So let's take score. US military has over a hundred bases globally. The CIA operates in over a hundred countries. The US intelligence budget is over $80 billion. The NSA can 'see' practically everything. And there goes Snowden, escaping on a common commercial flight out of Hong Kong.
If anybody looks stupid, it's clearly the US Government.
I can't imagine the NSA looks too kindly on non-business trips to Caracas, Moscow, or Havana. Even Iceland could have turned some heads given its recent streak of standing up for itself.
He has roundly ruined HK for future whistleblowers though!
Not really. What can they really do? Usually, they'd bully countries into submission. Hong Kong proved it does not bow down to the US. They also cannot really kidnap him or anything like that. It's way too public at this point, and as "terrible" the CIA sometimes is, they're not a bunch of murdering assholes like the Mossad.
However, this is a poorly chosen rhetorical attack in defense of the CIA since the US currently is engaging in a global assassination war using drones and other means which has murdered far far more people than the Mossad ever has, and far more of those people are completely innocent of any wrongdoing. Mossad at least picks specific and known enemy leaders and tends to assassinate only them up close and personal. It is true there is collateral damage, but the collateral killings caused by the US assassinations are much greater. The CIA is deeply involved in selecting targets and running the assassination programs, just as it was involved in horrific torture, abuse and war crimes committed against thousands of people in recent years. The CIA is a powerful and dangerous criminal organization which routinely engages in crimes against humanity. There is absolutely no defense possible for the crimes committed by the CIA.
http://www.livingunderdrones.org/
http://humanrightsclinic.law.stanford.edu/project/living-und...
The argument that "at least the CIA doesn't assassinate" like some other country that has nothing to do with Snowden's case makes no sense. It's simply not true that the CIA doesn't assassinate as much as the Mossad. The CIA assassinates far more, and far more indiscriminately. The CIA assassinates by giving american kids videogame-like control over flying robotic drones and having them assassinate anyone who they think looks suspicious while eating candy and drinking soda safe in an air conditioned room thousands of miles from where the robot planes are flying patrols. When they see someone they feel like shooting they shoot them and it is assumed that person is a "militant" because they said so. To them it is a fun videogame about shooting what they call "ragheads", and other derisive terms even worse. They keep track of their kill counts as a competition. At no point do they take responsibility for their actions, consider their targets human beings, seek justice, risk their own lives, or display any intelligence or skill. They are just cowardly thugs playing a video game where they shoot up random people who are a religion and color they don't like, because that's their job.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/21/us-usa-drones-idUS...
"President Barack Obama's administration has decided to give the Pentagon control of some drone operations against terrorism suspects overseas that are currently run by the CIA, several U.S. government sources said on Monday."
The article suggests that the Yemen assassination program will be transferred to the Pentagon, but the CIA will retain total control over the Pakistan assassination program to "maintain deniability for both the United States and Pakistan", which seems pretty Orwellian a statement given that they are obviously acknowledging it by saying they want to maintain deniability.
There's tons of articles on the drone program, the Stanford study I linked to above (Living Under Drones) is a very good intro.
There's also lots of coverage about the random nature of the assassinations. We're not at war with these countries so it can't be considered a military act of defense, at best it is an assassination. I'm not sure we should even call them assasinations though when the target is not known at all and some guy is just shooting people at random for fun. I believe the accurate term there is "genocide", "murder", and "psychopathic spree killing". Rather than a crazed individual though, it is a "normal" person, who has undergone some training, is working for a contractor who pays him, and the entire thing is managed by a state. Is a state running such programs a legitimate entity at this point? A pretty reasonable argument can be made for "no". It's interesting and disturbing from a psychological standpoint that after all the genocide in the 20th century and the talk against that genocide, that these sorts of state run programs still exist, and the sorts of countries that run them and what sort of values they claim to represent and defend.
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/06/cia_often_doesnt_know_who_it...
Incidentally, this rule also holds if you plan to work in Russian or Chinese intelligence agencies.
Is he important enough to move heaven and earth for? I didn't get that. The Obama administration needs to tread very carefully here, which is why, so long as Snowden doesn't make a stupid mistake, which it looks like he won't, he'll be able to squirrel himself away in Latin America. Obama, as head of state, needs to at least make the appearance he's protecting the power and prestige of the government. But he also needs to avoid looking like the terroristic assholes we're at war with.
It's a very thin line, and I'm actually a little impressed with how he's handling this.