, his bail application will be denied in light of his proven flight risk history, then he’ll get a lawyer and his case will be docketed for trial. He’ll get all the Due Process he’s due.
That said, his future would be sufficiently dire to make his desire to stay away perfectly understandable without engaging in hyperbole. The evidence against him is damning, given the number of incriminating statements he’s made and if he’s convicted or pleads guilty, he’ll do a lot of very hard time. The federal sentencing guidelines are inflexible and people with heads full of secrets don’t do their time at Club Fed.
But FFS, he’s a civilian and a celebrity. The idea that he’ll just disappear down some black hole is fucking idiotic and every time you guys put that up as a possibility, you just make yourselves look like hysterical ninnies.
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You skipped the part where they torture him first, like they did Manning. Then, after just surviving a campaign to have him executed for treason, he’ll go to prison for 40 years.
The current barbarity of the American criminal justice system–unique in the Western world in its cult of imprisonment–has nullified this country’s glorious tradition of civil disobedience, i.e., breaking the law then submitting to the rule of law. Patriots like Snowden have no option but to live a life of involuntary exile.
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Just out of interest, how much prison time do you think (1) he would get; and (2) ought to get?
Boy you catch on quick! I wonder how many other readers cottoned on to what that devious Kerry really meant?!
Latest news on Chelsea is that she’s being transferred to a civilian facility for taxpayer-funded hormone treatment in gender transition, but of course that’s just another of sly Kerry’s underhanded tricks.
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Oh, please. There’s not a country on the face of the Earth that treats spilling highly classified information to the press as a misdemeanor. Every country on earth, even countries like Sweden or the glorious worker’s paradise of Venezuela, treat is as a crime roughly equivalent to murder in its seriousness.
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If Snowden is a victim, which I don’t believe, it’s by his own hand. And for Bundy, he’s just a free loader with racist tendencies.
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He’s in Russia, because he is a fugitive. He can walk into the U.S. Embassy any time he likes. He repeats time and again how he “did nothing wrong,” but refuses to come to face his charges. Maybe he thinks he did something wrong.
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Kerry’s response was clueless but not because Kerry is clueless, its because thats all there is to be said from Kerry’s side.
The real problem here is that the generals running the NSA have amassed a vast amount of power and we simply should not trust them not to abuse it. Hoover abused his position and the establishment has never repudiated him or apologized for his actions. The FBI headquarters is still named after him.
During the 1950s through the 1970s the CIA and NSA engineered a series of coups in foreign countries. In many cases replacing democratically elected governments with dictators. Only a fool would believe that the generals are above doing that at home.
I have met Alexander and Hayden and I don’t trust either of them. They have a very narrow way of thinking and in a tight situation they are very likely to decide that extreme measures are needed and its time to declare martial law and suspend the constitution.
We can’t trust the NSA but we can’t trust legislation either. All we can trust is strong cryptography ubiquitously deployed and used.
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This is a unique take on justice in America. Ellsberg was tried, while out on bail, and ultimately all charges against him were dismissed. He can’t and won’t be tortured as a matter of law. This is just some stuff people like to make up to rationalize the man’s refugee status.
A man who says he did nothing wrong, should have no problem facing his charges. Unless, of course, he did something wrong.
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He’s also in Russia because, after deliberation, NO COUNTRY wanted to deal with him. Certain countries in South America could have flipped off America and shown their true socialist spirit by taking him in. But,alas, no. It just wasn’t worth it for them.
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Exactly, and this guy is no Daniel Ellsberg. According to him, he’s an International Man of Mystery.
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I would “classify” John Kerry’s comment as “disingenuous.”
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The impact of US-imposed trade sanctions might have proved calamitous to them. Imagine if the only coffee we drank was from Burundi? (The Burundians would love it, though.) But I digress…
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Where to begin?
- Ellsberg himself has stated that he supports Snowden’s decisions totally and that there is no chance that Snowden would be treated as he, Ellsberg, was treated.: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/daniel-ellsberg-nsa-leaker-snowden-made-the-right-call
- Torture and other forms of illegal physical mistreatment of prisoners occurs routinely in the USA when national security is perceived to be at issue: see http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/torture
- The US criminal justice system is viewed with horror around the civilized world and by our own ACLU. For example, over 3,000 people are serving life sentences without parole for nonviolent crimes.
Your ignorance and inhumanity make me despair.
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The theft of government property charges carry a sentence of a year. The unauthorized communication of defense secrets charges carries a sentence of ten years. The unauthorized communication of secret communications charges also carry a sentence of ten years. The problem he has is that he stole so much stuff on so many different occasions, that he’ll be facing multiple counts of each. Without a plea deal, he’ll effectively end up doing life. With a plea deal, I can’t imagine he’d do less than ten years.
Honestly, I don’t know how much time he should do because a) I don’t know what, if anything, he shared with Russia or China that wasn’t made public and b) I haven’t really heard what kind of case the government can make for the harm he caused. If it turned out somebody in the field got killed or captured because of something he leaked, my view would turn very hard.
But assuming neither of those things were proven, I think ten years would be about right because the reality is that however beneficial and wonderful you may think what he did was there has to be a cost attached to people entrusted with security clearances making a unilateral decision that classified information should be leaked.
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