It's entirely possible that Snowden is an ongoing CIA op to discredit their rival NSA as part of a turf war.
If Snowden were a CIA deep-cover operative against another US institution, couldn't they have found him a better safe-house than in Russia?
Having no experience with the CIA, maybe I just vastly under-estimate the amenities of Russian safe-houses. ;)
> tinfoil
You mean thinking and arriving at conclusions not blared from approved media outlets?
Nah, cynical one-upmanship by a bunch of people who consider Tom Clancy to be a good author.
He comes from a multigenerational military family. That's the kind of background that breeds strong loyalty to the state, and the exact kind of background from which the CIA recruits its top spies.
I find it almost implausible that someone with that kind of loyalty would suddenly resign from the CIA after they invested so much in him, only to jump ship to a private contractor. If his reasons for leaving the CIA were purely moral, why would a private contractor ameliorate any of those concerns? It seems more likely the CIA sent him to Booz Allen.
But hey, it's all a big conspiracy right? Don't believe anything you read on the Internet, except what Ed Snowden tells you.
Besides, the private sector pays a lot better than the CIA, and nobody is free from the gravitas of wealth.
That's the thing about conspiracies, when there is no proof or reasonable cause you're free to just make up whatever you want.
It's a shame that snowden's CIA background isn't talked about very often.