Nice try
by Tom Sullivan
Former CIA deputy director, Michael Morell, believes that the 2013 Edward Snowden leaks “played a role in the rise of ISIS”:
U.S. intelligence officials have long argued that Snowden’s disclosures provided valuable insights to terrorist groups and nation-state adversaries, including China and Russia, about how the U.S. monitors communications around the world. But in his new memoir, to be published next week, Morell raises the stakes of that debate by directly implicating Snowden in the expansion of ISIS, which broke away from al Qaeda and has conquered large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria.
Nice try. But for that matter, Ronald Reagan’s proxy war with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan played a role in creating al Qaeda. And the Bush/Cheney administration played a role in bringing al Qaeda to Iraq. Morell’s point is?
“Within weeks of the leaks, terrorist organizations around the world were already starting to modify their actions in light of what Snowden disclosed. Communications sources dried up, tactics were changed,” Morell writes. Among the most damaging leaks, he adds, was one that described a program that collects foreigners’ emails as they move through equipment in the United States.
As if that information hadn’t been out there since 2006. As if al Qaeda wasn’t already working well below the radar in the post-9/11, pre-Snowden era. That’s why it took until 2011 to find and kill him.
Meanwhile, back in the U.S., Elton Simpson had been investigated previously by the FBI and sentenced on a single count of making a false statement before he obtained a weapon and attacked a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland, Texas days ago. It seems the FBI played a role in his avoiding detection:
In retrospect, Mr. Simpson’s lawyer in the earlier case, Kristina Sitton, believes that the prosecution did have an effect on him — just not the one the authorities intended. “He learned that they were following him,” Ms. Sitton said Wednesday in a telephone interview. “He learned how not to attract suspicion. He learned how to be a better criminal.”
Whaddya gonna do? Snowden’s fault!