Snowden Lied About China Contacts

There seems to be a whole heap of negative crap about Snowden appearing... since the NYT editorial was released. --- DonV


By Gordon G. Chang
WORLD NEWS 01.03.14

Snowden Lied About China Contacts

Snowden lied about his contacts with China. Should he get clemency?


Snowden lied about his contacts with China. Should he get clemency?
Yesterday, the New York Times urged the Obama administration to offer Edward Snowden “a plea bargain or some form of clemency.” The paper called the former NSA contractor “a whistle-blower” for his exposure of “the vast scope” of the NSA’s “reach into the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the United States and around the globe.”

Perhaps Snowden is what the Times portrays him to be, a hero of sorts, yet the editors of the paper rushed to judgment. In their editorial they did not even raise the possibility that he passed along vital national security secrets to China. It is likely he did so.

“I have had no contact with the Chinese government,” Snowden wrote in a Q&A on the Guardian website while taking refuge in Hong Kong in June. “I only work with journalists.”

That’s far short of the truth. By the time he wrote those words in the online chat, Snowden, according to one of my sources in Hong Kong, had at least one “high-level contact” with Chinese officials there. Those officials suggested he give an interview to the South China Morning Post, the most prominent English-language newspaper in Hong Kong. This is significant because, as the Post noted, Snowden turned over to the paper documents that contained detailed technical information on the NSA’s methods. Included in these documents were Hong Kong and Chinese IP addresses that the NSA was surveilling. The disclosure of those addresses was not whistle-blowing; that was aiding China.

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full article
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/03/snowden-lied-about-china-contacts.html

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I don't know anything about Gordon Chang but, here are a couple of comments written about him:

OMG. Gordon Chang has been right about China about as often as Bill Kristoll has been right about anything, that is never. This guy has been forecasting China's downfall for decades now and he still gets airplay and newsprint. What a farce. Don't believe a word he has to say. His track record is zilch, but he still has a meal-ticket from the faux media.

Let us not forget that Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China, a 2001 book that predicted collapse in 2006. TDB must be trying to remove all doubt about their credibility by publishing anything by him.