The US is still in hot pursuit of Edward Snowden, as he reportedly shacks up in the Moscow airport after leaking details about NSA surveillance activities a few weeks ago. Now he’s broken his silence (if it really is him) to post this statement via Wikileaks. Surprise, surprise: he’s upset with Obama!
Snowden denounced Obama’s alleged orders to pressure world leaders into refusing the NSA leaker passage through their territory…
On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic “wheeling and dealing” over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.
This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.
…before saying that the US State Department’s actions have left him “stateless”…
Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.
He finishes up by saying that the US government is scared of an informed electorate…
In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.
…signing off with his full name
Edward Joseph Snowden
Why didn’t the statement include any laughs at the expense of those journalists he put on the plane to Cuba? That’s comedy-gold right there.
What do you think of Snowden?