Snowden flight turns into farce
About midnight Sunday, a perfectly respectable correspondent for another major Canadian newspaper tweeted that “It looks from Twitter like the NSA whistleblower fled Hong Kong to Moscow and is now walking across the Grand Canyon on a tightrope.” A story that was already pretty surreal had just reached the equivalent escape velocity of a Flying Wallenda stunt.
Since then, Edward Snowden has failed to board an Aeroflot flight for Cuba (packed with journalists and possibly the first no-booze flight in the history of the airline). As this is written, Snowden remains in the transit zone of a Moscow airport and is nowhere to be seen (en route to some other canyon perhaps?) but Ecuador is said to be weighing his request for asylum. The United States is apoplectic with China for letting him slip out of Hong Kong.
Erstwhile Wikileaker Julian Assange, who has already spent the past year or so sleeping on Ecuador’s national living-room floor, reportedly says he sees nothing ironic with Snowden’s choice of destination countries (Hong Kong, Ecuador, Venezuela, Cuba, or none of the above, but — significantly? — not North Korea).
In breaking news, Snowden (who made his Hong Kong lawyers put their cellphones in the fridge during at least one strategy session) has told the South China Morning Post that he joined security consultant Booz Allen Hamilton specifically “so he could collect proof about the U.S. National Security Agency’s secret surveillance programs ahead of planned leaks to the media.” Booz may want to check with its HR people on that.
The way he’s going, Snowden is going to give whistleblowers everywhere a weird name. Come to think of it, he probably already has.
The New Yorker notes that he has succeeded, against all possible odds, in giving China’s cyber-secret police a good name, one hopes temporarily. It also notes that Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, called China’s decision to let Snowden go “lose-lose and strategically short-sighted.”
Uh, really? The fact is, Snowden has made himself so hot that no great power in its right mind wants him anywhere around, except for the U.S., which is probably saving up sequestered funds for a public crucifixion if and when it gets him back.
The Russians, on whose doorstep Snowden showed up, have been acting nonchalant about the whole thing, startlingly so, coming from a regime notable for its chronic nonchalance deficiency. If they haven’t actually slipped him in the back door of Lubyanka Prison for a quiet little chat (one way of explaining away the Aeroflot noshow) they have every reason to act nonchalant. At this point he’s political poison.
The dirty little secret of all world powers is that everybody plays the games revealed by Snowden, everybody knows it, and most of the time everybody is willing not to rain on anybody else’s parade.
The U.S. is the occasional exception, since it tends to go all moral from time to time over this kind of thing, at least when done by certain other people. It knows that every once in a while it is going to get called on it, but it would rather it not happen at the hands of a freelancer who is separated from the tinfoil hat set apparently only by the fact that somebody else was using the tinfoil. This guy is about to make Assange look coldly rational.
Apart from Chinese secret police, Snowden at this point is benefiting only the usual international wing nuts and the standup comedy crowd. Which is a great pity, since the issues he raises are serious.
Everybody may play these games and everybody may know it, but the fact remains that there are a certain number of countries in the international multi-verse that call themselves democratic and whose political classes, ordinary citizens and media actually believe they should mean it and, at least from time to time, be held to account for it.
Standards vary. The British and French have remarkably ruthless attitudes and methodologies toward national security issues, but they seem to be able to get away with a lot more than some other states, and still retain credibility with their citizens. U.S. authorities have a lot less domestic political leeway on this, but by sheer size and complexity get away with a lot, until whistles get blown.
One of the ironies is that the U.S. is no country for whistleblowers itself these days. The Obama administration, despite its liberal sheen, is cracking down very hard on the practice. Which ought to mean that the Snowden escapade should be welcomed — if only we could take him seriously.