THE FIRST STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF EDWARD SNOWDEN
From the start, everything about Edward Snowden sent up red flags.
Snowden’s first strange disappearance, of course, was his flight to Moscow, which occurred even though there were nonstop and one-stop flights from Hong Kong to Ecuador and other nonextraditable countries.
It was very strange for him to end up in a country where he could comfortably spend his days complaining about Western democracies.
I documented the second strange disappear-ance of Edward Snowden here. He became a figure in hiding at the time of the trial and sentencing of Russian journalist Alexei Navalny.
To be more specific, though, Snowden’s strange disappearance occurred when hundreds of thousands of Russians began protesting in the streets.
At that time—a coincidence I’m sure—Snowden announced a twitter “sabbatical.” He then remained off twitter until Navalny was safely ensconced in the gulag and the street protests had died down.
The manner in which Snowden announced his twitter sabbatical during the Navalny episode was disgusting. He ended his tweet with the words, “Stay Free.”
This was during a time when Navalny was being sent to the gulag for proving Putin’s corruption and when thousands of Russians were being processed by the courts after their arrests for protesting. This is what that tweet looked like (with some editorializing from me):
THE SECOND STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF EDWARD SNOWDEN
To put this second strange disappearance into some type of perspective, I prepared a timeline to show the major events. A much longer timeline is contained in my post about Snowden’s silence during the Navalny street protests at this link. Here is the abridged version:
That was the second strange disappearance of Edward Snowden. The third strange disappearance also involves Alexi Navalny, but, again, the most important factor is, I believe, the Russian street protests of the Ukrainian invasion.
SNOWDEN WAS BUSY BETWEEN DISAPPEARANCES
But before we get to that third strange disappearance, we have to acknowledge that Snowden got back onto Twitter and resumed his role as a know-it-all pundit when it comes to gas prices and military evacuations and assorted other areas of expertise that come in handy when you want to attack Western democracies.
He tweeted and retweeted dozens and dozens of times to dunk on the American evacuation of Afghanistan after the allied pull out from that war. Not only did he revel in that on Twitter, but he also had enough copy to write articles about it on his Substack page.
He touted his articles endlessly on Twitter.
This was one of his many tweets about that sad day:
I think that Edward Snowden should take the “our” out of his fucking mouth, personally.
THE THIRD STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF EDWARD SNOWDEN
So, along comes Ukraine, and the United States is making it clear as day that the Russians are going to invade that country. Toeing the Russian line, Snowden wasn’t having any of that. His tweets derided the American intelligence community, and he even went so far as to re-tweet anti-war sentiments:
But leave it to Olga Lautman to point out later that this was the actual Russian position until its army crossed the border into Ukraine. Thus, up until the invasion began, Snowden was, at best, a useful puppet, decrying any intention on the part of Putin to attack Ukraine.
And he spent many tweet-hours taking this position.
Was Snowden part of Russia’s plan to have a sneak attack, or was he an unwitting asset? There is one thing for sure, his twitter presence benefitted the Putin plan to attack Ukraine.
Snowden even metaphorically bet that there would be no invasion of Ukraine:
The Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022.
From February 24 to February 27, Snowden doesn’t tweet anything. Then, he apparently learned what his “cover” would be for disappearing from the internet: It would be that he was wrong! That was the best cover that they could come up with for his third strange disappearance.
You see, my friends, nobody is ever wrong on Twitter!
While Alexei Navalny, already in prison, tweets an exhortation for his people to march in the streets of Russia, and while thousands of Russians are again arrested by Putin for protesting, and while Marina Ovsyannikova is proudly displaying a sign demanding “No War” on live Russian television, our gallant hero bows out and walks off the stage during the Russian invasion of Ukraine,.
Here’s a timeline to put it all into some kind of perspective: