MOSCOW (AP) — Yes, he's at a Moscow airport, and no, you can't have him.
Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the first official acknowledgment of the whereabouts of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden on Tuesday June18 and promptly rejected U.S. pleas to turn him over.
Snowden, who is charged with violating American espionage laws, fled
Hong Kong over the weekend, touching off a global guessing game over
where he went and frustrating U.S. efforts to bring him to justice.
Putin said Snowden
is in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo Airport and has not passed
through Russian immigration, meaning he technically is not in Russia and thus is free to travel wherever he wants.
After arriving Sunday June 16 on a flight
from Hong Kong, Snowden registered for a Havana-bound flight Monday en
route to Venezuela and then possible asylum in Ecuador, but he didn't board the plane.
Speculation has been rife that Russian security services have been
talking to Snowden and might want to keep him in Russia for a more
thorough debriefing, but Putin denied that."Our special services never worked with Mr. Snowden and aren't working with him today," Putin said at a news conference during a visit to Finland.
Because Moscow has no extradition agreement with Washington, it cannot meet the U.S. request, he said.
"Mr. Snowden is a free man, and the sooner he chooses his final destination the better it is for us and for him," Putin said. "I hope it will not affect the businesslike character of our relations with the U.S. and I hope that our partners will understand that."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry
said Tuesday that the U.S. wants Russia to show respect for the rule of
law and comply with common practices when it comes to fugitives from
justice.
Putin's staunch refusal to consider deportation shows his readiness
to further challenge Washington at a time when U.S.-Russian relations
are already strained over Syria and other issues, including a Russian
ban on adoptions by Americans."Just showing America that we don't care about our relations, we are down to basically a Cold War pattern: The enemy of your government is our friend," said Masha Lipman of the Carnegie Moscow Center.
"The Russian administration has not come that far, but we don't know what it's up to," she said.
Despite Putin's denial, security experts believe Russia's special services wouldn't miss the chance to question a man who is believed to hold reams of classified U.S. documents and could shed light on how the U.S. intelligence agencies collect information.
Igor Korotchenko, director of the Center for Global Arms Trade and editor of National Defense Magazine, said Snowden would be of particular interest because little is known about digital espionage.
"The security services would be happy to enter into contact with Mr. Snowden," Korotchenko said.
Russia also has relished using Snowden's revelations to turn the tables on the U.S. over its criticism of Russia's rights record.
Putin compared Snowden to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been given asylum in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, saying that both men were labeled criminals but consider themselves rights activists and champions of freedom of information.
"Ask yourself a question: Should people like that be extradited so that they put them in prison?" he said. "In any case, I would prefer not to deal with such issues. It's like shearing a piglet: a lot of squealing and little wool."
In an apparent reference to claims that Russia could have played a role in Snowden's exit from Hong Kong, Putin said his arrival in Moscow was a "complete surprise" and dismissed such accusations as "ravings and sheer nonsense."
"He doesn't need a visa or any other documents, and as a transit passenger he has the right to buy a ticket and fly wherever he wants," Putin said.
Snowden, 30, is a former CIA employee who later was hired as a contractor for the NSA. In that job, he gained access to documents that he gave to newspapers the Guardian and The Washington Post to expose what he contends are privacy violations by an authoritarian government.
Snowden also told the South China Morning Post newspaper in Hong Kong that "the NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS data." He is believed to have more than 200 additional sensitive documents in laptops he is carrying.
Russian news media had reported that Snowden remained in a transit zone at the airport, which is separate from regular departure areas. He has not been seen by any of the journalists who have been roaming Sheremetyevo in search of him, furthering speculation that he had been secreted away.
The Interfax news agency, citing an unidentified airport official, said Snowden could be staying in a room in the transit zone normally reserved for flight crews and other personnel.
Legally, an arriving air passenger only crosses the border after clearing Russian immigration checks.
Earlier Tuesday, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov rejected the U.S. push to turn over Snowden, but he wouldn't specify his whereabouts, saying only that he hadn't crossed the Russian border.
Kerry called for "calm and reasonableness."
"We would hope that Russia would not side with someone who is a fugitive from justice," Kerry said at a news conference in Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. has revoked Snowden's passport.
