Ethereal
03-21-2017, 08:23 PM
Newly Obtained Documents Prove: Key Claim of Snowden’s Accusers Is a Fraud (https://theintercept.com/2017/03/21/newly-obtained-documents-prove-key-claim-of-snowdens-accusers-is-a-fraud/?comments=1#comments)
Glenn Greenwald
March 21 2017, 5:23 a.m.
(updated below)
FOR ALMOST FOUR years, a cottage industry of media conspiracists has devoted itself to accusing Edward Snowden of being a spy for either Russia and/or China at the time he took and then leaked documents from the National Security Agency. There has never been any evidence presented to substantiate this accusation.
In lieu of evidence, the propagators of this accusation have relied upon the defining tactic of tawdry conspiracists everywhere: relentless repetition of rumor and innuendo based on alleged inconsistencies until it spreads far enough through the media ecosystem to take on the appearance of being credible. In this case, there was one particular fiction — about where Snowden spent his first 11 days after arriving in Hong Kong — which took on particular significance for this group.
They insist that Snowden, contrary to what he has always maintained, did not check into the Mira Hotel on May 21, 2013, the day after he arrived in Hong Kong. Instead, they assert, he checked-in only on June 1, which means Snowden has 11 “unaccounted-for” days from the time he arrived in Hong Kong until he met with journalists at the Mira in the beginning of June. They have repeatedly leveraged this Missing Eleven Days into the insinuation that Snowden used this time to work with his Russian and/or Chinese handlers in preparation for meeting the U.S. journalists in Hong Kong.
While such reckless conspiracy-mongering is often relegated to online fringes, this accusatory fable found its way to the nation’s mainstream journalistic venues: the Wall Street Journal, Slate, Yahoo News, Lawfare, Business Insider; these media conspiracists were subsequently joined by several former officials of the intelligence community now embedded in the pundit class in affirming this tale. These outlets have repeatedly laundered and thus sanctioned the tale of the Missing Eleven Days, despite its utter lack of any journalistic basis.
[...]
After Edward Snowden exposed the NSA's domestic spying programs, the government and their lackeys in the mainstream media went to work trying to discredit him with all manner of lies and fabrications. Chief among them was the claim that Snowden's whereabouts were unaccounted for eleven days when he first arrived in Hong Kong, fueling speculation that he used that time to meet and conspire with Chinese and/or Russian agents. The only problem? That claim was false. Snowden was exactly where he said he was at that time: In his hotel room. All the pertinent documentation and explanation can be found within the article.
Among the mainstream media outlets who disseminated this false claim were: The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, Yahoo News, Slate, The Daily Beast, and The San Francisco Chronicle, among many other supposedly reputable and credible news outlets.
And this is by no means an isolated occurrence. As anyone who reads Greenwald's column knows, the mainstream media spreads propaganda an disinformation with striking regularity (I'll post other examples upon request). Yet there are still many Americans, some of them members of this forum, who still cling to the naive belief that corporate media outlets are somehow trustworthy and objective sources of information. Even worse, they support the selective, transparently self-serving war on "fake news" supposedly originating within the alternative media. This is what a 1984 society looks like, where truth tellers are portrayed as "fake" and liars are portrayed as genuine and credible. I'm just wondering how much more fake the mainstream media needs to get before people will start admitting the truth.
Glenn Greenwald
March 21 2017, 5:23 a.m.
(updated below)
FOR ALMOST FOUR years, a cottage industry of media conspiracists has devoted itself to accusing Edward Snowden of being a spy for either Russia and/or China at the time he took and then leaked documents from the National Security Agency. There has never been any evidence presented to substantiate this accusation.
In lieu of evidence, the propagators of this accusation have relied upon the defining tactic of tawdry conspiracists everywhere: relentless repetition of rumor and innuendo based on alleged inconsistencies until it spreads far enough through the media ecosystem to take on the appearance of being credible. In this case, there was one particular fiction — about where Snowden spent his first 11 days after arriving in Hong Kong — which took on particular significance for this group.
They insist that Snowden, contrary to what he has always maintained, did not check into the Mira Hotel on May 21, 2013, the day after he arrived in Hong Kong. Instead, they assert, he checked-in only on June 1, which means Snowden has 11 “unaccounted-for” days from the time he arrived in Hong Kong until he met with journalists at the Mira in the beginning of June. They have repeatedly leveraged this Missing Eleven Days into the insinuation that Snowden used this time to work with his Russian and/or Chinese handlers in preparation for meeting the U.S. journalists in Hong Kong.
While such reckless conspiracy-mongering is often relegated to online fringes, this accusatory fable found its way to the nation’s mainstream journalistic venues: the Wall Street Journal, Slate, Yahoo News, Lawfare, Business Insider; these media conspiracists were subsequently joined by several former officials of the intelligence community now embedded in the pundit class in affirming this tale. These outlets have repeatedly laundered and thus sanctioned the tale of the Missing Eleven Days, despite its utter lack of any journalistic basis.
[...]
After Edward Snowden exposed the NSA's domestic spying programs, the government and their lackeys in the mainstream media went to work trying to discredit him with all manner of lies and fabrications. Chief among them was the claim that Snowden's whereabouts were unaccounted for eleven days when he first arrived in Hong Kong, fueling speculation that he used that time to meet and conspire with Chinese and/or Russian agents. The only problem? That claim was false. Snowden was exactly where he said he was at that time: In his hotel room. All the pertinent documentation and explanation can be found within the article.
Among the mainstream media outlets who disseminated this false claim were: The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, Yahoo News, Slate, The Daily Beast, and The San Francisco Chronicle, among many other supposedly reputable and credible news outlets.
And this is by no means an isolated occurrence. As anyone who reads Greenwald's column knows, the mainstream media spreads propaganda an disinformation with striking regularity (I'll post other examples upon request). Yet there are still many Americans, some of them members of this forum, who still cling to the naive belief that corporate media outlets are somehow trustworthy and objective sources of information. Even worse, they support the selective, transparently self-serving war on "fake news" supposedly originating within the alternative media. This is what a 1984 society looks like, where truth tellers are portrayed as "fake" and liars are portrayed as genuine and credible. I'm just wondering how much more fake the mainstream media needs to get before people will start admitting the truth.