1) The TLAs have fairly healthy cultures. 2) The TLAs are doing what we pay them for. 3) Snowden looks increasingly like a Russian agent.
The point of no return for me was seeing him and Assange trying to interfere in Catalonia. Neither had ever expressed the slightest interest, and then suddenly, they're both pushing the same line. What a marvelous coincidence!
Snowden can apply for a pardon after he turns himself in.
Similar to the Military Industrial Complex, the intelligence community has morphed into a bureaucracy all its own, with a tendency to hide its own agenda from oversight.
I'm afraid assassination is literally flying today...
Under Obama the formerly illegal assassinations were made legal, Habeas Corpus was abandoned, but it didn't reach the volume of the pre-Church and Bush Sr years. The military drone program took over those numbers.
Weren't the CIA caught red handed spying on congress?
It's certainly possible that Snowden was pressured into the Russian government into tweeting his support for it (since he is at their mercy), but even if it's true he's now compromised, how does that at all affect the NSA disclosures?
A) make the US look like a failed democracy
B) seem to be living happily and freely in Russia
I would suggest without any qualification, that Putin probably protects Snowden quite astonishingly well from influence or persuasion by any faction inside or outside the country. They need him to feel safe and protected; the rest of his behavior can then be the natural result of this.
I do get the impression he's probably allowed to speak freely (as long as he's not too publicly critical of Russia or Russian interests), but it's impossible to know. Considering he's a potentially amazing propaganda asset for the Russian government, it's not hard to think they might want to put him up to some things.