A representative of WikiLeaks has been traveling with Snowden, and the secret-spilling organization is believed to be assisting him in arranging asylum. Assange, the group's founder, said Monday that Snowden was only passing through Russia and had applied for asylum in Ecuador, Iceland and possibly other countries.
A high-ranking Ecuadorean official told The Associated Press that Russia
and Ecuador were discussing where Snowden could go, saying the process
could take days. He also said Ecuador's ambassador to Moscow had not
seen or spoken to Snowden. The official spoke on condition of anonymity
because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly.
The Kremlin has previously said Russia would be ready to consider Snowden's request for asylum.Some observers said Snowden's revelations have provided the Kremlin with propaganda arguments to counter the U.S. criticism of Russia's crackdown on opposition and civil activists under Putin.
"They would use Snowden to demonstrate that the U.S. government doesn't sympathize with the ideals of freedom of information, conceals key information from the public and stands ready to open criminal proceedings against those who oppose it," Konstantin Remchukov, the editor of independent daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta, said on Ekho Moskvy radio.
Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, bluntly rejected U.S. demands to extradite Snowden, saying that Snowden hasn't crossed the Russian border.
Sergey Lavrov
insisted that Russia has nothing to do with Snowden or his travel
plans. Lavrov wouldn't say where Snowden is, but he lashed out angrily
at Washington for demanding his extradition and warning of negative
consequences if Moscow fails to comply. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday urged Moscow to "do the right thing" and turn over Snowden.
"We consider the attempts to accuse Russia of violation of U.S. laws
and even some sort of conspiracy, which on top of all that are
accompanied by threats, as absolutely ungrounded and unacceptable,"
Lavrov said. "There are no legal grounds for such conduct of U.S.
officials."
The defiant tone underlined the Kremlin's readiness to challenge Washington at a time when U.S.-Russian relations are strained over Syria and a Russian ban on adoptions by Americans.
U.S. and Ecuadorean officials said they believed Snowden was still in Russia. He fled there Sunday from Hong Kong, where he had been hiding out since his disclosure of the broad scope of two highly classified U.S. counter-terror surveillance programs. The programs collect vast amounts of Americans' phone records and worldwide online data in the name of national security.
Lavrov claimed that the Russian government found out about Snowden's flight from Hong Kong only from news reports.
"We have no relation to Mr. Snowden, his relations with American justice or his travels around the world," Lavrov said. "He chooses his route himself, and we have learned about it from the media."
Snowden booked a seat on a Havana-bound flight from Moscow on Monday en route to Venezuela and then possible asylum in Ecuador,
but he didn't board the plane. Russian news media have reported that he
has remained in a transit zone of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, but
journalists there haven't seen him.
A high-ranking Ecuadorean official told The Associated Press that Russia and Ecuador were discussing where Snowden could go, saying the process could take days. He also said Ecuador's ambassador to Moscow had not seen or spoken to Snowden. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly.
Ecuador's foreign minister, Ricardo Patino, hailed Snowden on Monday as "a man attempting to bring light and transparency to facts that affect everyone's fundamental liberties."
He described the decision on whether to grant Snowden asylum as a choice between "betraying the citizens of the world or betraying certain powerful elites in a specific country."
State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said the U.S. had made demands to "a series of governments," including Ecuador, that Snowden be barred from any international travel other than to be returned to the U.S. The U.S. has revoked Snowden's passport.
"We're following all the appropriate legal channels and working with various other countries to make sure that the rule of law is observed," President Barack Obama told reporters.
Some experts said it was likely that Russian spy agencies were questioning Snowden on what he knows about U.S. electronic espionage against Moscow.
"If Russian special services hadn't shown interest in Snowden, they would have been utterly unprofessional," Igor Korotchenko, a former colonel in Russia's top military command turned security analyst, said on state Rossiya 24 television.
The Kremlin has previously said Russia would be ready to consider Snowden's request for asylum.
The Interfax news agency, which has close contacts with Russian security agencies, quoted an unidentified "well-informed source" in Moscow as saying Tuesday that Snowden could be detained for a check of his papers. The report could reflect that authorities are searching for a pretext to keep Snowden in Russia.
Snowden is a former CIA employee who later was hired as a contractor for the NSA. In that job, he gained access to documents that he gave to newspapers The Guardian and The Washington Post to expose what he contends are privacy violations by an authoritarian government.
