Publishing his new book, “Dark Mirror,” on 36-year-old fugitive National Security Agency [NSA] thief-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden, Pulitizer Prize winning former Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman showed how personal sympathies impact objectivity. There’s plenty of sympathetic people for so-called whistleblowers like WikiLeaks Julian Assange, who, above anything else, is a psychotic recluse, hiding from the law much like Snowden. Unwilling to face espionage charges in the U.S., Snowden fled from Hawaii to Hong Kong May 23, 2013 ending up holed up in Moscow’s Sheremeytyevo Airport, where Russian “czar-like” 67-year-old President Vladimir Putin granted him political asylum July 12, 2013. Gelllman’s new book glamorizes Snowden’s theft of U.S. classifed documents working for NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton in Hawaii.
Gellman saw dollar signs writing a book on an intriguing subject like Snowden, who, for certain people, romanticize Snowden’s theft of classified documents as a form of “whistleblowing,” something so preposterous, it’s hard to imagine anyone naïve enough to believe Snowden’s smoke blowing. But for authors like Gellman who stand to make easy cash, Snowden becomes a cause celebere, when it fact he’s a garden-variety hacker-con artist, who thought he could enrich himself stealing classified government documents. If Snowden wanted to repent, there’s plenty of opportunity for him face justice in Amrerican courts, with many high-profile defense attorneys wanting to take on another high-profile celebrity driven case. Gellman thinks Snowden shared special secret documents proving that after Sept. 11, the government routinely spied on U.S. citizens for whatever reason.
Pandering to the government conspiracy crowd, Gellman thinks spending time with Snowden he’d get the real story on an intrusive NSA, with secret files proving the government routinely violates the First Amendment. Yet Gelman would be the last person to question what former President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice [DOJ], FBI, CIA and NSA did to 73-year-old President Donald Trump, launching a bogus counterintelligence investigation, illegally obtaining warrants to wiretap Trump’s campaign for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [FISA] Court, accusing Trump of being a Russian asset. No Gellman, like the Snowden case, thinks he can get the juicy inside story of what really happened to an American hero. Snowden’s the architect of the phony “whistleblower” narrative when he violated his employment contract with Booz Allen Hamilton and betrayed his country.
Nothing stopped Snowden from returning to the United States to face the world’s most compassionate and fair criminal justice system. But no Snowden chose to flee the country, escape justice and pretend he lives a glamorous life behind the Iron Curtain. “Edward Snowden succeeded beyond his wildest ambitions that he could plausibly have had . . Even the biggest critics of Snowden—not all of them, but some of them . . . all say he started a debate that the public needed to have about the limits of surveillance in a democratic society,” wrote Gellman in “Dark Mirror.” Snowden didn’t open up any national debate, other than for skeptical Patriot Act journalists, who value the First Amendment as log as it’s used to Democrat advantage. Journalists like Gellman have no problem working for the Washington Post, a paper so biased and controlled by the Democrat Party it has zero credibility.
Gellman insists Snowden, of all people, opened up a national debate on government secrecy and spying in a post-Sept. 11 world. Gellman admits that most of the programs Snowden exposed are still in existence. Snowden expressed concern to Gellman that he would take the government side, fearing repercussions from publishing “Dark Mirror.” Gellman doesn’t take long to expose his own bias. “When [Donald] Trump came to power—a guy who is allergic to norms, a guy who is at war with every institution of accountability, whether it’s the press, whether it’s inspectors general, whether it’s the courts . . “ Gellman wrote, exposing his colossal hypocrisy about government surveillance. Gellman is so brainwashed by Snowden and his own leftist agenda, he can’t fathom that the government’s national security apparatus was used to undermine Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Gellman’s book “Dark Mirror” exposes for all to see the fake news industry, content to spawn tales of government conspiracy but only if it’s directed at Republicans. Mellman fits right in with the #MeToo movement that uses violence against women to bludgeon Republicans but not Democrats, like 77-year-old Democratic presumptive nominee former Vice President Joe Biden for whom the same rules don’t apply. Gellman was smitten with Snowden because he thought his story would sell books. Living as an ex-pat in Russia, Snowden spends his life justifying his larceny of government secrets, pretending that he did it for noble cause: To protect the First Amendment. In reality, Snowden stole government files because it had asset-value to America’s enemies. How much Snowden got from Russia’s FSB [Federal Security Service] or SVR [Foreign Intelligence Service] is anyone’s guess.
