Edward Snowden: Fade Left
The New York Times last week called for ex-NSA data-dumper Edward Snowden to be pardoned. That paper's chief competitor, The Washington Post, on the other hand, urged that he be prosecuted for his crimes. Alas, for once, the allegedly liberal "mainstream media" aren't on the same page. Now here's my two cents, for what its worth: Eddie boy, please fade away. Embrace the obscurity that a socially maladjusted geek like you richly deserves. Folks are wearying of you. They have other obnoxious iconoclasts to obsess over, like, say, Donald Trump. You will soon morph into yesterday's news and people won't give a crap about you any more.
Yes, that trollish gadfly movie-maker, Oliver Stone, has given you a boost in the public consciousness with a hagiographic biopic which the Christian Science Monitor's movie critic dismissed as "a fawning piece of work." And the U.S. House Intelligence Committee just issued a report denouncing you as "a serial exaggerator and fabricator." All this notoriety must have you ghoulishly rubbing your hands out there in exile in Putinland. Notoriety-laced narcissism clearly is another trait you share with the Republican presidential contender. But before you go too far with your delusions of returning to America as a fully pardoned conquering hero, you would be wise to examine several case studies of other turncoats who ended up in jail or exile.
First, there's Jonathan Pollard, the unhinged civilian naval intelligence analyst who sold tens of thousands of classified documents to the Israelis and attempted to shop yet more to other countries before being nabbed in 1985. These included the NSA's ten-volume manual on how the U.S. gathers its signals intelligence. He used his ill-gotten cash, which included a monthly clandestine $2500 stipend, to live high, including with cocaine. His wife was his partner in crime, helping to conceal crates of classified information and using some of the Israeli cash to fund her business. Upon his arrest, Pollard suddenly became an Israeli patriot, asserting he was helping the Jewish state when the U.S. government would not. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. The Israeli government and a broad network of supporters pulled every trick in the book to get Pollard sprung, ranging from letters from Israeli and American big shots to formal entreaties and cockamamie three-way spy swap deals from Tel Aviv. But none of them took. The U.S. intelligence community, defense establishment, veterans groups and members of Congress vehemently opposed freeing Pollard. Pres. Clinton came close to pardoning him, but retreated in face of the domestic opposition and Pres. Obama likewise demurred when Vice President Joe Biden said Pollard would be pardoned "over my dead body." Well, Pollard finally won parole after thirty years in the slammer in accordance with sentencing guidelines at the time of his conviction. Under the terms of his parole, Pollard must wear an ankle locator bracelet, reveal all of his internet use to the authorities and remain in the U.S. for at least five years. He is a jobless 62-year old.
Kim Philby was the principal double agent in the notorious "Cambridge Five," British intelligence officers and diplomats who spied for Moscow in the years surrounding WWII. A clandestine Soviet agent for three decades, he headed up Britain's counterintelligence operations and served as MI-6's head of station in Washington in the '50s. Philby gave up the ghost in 1963, defecting to Moscow. Two of his treasonous cohorts, Donald Mclean and Guy Burgess, tipped off by Philby that they were about to be arrested, had defected in 1951. None fared well there. Philby drank heavily and suffered from loneliness and depression; according to his Russian wife, he had attempted suicide by slashing his wrists in the 1960s. He lived to 76, having gone through four wives. She said, "he was struck by disappointment, brought to tears." Burgess and Mclean both succumbed to alcoholism, dying at 52 and 69, respectively.
Edward Lee Howard was the only former CIA employee ever to seek asylum in Moscow. A brawling drunk and drug abuser, Howard fled to Moscow in 1985. A case officer in the Soviet division of the CIA's Operations Directorate, he was trained by the CIA for deep-cover clandestine operations against the Soviets. There he remained, lonesome, embittered, alcoholic until 2002, when the Russian news agency TASS reported that Howard, 50, had died in a drunken fall from a stool at his KGB-owned dacha outside Moscow, breaking his neck. Breaking your neck falling from a stool? Hmm. Thriller film producer, Robert Stone, asserts that the KGB's successor agency, the SVR, whacked Howard simply because he was no longer useful to Moscow as it then sought to improve relations with Washington.
"There's little evidence from historical records that [Snowden] has anything good to look forward to," says Peter Savodnik, author of, The Interloper: Lee Harvey Oswald Inside the Soviet Union. "Essentially, nobody from the U.S. who has defected to Russia has gone on to think that's a smart decision." Echoing Robert Stone's assertion that defectors to Russia have a way of wearing out their welcome, Savodnik adds, "Whatever value he has to the Kremlin has already been drained... They'll probably try to marginalize him and send him where he's less likely to make noise or attract the attention of the media or others."
So, Ed, enjoy your last splash of public fame. Rest assured it will fade. Resign yourself never to return to your home country - alive anyway. Beware the booze. And, uh, don't be climbing any rickety Russian stools.