The Leaky Myths of Snowden
Oliver Stones Snowden is a bad movie, stuffed with myth, short on drama. Stone has always been a tendentious writer but he was once a terrific director. JFK ranks among the most exasperating movies of all time for portraying Jim Garrison, one of the battier Kennedy-assassination conspiracy-mongers, as a truth-telling hero. But it was still rollicking, spooky funso crazy entertaining, I could almost excuse its crazy script. In Snowden, Stone has another self-styled hero on his hands, but this time he dispenses with the high-flying style and instead spends two hours shrouding his protagonist with the aura of a holy martyr.
The story, as Stone tells it, matches the portrait put forth by Edward Snowden, his lawyers, and his celebrators for some time: A patriotic young man goes to work for the CIA, then the NSA. Gradually disillusioned by what he sees, he smuggles out thousands of documents that reveal the NSAs vast scale of domestic surveillance. He flees to Hong Kong, where he gives the material to a pair of trusted, rebellious reporters, so the American people will know whats being done in their name at the price of their liberty.
The fact is, many of Snowdens documents bore no resemblance to whistleblowing as the phrase is broadly understood. Judging from Snowden-inspired stories in the Washington Post and the Guardian, they revealed details about the NSAs interception of email and cellphone calls by the Taliban in Pakistans northwest territories; an operation to gauge the loyalties of CIA recruits in Pakistan; intelligence assessments inside Iran; and NSA surveillance of cellphone calls worldwide, an effort that (in the Posts words) allows it to look for unknown associates of known intelligence targets by tracking people whose movements intersect. In his first interview with the South China Morning Post, Snowden revealed that the NSA routinely hacks into hundreds of computers in China and Hong Kong. None of this is noted in Stones film.
Whatever ones views of U.S. foreign policy in those parts of the world, these activities are legitimate aspects of the NSAs charter, which involves intercepting communications of foreign powers. They have nothing to do with domestic surveillance or spying on allies. Exposing these intercepts is not whistleblowing: Its an attempt to blow U.S. intelligence operations. And while Snowden has since acknowledged that other countries do this sort of thing too, not least China and his host at the moment, Russia, he never leaked documents revealing their hacking programs even though, in his job at the NSA, he would have had access to reports (and possibly raw data) about them as well.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2016/09/what_snowden_gets_wrong_about_its_hero.html
It's almost like he's been reading me on DU the past three years...
PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,857 posts)I did see "JFK" and was thoroughly disgusted at the essential facts he got wrong.
Towards the end of the film the Donald Sutherland character claims that the breakdown in the telephone system was a part of whatever the supposed plot was. That is completely and totally wrong. The reason the phone system broke down was because practically every single person in the country was trying to make a phone call, and the equipment simply couldn't deal with it. I was a telephone operator not long after Kennedy's assassination, and every single year on Mother's Day the dial tone likewise disappeared because so many people were trying to phone Mom. It was simple overload, not a nefarious plot.
I seem to recall that when I saw the movie I was thoroughly disgusted at a few other things I could tell were wrong, and I'd have missed at least some of them.
Oliver Stone can make dramatic movies, but his acquaintance with truth and historical accuracy can be pretty nebulous.
I do need to get around to watching "Citizen Four".
Response to Blue_Tires (Original post)
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Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)My issue has been (and will always be) his exposure of legitimate foreign operations, and his complete dismissal of other nations caught doing the same thing (including the one where he has defected to).
Anytime you want to challenge me on that and discuss this matter like a grownup instead of a fanboi cultist, let me know... Trust me, you aren't the first DUer to lash out and call me everything but a Child of God just because I'm chipping away at the myth of the Golden Boy. More fervent Snowdenistas than you have taken me on and they have all failed. So the ball is in your court, chief...