Inside America
Washington, DC - Edward Snowden is a 30-year-old man who has emerged as the world’s most famous leaker, spy, and fugitive. He is wanted by the world’s most powerful country: the United States. He is charged with espionage, and if arrested, he could spend at least thirty years behind bars.
Snowden is a high-school dropout, but the lack of a prestigious college degree was no obstacle for him to land a well-paid job at the world’s biggest spy organization: the National Security Agency of the US.
Snowden said his latest salary was roughly $200,000. Because of his job, he had access to some of the most classified and top-secret documents of the US government.
But at some point, Snowden decided he had to abandon everything he had gained: his job, his girlfriend, and his seemingly perfect life in Hawaii, a place with amazing natural scenery, a lot of beaches, oceans and tropically warm climate.
He left for Hong Kong, a semi-autonomous region in China where he revealed documents confirming that the US government had for years secretly collected data on phone calls of millions of Americans. He published most of those documents in the Guardian, a London-based newspaper.
He’s currently believed to be hiding in the transit area of a Moscow airport, where he awaits asylum from a country that won’t extradite him to the United States.
He has approached more than two-dozen countries for asylum, but most of them have turned down the request.
Earlier last week, Venezuela, a South American country, became the first country to offer unconditional asylum to Snowden.
Venezuela, an oil-rich nation, has for years been at odds with the United States, but Snowden’s best chance for asylum lies in countries, which lack close ties to America.
So what’s Edward Snowden? Is he a traitor or a hero? Is he a whistleblower, a supporter of freedom and transparency? If he is, why has he left for China and Russia, countries with much worse human rights records?
To debate this issue, Rudaw talks to:
- Robert J. Lieber is a professor of government and international affairs at Georgetown University. He is author and editor of 16 books on international relations and U.S. foreign policy, and he has served as an advisor to several presidential campaigns, to the State Department, and to the drafters of U.S. National Intelligence Estimates. His latest book is titled Power and Willpower in the American Future: Why the U.S. is Not Destined to Decline.
- Chris Simpson, a professor of communication at American University in Washington, D.C., is an author of several books, including Blowback, Science of Coercion and National Security Directives of the Reagan and Bush Administrations.
Snowden is a high-school dropout, but the lack of a prestigious college degree was no obstacle for him to land a well-paid job at the world’s biggest spy organization: the National Security Agency of the US.
Snowden said his latest salary was roughly $200,000. Because of his job, he had access to some of the most classified and top-secret documents of the US government.
But at some point, Snowden decided he had to abandon everything he had gained: his job, his girlfriend, and his seemingly perfect life in Hawaii, a place with amazing natural scenery, a lot of beaches, oceans and tropically warm climate.
He left for Hong Kong, a semi-autonomous region in China where he revealed documents confirming that the US government had for years secretly collected data on phone calls of millions of Americans. He published most of those documents in the Guardian, a London-based newspaper.
He’s currently believed to be hiding in the transit area of a Moscow airport, where he awaits asylum from a country that won’t extradite him to the United States.
He has approached more than two-dozen countries for asylum, but most of them have turned down the request.
Earlier last week, Venezuela, a South American country, became the first country to offer unconditional asylum to Snowden.
Venezuela, an oil-rich nation, has for years been at odds with the United States, but Snowden’s best chance for asylum lies in countries, which lack close ties to America.
So what’s Edward Snowden? Is he a traitor or a hero? Is he a whistleblower, a supporter of freedom and transparency? If he is, why has he left for China and Russia, countries with much worse human rights records?
To debate this issue, Rudaw talks to:
- Robert J. Lieber is a professor of government and international affairs at Georgetown University. He is author and editor of 16 books on international relations and U.S. foreign policy, and he has served as an advisor to several presidential campaigns, to the State Department, and to the drafters of U.S. National Intelligence Estimates. His latest book is titled Power and Willpower in the American Future: Why the U.S. is Not Destined to Decline.
- Chris Simpson, a professor of communication at American University in Washington, D.C., is an author of several books, including Blowback, Science of Coercion and National Security Directives of the Reagan and Bush Administrations.
Comments
Rudaw moderates all comments submitted on our website. We welcome comments which are relevant to the article and encourage further discussion about the issues that matter to you. We also welcome constructive criticism about Rudaw.
To be approved for publication, however, your comments must meet our community guidelines.
We will not tolerate the following: profanity, threats, personal attacks, vulgarity, abuse (such as sexism, racism, homophobia or xenophobia), or commercial or personal promotion.
Comments that do not meet our guidelines will be rejected. Comments are not edited – they are either approved or rejected.
Post a comment