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| AmericaÂ’s Spies Want Snowden Dead | |
| 2014-01-18 | |
“In a world where I would not be restricted from killing an American, I personally would go and kill him myself,” a current NSA analyst told BuzzFeed. “A lot of people share this sentiment.” “I would love to put a bullet in his head,” one Pentagon official, a former special forces officer, said bluntly. “I do not take pleasure in taking another human beings life, having to do it in uniform, but he is single-handedly the greatest traitor in American history.” That violent hostility lies just beneath the surface of the domestic debate over NSA spying is still ongoing. Some members of Congress have hailed Snowden as a whistle-blower, the New York Times has called for clemency, and pundits regularly defend his actions on Sunday talk shows. In intelligence community circles, Snowden is considered a nothing short of a traitor in wartime. “His name is cursed every day over here,” a defense contractor told BuzzFeed, speaking from an overseas intelligence collections base. “Most everyone I talk to says he needs to be tried and hung, forget the trial and just hang him.” One Army intelligence officer even offered BuzzFeed a chillingly detailed fantasy. “I think if we had the chance, we would end it very quickly,” he said. “Just casually walking on the streets of Moscow, coming back from buying his groceries. Going back to his flat and he is casually poked by a passerby. He thinks nothing of it at the time starts to feel a little woozy and thinks it’s a parasite from the local water. He goes home very innocently and next thing you know he dies in the shower.” There is no indication that the United States has sought to take vengeance on Snowden, who is living in an undisclosed location in Russia without visible security measures, according to a recent Washington Post interview. And the intelligence operators who spoke to BuzzFeed on the condition of anonymity did not say they expected anyone to act on their desire for revenge. But their mood is widespread, people who regularly work with the intelligence community said. “These guys are emoting how pissed they are,” Peter Singer, a cyber-security expert at the Brookings Institute. “Do you think people at the NSA would put a statue of him out front?” The degree to which Snowden’s revelations have damaged intelligence operations are also being debated. Shawn Turner, a spokesman for the director of national intelligence, recently called the leaks “unnecessarily and extremely damaging to the United States and the intelligence community’s national security efforts,” and the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Dutch Ruppersberger said terrorists have been “changing their methods because of the leaks.” Snowden’s defenders dismiss those concerns as overblown, and the government has not pointed to specific incidents to bear out the claims. On the ground, intelligence workers certainly say the damage has been done. The NSA officer complained that his sources had become “useless.” The Army intelligence officer said the revelations had increased his “blindness.” “I do my work in a combat zone so now I have to see the effects of a Snowden in a combat zone. It will not be pretty,” he said. And while government officials have a long record of overstating the damage from leaks, some specific consequences seem logical. “By [Snowden] showing who our collections partners were, the terrorists have dropped those carriers and email addresses,” the DOD official said. “We can’t find them because he released that data. Their electronic signature is gone.” | |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #13 This group has never quite gotten it right. It is absolutely unnecessary to read the mail, read the email, record the phone calls of the Jone's who live next door, or of grandma who lives across town. Absolutely useless. It is absolutely necessary to monitor people who make open threats and who clearly exhibit signs that result in the Boston Marathon bombings and the Fort Hood massacre. Absolutely essential. Snowden is an absolute HERO. He exposed that the NSA is stalking grandma, not Dzhokhar or Tamerlan or Nidal Hassan. All the while the useless left wing socialist media propaganda machine continues banging the drum, KILL SNOWDEN, driving people on the left and the right, as witnessed here, into a feeding frenzy of KILL SNOWDEN. Who did he kill to deserve a death sentence? No one. But the people who murdered our Fort Hood troops and failed to protect marathon runners from explosions in Boston and who are busy recording every phone call grandma makes continue to band the drums for another death while the mindless bots every where jump on the death wagon and bang the drums too. Sick, very sick. |
| Posted by: Omavising Ebbemp9815 2014-01-18 23:06 |
#12
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| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2014-01-18 18:33 |
| #11 This is just more propaganda for the brainwashed masses U-S-A U-S-A Makes me sick. |
| Posted by: Ulinesing Flusolet3778 2014-01-18 17:04 |
| #10 Snowden didnt accomplish what he did by himself. He had behind the scenes help. Some scrutiny needs to be applied in that direction. I have mixed feelings about Snowden, yes he's a traitor. But, he exposed a whole lot of rot and revealed how deep it really goes. Whack Snowden? Okay, but let's nuke D.C. while we're at it. |
| Posted by: Secret Asian Man 2014-01-18 16:41 |
| #9 Well, lets take a survey ... Who are the traitors? Snowden? Obama? Reid? Pelosi? Which of these has harmed the USA least? |
| Posted by: irishrageboy 2014-01-18 16:39 |
| #8 We need more, not less amirite Spereting Tingle4064? That's not your real name BTW. But your IP address is real and copied. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2014-01-18 13:34 |
| #7 I can understand the anger, but all this does is give Snowden justification in the eyes of many. His "Reason" for not being a whistleblower was because he was genuinely afraid for his safety, aka backlash. Now we have the very people he is claiming to be afraid of wishing to kill him without trial. Why in the name of God these sources thought giving quotes like this wouldn't be taken the wrong way by a majority of people confounds me. Aren't these suppose to be INTELLIGENCE officials? |
| Posted by: Charles 2014-01-18 12:31 |
#6 Cutting & pasting another article on today's Burg:freedom where art thou? The citizens come together to better their lives and the lives of their loved ones in a country. Here they end up giving their lives for the sake of some 'feel good' cliché. When it comes to bestowing the title of martyr, everyone is for it but let me ask a few painful yet extremely simple questions: who are you at war with? What do they want and what do you want? If you are at war, then accept and own this war. Do not play the confused lamb. Admit it and go all the way. Let me part with another painful reality. Day by day, the grip on the capital is eroding. At this rate, that day is coming closer when our enemy will be in the capital -- provided we consider them our enemy. The people claiming to be right at this moment will keep their heads buried deeper and deeper in the sand. It sure seems like they are talking. The fact is it is always good to talk, especially when you are talking to yourself. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2014-01-18 11:20 |
| #5 Lot's of "emoting" and "seething" in this article. Just what makes the results of Snowden's disclosures more damaging than, say, those of Aldrich Ames? Or compared to the unknown and/or undisclosed atomic spies who gave US secrets to the Soviets & who wound up retiring on US pensions? Or is this all about the "public" damage? |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2014-01-18 11:14 |
| #4 They should set up both Snowden and Assange by making it seem like both of them are reaching out for a meeting. When they both show up; whack them both. |
| Posted by: Airandee 2014-01-18 10:48 |
| #3 ...he has his "M.A.D." package ready and waiting...keeping him around is the lesser of two evils...see Ann Coulter re: Obama/Biden... |
| Posted by: Uncle Phester 2014-01-18 09:23 |
| #2 Personally, I'd rather not confuse intelligence collection and criminal justice, lest we become more like them. Evil such as this will always walk among us. There's no killing them all. The Intelligence Community should be absolutely consumed with damage assessment, and the repair of a system which permitted this to happen in the first place. Just my .02 cents worth. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2014-01-18 07:39 |
| #1 Contract it out. Lots of Russians who are qualified. It doesn't have to be subtle or professional. Just something heavy applied vigorously with a big blunt knob and a lot of shoulder behind it. Repeat until the gravy is warm. He IS the biggest traitor the US has has ever had. And he is " a citizen of the world"..he isn't an American any more. Besides, who will miss him? Will you miss him? Get some old lady to bag his groceries and make sure the vegetables are fresh. |
| Posted by: Spereting Tingle4064 2014-01-18 07:16 |