One thing about Snowden that I haven’t read or heard anyone else commenting about yet are the IT job titles he claims to have had while working at the CIA during his interview with Greenwald and for which The Guardian published the video on June 9th of last year.

Quote: “”I have been a systems engineer, a systems administrator, [a] senior advisor for the Central Intelligence Agency’s solutions consultant, and a telecommunications information systems officer””.

Source: The following TPM piece by Eric Lach and published on June 10th of last year.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/a-guide-to-the-career-of-edward-snowden

Lach didn’t provide a link for the video, but I easily found it.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-interview-video

Snowden states the job titles shortly after the very start of the interview.

Read Lach’s article about Snowden’s high school-ing. Also read the Washington Post article that Lach provides. Only the second part of the latter piece is needed. In it, the writer refers to the words of some CIA officers about Snowden’s personal story in all of this. One says that the job title Snowden claims to have had while working under diplomatic cover for the CIA in Switzerland is for IT work the CIA doesn’t do there. I can’t say more about that, but another officer said Snowden didn’t even have a high school diploma while working at the CIA.

Lach says the Snowden claimed that he did poorly in high school. He clearly dropped out as well, but the college he claimed to have attended in Maryland has stated that they have records for [an] Edward Snowden attending from 1999 to 2001 and then again from 2004 to 2005, no months specified. Lach says it’s after his second year at the college that Snowden finally got his GED, which is a high school equivalency diploma and not a college equivalency. This strikes me as very odd, for post-high school colleges and universities normally have high school completion as a prerequisite. Since Snowden did poorly in high school and dropped out, a college or university should be even more strict about the high school equivalency, obtained with very good test scores, for prereq. For some reason, this college ignored his complete lack of HS equivalency.

But, the school also said that whatever Snowden they have records for the student didn’t take any cyber-related or NSS-approved ISS, information systems security, courses. Furthermore, he shouldn’t even have been allowed to enroll in any computer science (CSC) courses at all, for CSC has good grades in maths as a prerequisite. Perhaps he sat in the classes without registering for the courses? If he did, then he couldn’t legitimately claim to have completed them, for he wouldn’t be permitted to do the exams. Professionally, it’d be illegitimate without having successfully passed the exams.

Snowden claims to have taken computer courses there, but the school apparently has no registration records that support this.

He claims to have been a systems engineer for the CIA. Well, this requires both CSC and electrical engineering (EE) and the person very normally must have successfully completed these courses for their undergraduate degree. But, Snowden at best has a high-school GED while having done poorly in HS. No employer would hire someone with his total lack of proven qualifications for systems engineering, systems administration, or either of the two other IT job titles he claims to have had.

It’s possible that someone very dumb or disingenuous in a position to be able to decide whether or not to employ Snowden for IT work that, normally, only very qualified IT professionals are eligible for chose to accept him for work on some IT team at the CIA. Some people in such management positions are quite dumb when it comes to IT; not having a clue what’s really required to be qualified. If they placed him to work on a real team of IT professionals, then he’d be assigned minor tasks that’d be helpful to have a very junior person perform so that the real professionals would have more time for the critical IT work they have to do; but, he wouldn’t be given work of serious responsibilities on such teams. It’s also possible that the CIA didn’t sincerely plan of having do much at all for IT work. They could’ve hired him with IT job titles while employing him for something else.

In any case, given his lack of qualifications, he wasn’t and still isn’t qualified for any of the for IT jobs he claims to have performed in at the CIA.

He also said that he joined the Army in 2003 and began immediately training for special forces. The Army said its records show that he joined or began in May and was out in September of 2004, not 2003. He began and was discharged within 4 months; not a year. He says it’s because of having broken both of his legs. Rather than hospitalize him and then put him back into training after healing, the Army discharged him.

Lach adds the following.

Quote: “In 2007, Snowden said he was stationed with diplomatic cover in Geneva, Switzerland, where he was responsible for maintaining computer network security”.

He had no qualifications for that kind of work. A CIA officer or official also said that the CIA doesn’t have such work in Switzerland, though whether or not that’s true isn’t something I can give an answer for. I would’ve expected that the CIA has a computer network there and if there is, then someone must surely be doing CNS, for they wouldn’t want to use a computer network without employing one or more people to work on ensuring CNS. But, maybe they don’t have a CN there for some reason.

The officer said they have IT people there and that they all have broad and in-depth knowledge for the work they do. This definitely doesn’t describe Snowden at all; not based on the information we have about him.

Kevin Ryan provided a link to the following article in a reply to a reader’s comment for one of Kevin’s articles of this month.

“In 2009, Ed Snowden said leakers “should be shot.” Then he became one In Internet chat, Snowden opined on travel, short-selling — and national security.”,
by Joe Mullin – June 26 2013
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/06/exclusive-in-2009-ed-snowden-said-leakers-should-be-shot-then-he-became-one

It’s 3 pages online and none are very long. Snowden also opined that Obama, when running for president in 2008, should have John McCain for running mate for V.P., a totally ludicrous idea. Obama wasn’t trustworthy, as some critics of all of the 3 leading candidates repeated many times in 2008; but, McCain is a very sick individual, liar, etc., and he was photographed over the past few months or so meeting with the terrorist fighters making life hellish in Syria. He wasn’t meeting with them to at all try to persuade them to cease their extreme criminality. He was supporting and basically praising them. They’re “good” proxies for Washington, so McCain paid them a cordial visit.

Snowden also expressed opposition to the NYT having published one more articles about Washington’s covert operations to try to sabotage Iran’s (non-existant) nuclear weapons development. He was pro-NSA spying on citizens in the USA. Etc.

Now he’s done gone and handed over the NSA documents to the WRONG parties.

He’s no genius, that’s for sure. He also is not a hero. If he’s innocent of ill will, then he’s a blundering idiot and awfully naive. He apparently doesn’t even have a clue about the fact that he most definitely has no qualifications for any of the IT job titles he claims to have had. He can’t even get the year right for when he entered into the Army.

Closing:

Again, I recommend reading Jon Rappoport’s January 2014 pieces about Snowden and then possibly read those or some of those from 2013 linked in his more recent ones. Also to be recommended are articles about Greenwald at Kevin Ryan’s blog, DigWithin.net, as well as articles about Greenwald, Omidyar, PayPal and Snowden at BoilingFrogsPost.com. There’re videos as well as the corbettreport and boilingfrogspost channels at YouTube. These people haven’t focused on Snowden, but they provide information people should read or learn about Greenwald et al in all of this story.

Thinking Snowden is a hero is a viewpoint based on very superficial information. It’s like judging a book by its cover. We need to dig into it, before judging its contents. I can’t say that Snowden is guilty of being more than idiot and naive, due to not having proof for the contrary. But there’s something that isn’t right in his personal account in this whole story and this merits examination.

This isn’t an attack on Snowden. Instead, it’s to posit questions that’re merited. If he really was assigned the IT job titles that he claims, then so be it. It’s possible. Titles, alone, don’t necessarily indicate what a person really did or does. But, he extremely lacks necessary qualifications for the kind of work such titles normally should entail.

Come on folks! What was your first clue? That he stole a GAZILLION national secrets and then defected, with the information, to Russia? Gotta admire the analysts for THIS breakthrough revelation. I guess brilliance like this is how America keeps her edge, huh?