Snowden also told the South China Morning Post newspaper in Hong Kong that "the NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS data." He is believed to have more than 200 additional sensitive documents in laptops he is carrying.
Putin has accused the U.S. State Department of instigating protests in Moscow against his re-election for a third term in March and has taken an anti-American posture that plays well with his core support base of industrial workers and state employees.
____
(Huuhtanen reported from Naantali, Finland. Associated Press writers Lynn Berry in Moscow and Michael Weissenstein and Gonzalo Solano in Quito, Ecuador, contributed to this story.)
SOMEONE FORGOT TO PUSH THE RESET BUTTON. DID HILLARY TAKE IT WITH HER?
A row between the US and Moscow over Snowden’s extradition has reached a new level of tension after Barack Obama canceled a long-planned summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, again showing the adherence of US to double-standard politics.
This goes back to Putin finally deciding to give temporary asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, specifically ignoring Obama’s personal directive that Snowden should be handed over to the US. With this measure, Putin echoes Russia’s and the world’s growing weariness with America’s hegemonic carrot-and-stick strategy, and its double talk.
Both presidents had agreed to hold a summit in Moscow next month to discuss bilateral issues but, reading between the lines, one can clearly sense the increasing frustration the US and its key global allies feel towards Russia and China, the only two major powers that can stand up to them, bringing some measure of traditional balance-of-power to today’s world; even if uneasy and fragile.
Disclosure
As with Julian Assange, the case involving Edward Snowden is well-known around the world: both men were in a position to access credible behind-the-curtain information, together with the documentation backing it up, and they both came out boldly disclosing it to the public.If the proof is in the pudding, then America’s rage and ire, as well as that of its allies’, are proof that these disclosures are in fact true, which is why such a large portion of global public opinion hail Snowden and Assange as true heroes and freedom fighters.
For when it comes to assessing the true motives and unconfessable activities and goals behind much of US, UK and Israeli foreign and domestic policies, millions of modern-day Hamlets can smell that there is definitely something very rotten and not precisely in the State of Denmark.
If, as we believe, the supranational global power elites are embedded deep inside the public and private power structures of key nations – notably the United States and the United Kingdom – then clearly their Achilles Heel is any and all disclosure of their crimes, their meddling in the internal affairs of other countries, their direct or indirect involvement in false-flag attacks, their support of genocidal regimes when it serves their purpose, their murderous invasions and occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Libya, and their obscene funding and support of terrorists, guerrillas and mafias in Syria and elsewhere, under the PsyOps cover of ‘Arab Spring’.
Now, if giving temporary asylum to a disgruntled 30-year-old former National Security Agency (NSA) operative like Snowden has such impact on the US power structure - so much so that it led the president of the United States to cancel a key summit with the President of Russia - then one can only wonder at the fear and trembling they must feel when assessing potentially much more serious ‘security breaches’.
What if a really organized group of truly powerful insiders-turned-outsiders were to decide to confront Washington, New York, London and Tel-Aviv with unquestionable evidence and proof of their crimes and their criminal perpetrators? What if, say, somebody comes up with total and undisputable proof on the truth behind 9/11? Or Iraq and Libya? Or Wall Street in 2008? Or London 7/7…?
Russia and China: America’s 21st-century foes
Naturally global hegemons abhor anyone standing up to them, which is clearly what Russia has been doing for the past decade. At the UN, where Russia had been more accommodating to many US interests, after the US-backed monstrous assassination of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on live TV and the rape of Libya in 2011, its appears Moscow got really fed up.Assassinating global leaders to the chuckling of Hillary Clinton on CBS News is definitely not on Moscow’s agenda.
A key change in Russian foreign policy can thus be clearly seen in the cases of Iran and, more significantly, in Syria - a traditional Russian ally.
The US, UK and Israel know full well that even if they continue to finance the worst terrorists, mafias, murderers, arms-dealers and Al-Qaeda operatives - whom they collectively dub as ‘freedom fighters’ - against the legitimate government of Bashar Assad, Russia just won’t budge.
Putin’s message is clear: the West will not have its way in Syria. Period.
Many readers are probably asking, what about China? Isn’t China supposed to be the key Pentagon target in the years to come because it continues to grow and grow, and its economy will soon surpass that of the US?
