It is becoming something of a cottage industry. Two weeks ago, Patrik Etschmayer of Switzerland’s News rejected historian Sean Wilentz, who in the pages of the New Republic, attacked Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Glenn Greenwald, by examining old blog entries, their early careers, and other information that has nothing to do with NSA mass surveillance.
Today we have another well-known foreign columnist rebutting American writer Edward Lucas, who also attempts to smear the messengers – Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, et.al., in order to discredit their disclosures of massive government wrongdoing. For Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza, columnist Wojciech Orlinski looks at Russian spycraft, and explains why accusing Snowden of being a Russian agent makes absolutely no sense. He also writes that when caught lying, public officials around the world behave in precisely the same way: they stop talking about the message, and begin talking about the messenger.
For Gazeta Wyborcza, Wojciech Orlinski, in his monumental 1300-word rebuttal, writes in small part:
When a person – a journalist, an opposition politician, a whistleblower, whoever – reveals any kind of wrongdoing on the part of the group in power, there are usually two types of reaction. When the allegations are untrue, the authorities concerned react with swift and specific denials. When they are true, the typical reaction is to change the subject: stop talking about the message – let’s talk about the messenger.
So who is he? What are his sins? What do we have in our archives that could be used against him? Also, who stands behind him and what’s the purpose of the entire brouhaha? Let’s look for that someone instead of discussing the merits of his revelation!
In our own country’s political life, where it is standard behavior for any politician caught doing something wrong, we are thoroughly familiar with the strategy of changing the subject. This is popular in all countries and all political systems.
It is hard for me to believe that Russian intelligence, having a mole with access to the most classified NSA secrets, would allow him, first, to anonymously warn Internet users about American surveillance (until May 2012, Snowden wrote about it under the nickname ”TheTrueHOOHA,” on the forum of techie Web page Ars Technica), and then to release everything to the media. And what would the Russians achieve by losing such a valuable source within America’s intelligence services? “Sow discord among the allies,” suggests Lucas, who alerts readers to the fact that, due to Snowden’s disclosures, “anti-Americanism in Germany and other European countries is now ablaze.”
This seems to me too small a gain at too high a price. Anti-Americanism in Europe doesn’t need intelligence tricks to flourish.
European anti-Americanism is the price America pays for sucking us into the Iraq brawl with lies about “weapons of mass destruction.” As a consequence, even I, a fanatical admirer of American history, culture and political inventions like the “First Amendment” and “class action lawsuits,” have become deeply suspicious of the country and its foreign policy.
There is a chance to take a middle road, which would enable the intelligence services to look for terrorists and criminals while protecting the privacy of innocent people. This is how it’s supposed to be done in Europe.
This once seemed – in theory – to be the America way, too, until Snowden revealed that the U.S. intelligence services are breaking U.S. rules regarding even their own citizens – let alone those of the rest of the world. NSA chief Keith Alexander and national intelligence chief James Clapper lied to their own citizens, and thanks to Snowden, they were even caught lying to Congress.
What is more important: these lies, or the question of whether the person who revealed them was an agent of the Russians, the Chinese, or God knows, perhaps the Martians?
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