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Edward Jay Epstein is my favorite investigative journalist and the author of several of my favorite books including, most recently, How America Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft. Ed has forwarded his thoughts on Snowden s becoming a Russian citizen. Ed writes: Edward Snowden, the former civilian contractor at the super-secret National Security Agency, has now joined the group of secret-stealers including infamous British Cold War spies
eye on the news
Don’t Pardon the Intrusion Edward Snowden’s actions immeasurably weakened the United States and strengthened our adversaries.
Politics and law
The most surprising thing about the failure of U.S. intelligence to discover for nearly nine months the SolarWinds penetration of U.S. government agencies, reportedly including the State, Energy, and Homeland Security Departments as well as private contractors, is that anyone is surprised. After all, the National Security Agency, responsible for protecting the communications of the U.S. government, had such a massive hole punched in its capabilities by a breach in 2013 that Michael McConnell, the former director of first the NSA and then the Office of National Intelligence, assessed “This [breach] will have an impact on our ability to do our mission for the next 20 to 30 years.”