Yes, but that’s just the economy and, yes, China does hold almost $2 trillion in US Treasury Bills, which gives them the potential to wreak havoc on the US by just liquidating them short-term in the major global financial markets. China could, if it wanted, send the US Dollar crumbling down like the World Trade Center twin towers did in 2001.
Besides, China has never had, nor has today, global hegemonic aims. China seems quite happy to be and remain the undisputed power in South East Asia and the Western Pacific, something that is in sharp contrast with the US/UK/Israel, which together insist on running the whole world: politically, territorially, financially, even trying to impose its courts and laws.
In addition, China has few issues for open conflict: Tibet, Taiwan, a couple of disputed islands with Japan, perhaps, but that’s basically it. Their struggle lies on the economic and resources stage.
Now, compare that to the permanent conflicts the US and its allies stir up in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, Central Europe etc.
China does not really need to be contained; it is self-contained. The US and its allies, however, must be contained and, seeing the way things are going, in the long run they must be stopped.
Russia might have far less economic clout than the US, however the Kremlin has always had clear long-term geopolitical objectives; intelligently designed and planned ever since the times of the tsars, later under the Bolsheviks, and today under its mature, coherent and consistent leadership.
For Russia not only has global aims, Russia understands the world and its multicultural complexities far better than the US. On this, Russia is only rivaled by Britain... and China.
So is the US now slipping back into ‘Evil Empire’, Russia-standing-in-the-way-of-‘democracy’; Russia-supporting-the-bad-guys rhetoric?
The truth is that Russia is helping to unmask American social and political decadence, financial weakness, and psychopathic imperial overdrive.
When Russia stands up to America, it shows strength, personality and self-respect. The world looks on and applauds.
Double standards
On August 7, Obama appeared on Jay Leno’s popular ‘Tonight Show’, whining and complaining about Putin, accusing Moscow of slipping back into “Cold-War mode”. He listed US grievances against Russia: missile defense and arms control, trade relations, global security, human rights, civil society… and advising President Putin not to look at the past but to “think about the future as there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to cooperate.”
As journalist Glenn Greenwald of London’s The Guardian newspaper reminded his readers on that same day, whilst Obama and the mainstream media today express so much distress over Snowden’s Russian asylum, they seem to forget past cases where the tables were turned, and which did not involve a young, mild-mannered whistleblower, but rather where the US protected the worst criminals and murderers.
For instance, the US refused to heed an extradition request from Italy for two CIA agents indicted in the alleged 2003 abduction of an Egyptian cleric in Milan (New York Times, February 28, 2007); later, when CIA agent Robert Seldon Lady was released in Panama, he was flown back to the US to avert the possibility he might be extradited to Italy (Washington Post, July 19, 2013).
Then we have America’s refusal to extradite former CIA-supported Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada - who for all practical purposes was given US asylum - so he could stand trial for genocide and war crimes in Bolivia (The Guardian, September 9, 2012). Or the case of Luis Posada Carriles, whose extradition to Venezuela was also refused by the US, over his alleged role in the 1976 terror bombing of a Cuban jetliner that killed 73 people (El Paso Times, December 30, 2010).
The list does not stop there. In recent years, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Brazil filed repeated requests and legal summons asking the US to give up one Sir Henry A. Kissinger, wanted for questioning over his decades-long involvement with CIA-backed military regime murders in those countries during the 1970s, under a mass genocide strategy which later became known as ‘Plan Condor’.
But again, the Global Power Elite always stands behind its problem children like Sir Henry to the very end. Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón went so far as to ask Interpol to arrest Kissinger for questioning during a visit to London but - Alas! - to no avail.
And we won’t even mention the repeated extradition requests filed by Belgian Courts against former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for his war crimes and crimes against humanity, filed by Lebanese victims of his 2001 killing sprees.
The list is far too long. But the double standards are glaringly obvious, which does not seem to unduly bother the Global Hegemons, for they are far too used to always having their way.
And even when they do take some risk they use their overpowering leverage to play their game safely, as if saying “let’s flip a coin: heads we win; tails you lose”.
The
statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Comments (23)
dd 09.08.2013 21:53
A. Veranen 09.08.2013 20:51
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