Spy agencies turning to Snowden as convenient scapegoat

In something of a follow-up to yesterday’s post about the failure of our intelligence agencies to foresee Russia’s plan to invade Crimea, there’s this: It’s Edward Snowden’s fault.

According to an article in today’s BuzzFeed, hints and whispers coming out of the surveillance community are about trying to pin our Crimea intelligence failure on leaked Snowden documents. They somehow gave Russia a leg up on our spooks. Sorry, I just snorted coffee out of my nose. I’ve also heard that climate change and the Washington landslide are being pinned on Mr. Snowden.

There seems to be a large group within the intelligence community who really, really hate Edward Snowden, and it’s clear they will stoop to anything to try and discredit him. As is apparent, they’re not above shifting blame for their own failures to the fugitive hacker. The charges are ludicrous, but even if they weren’t, our spy agencies know that Snowden is not in a position where he can defend himself, so they can make up pretty much anything about him and toss it to the media. Glenn Greenwald does a pretty good job of batting back the insane claims of the agencies, but it’s a large task to take on.

We need to take anything and everything Washington, D.C. says about Edward Snowden with a huge grain of salt.