There's a very hot Diary, currently on the Rec List, which discusses a release by Wikileaks of a statement by Edward Snowden.
I'm reasonably certain it was indeed released by Wikileaks.
But was that release written by Snowden? I'm not as sure of that. I thought we were a little less trusting, here on DKos - but nobody appears to have asked the obvious question: was it really written by Snowden? Consider:
Edward Snowden is quite well-spoken. Quite. It's the sort of thing that tends to translate to the written word; and so... I have a couple of questions.
For decades the United States of America have been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum.
[From the statement.]
"...the United States of America have been..."? What American says that?
I consider myself fairly well-spoken as well; and I would say: '...the United States of America has been...'. Wouldn't you? And yes, I'm aware of the rules of grammar which indicate 'have' to be correct. But usage does trump - and has always trumped - persnickety rules.
Secondly:
Monday 1st July 2013
How European. Who writes dates like that? I thought perhaps that may be how the government writes dates these days, and for Snowden it could have become habitual. It's been awhile since I was in the service (where yes, as a Yeoman, I did indeed write dates - but not like that). So I went back and looked at some of the original source material of the leaks, here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
...and here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
There are some variations, but it looks like DOJ uses a Month (spelled out) Day comma Year format, while intelligence organizations use this: "Dated: 20070108". Date usage, of course, is mandated by government bodies - it's not like any given employee has any latitude at all in writing them.
So yeah, then I started looking at the language of the statement in general, and comparing it to Snowden's video. I know that spoken and written language tends to vary - but by that much? And I must assume that the video certainly had prepared notes, at the least. The released statement is so... bombastic, in a way. It just doesn't fit, for me.
I'm not trying to present some massive conspiracy here, but I would like to know if there is any verification that it was Snowden who wrote that statement. Does anyone know for sure? I'll tell you one thing - I would tend to trust Snowden quite a bit more than Wikileaks, despite some of the sunlight they've shone on the world.